Tmuir

Would these cheaper mass produced carriage clocks been originally gold plated, or was it just the more expensive ones that were gold plated? The case I'm talking about , not the movement

Cousins lists the part number for a Seiko 7019-7060 crystal as 310W13GN00 Just did a quick look on ebay and found 2 NOS ones for sale, but how deep is your pocket?

I think you just need to hit them really hard with a hammer to 'improve' the amplitude.

I would go against the JB weld idea, might get you out of trouble but would make it impossible to replace the staff again in the future. Unfortunately starting to sound like its time to start again.

Part of the price is definitely the brand name, but Rolex does use higher quality materials, higher tolerances in making the watch and still hand finish a lot of the parts, and that does add a lot of cost to the watch. There are 2 types of expensive watches. 1) High end brand, Rolex, Longines, Patek Philippe etc. These brands a lot of the price is the workmanship 2) Fashion brand watch. These are watches branded with a high end fashion name. The Fashion house may design the watch case but almost always buy in the movement. Usually the movement will be of reasonable quality, but its not uncommon to find a watch that sells for $500 to only have a movement that sells wholesale for $50 in it. This type of watch you are paying to wear the name not the quality of the watch. But if you want to see what goes into making the real top end brands go watch the videos by Roger Smith on Youtube and you will understand why his watches are so expensive. https://www.youtube.com/user/rwsmithwatches/videos

Now that is annoying. I remember the first balance staff I made took me forever, probably spent about 8 or 10 hours on it and taking the final cut for the perfect fir for the roller table I cut too deep and took off an extra 1 or 2 100th of a mm and the roller table went from a friction fit to a sliding fit. So it was back to the start again. I still keep that balance staff though to show people just how small the things you have to machine by hand with a graver to fix a watch, and then I tell them my balance staff is from a pocket watch and a wristwatch staff is about 30 to 40% smaller again. I hope you have enough material to be able to rivet it on.

Yes I was thinking I might need to buy a new smaller diamond stone as mine were all bought to sharpen gravers so are quite large and would be hard to hold flat. I do have smaller Arkansas stones but I wouldn't trust them to be perfectly parallel.

Just dredging up my old post from nearly 3 years ago as I am finally starting to use this. I had to replace an endstone recently and noted that the size reamer I wanted to use was damaged and the next size up was missing, but after some research and measuring I discovered the the Bergeon (Seitz) spare parts fitted mine so I replaced about half of the reamers. I'm now looking at some of my pushers and may replace some of them as they also have seen better days, but was wondering if anyone here maintains their pushers as listed in the Seitz booklet by grinding them flat. I obviously don't have the special (and expensive) Seitz grinding stone but was thinking about using one of my diamond sharpening stones instead. What does everyone else do?

The first watch is out of beat and needs to be set in beat, although it may have other issues too. Do some research on how to set a watch into beat The second watch sounds like it has a hairspring issue, and there are a few possibilities but all of them will be leading to the hairspring behaving like it is shorter making the watch beat faster. This could be the watch is magnetized causing the hairspring coils to stick to each other, or it could have oil on it also causing the coils to stick to each other. The hairspring could be out of flat and touching something. Either way have a close look at the hairspring.

I like the look of some mains powered clocks, but the old mains powered movements are usually death traps, replacing the movement was probably the best idea. I did once read how to convert Smiths mains clocks to run on 12 V AC but being your clocks came from the USA the frequency difference would still stop it from working. Nicely done.

My wife has had a jumbo size jar of pickles of the bench for the last 2 months that has defied all efforts to open it. Bought a new Silicone jar opener, made no difference. Holding the jar at 45 degrees and slapping the bottom of the jar to use the 'water hammer' effect didn't work. Me holding the jar and my son trying to open it didn't work. Heating the jar lid with me holding the jar and my son trying to open it didn't work. After coming home tonight from the pub I could see my wife had tried to open it again without success. I gave up and searched the web for how to open stuck pickle jars and one suggestion was use a bottle opener on the side of the lid. I very carefully used my best bottle opener (Hand forged by a blacksmith) on the edge of the lid and 'pop' went the lid without the lid being damaged. The jar is now open after 2 months of trying, is there anything the web can't help you with?

Nice case and a nice collection, but I see you still have room to grow in that case. I'm OH, I like that Omega.

Well done, great job on the crystal!

At the other end of the spectrum the senior lecturer at the school I studied told me when he was an apprentice the worst job that he had was making the grease for the tower clocks they looked after. He had to go down to the butchers to collect all the offcuts and then they had to render the fat down to make grease for lubing the tower clocks. Thank god now we can just buy a bottle of oil or grease.

Thanks, I have seen smaller sets for watch pivots, but never a set for largers sizes like that, something else for me to keep an eye out for.