Search the Community

The index wheels all seem to have a strangely large amount of runout. As long as the teeth are intact they just seem to work though. When phasing, I do as in the quote above, but I don't want to see any hesitation- smooth running only. That's a shame they skip the actual phasing part in the vid! Henry was actually a guest instructor when I was in school to teach us Accutron work- interesting guy and he really did know his stuff. You could check with AWCI, the American Watchmakers and Clockmakers Institute, who made the video; if you are a member you can check out books and videos from their library.

So first of all: yes, I'm a dummy. Yes, I learned my lesson. While cleaning my Accutron I pegged out the jewel holes as usual, but realized too late there were burnished-in cap jewels on the other side and managed to get bits of pegwood trapped between the hole and cap jewels. I was able to clean one out through the hole jewel with a sharpened oiler, but the other is not budging. I've been soaking the bridge over night in hexane, but it's no better this morning. I'm worried about chipping the edges of the jewel hole if I keep it up. Any other suggestions on what might soften/dissolve pegwood?

Accutron train bridges are very easy to assemble because the jewel holes have something like a funnel to guide the pivots in. Just put the the bottom pivots into the bottom holes, gently drop the top plate on and tap the holder. The plate will just drop in. It's really satisfying. I suspect it's because your bottom holes have pegwood in them that you can't get the plate on.

There used to be somebody out there that didn't do this but I think he got overloaded and work and doesn't do it anymore. Then when you're making a machine for winding coils about a machine to make index wheel's. Then I figured out where I put the information on phasing for silver cells. I'm attaching a PDF on that. 1996-08-web horological times Accutron silver cells phasing.pdf

Is that a 218 movement? 218s are a good starting point to learn Accutron repair. They are infinitely simpler than 214s. The uA are an indication of the amount of current drawn. It should be within the current range for the movement. An abnormally high current could indicate a faulty circuit, a dirty gear train or a high amount of pressure of the pawl/index fingers on the index wheel. A high current draw will result in short battery life. The adjustments to the index finger that we are talking about here are incredibly small. My 218 just died on me after two years. I found that it's due to an open cell coil. Looks like it's time to build a jig to do coil rewinding as working coils are getting really hard to find.

Thought I'd share a picture or two, since I was cleaning up today in preparation for finally getting to work on all these Accutron 218 movements I have waiting for love. Hence the power supply over there.

Hello, I am new at this forum, and I have a question right at start. I have got an accutron for a year, and I looked into it with a microscope first time (only with loupe earlier). I found out that fingers are dirty, looks like oxidation. I put photo of them. Is it possible to clean them without disassembling the movement? I have read that someone has applied naphta to the index wheel while running... Thanks in advance for help! BR Jukka

Although I was trying to be good and not purchase anything till I had sorted out the multitude of watches I have in the queue, I saw this Accutron on the bay and bought it for £32.49 plus about $5 postage to my sons place in LA. I had not got an Accutron 2210 up to this point in time, and to be honest the movement does not have a particularly good rep for reliability. However, the parts are comparitively cheap compared to the 214 and 218 and through a quirk of fate I have quite a few NOS 2210 parts that were amongst a job lot of 214 and 218 bits I bought some time ago. It is a 1973 movement and coincidentally that is when these were first produced and the movement is quite small, being used in lots of ladies watches which do not command the same prices as the mens accutrons - good for getting parts. I queried with the vendor the size and was advised it is 34mm excluding the crown so it is in a mans case. Condition was described as "Awesome" but I will settle for reasonably good seeing it is over 40 years old, there are some scratches on the glass and I deduce from the back that the case is gold plated which is difficult to tell from the photos, but I will take what comes. It will be a while until it is sent over to me along with some 218 coils I took a punt on but I look forward to seeing it. Was not going to buy any more repair jobs but I weakened, however, I am definitely back on the wagon for a while. Cheers, Vic

This may help out with Accutron 2185 problems Bulova-Accutron-2185- Pages 58 to 71 Supplement for Hour and Date Settings Manual.pdf Cheers, Vic

I contacted a respected watch repairer to ask about repairing Bulova accutron tuning fork watches. The reply came back that parts were impossible to source so he couldn't help me. Does anyone on this form repair these watches. I have 2 that were working but now don't and I would prefer to pay for the repairs rather than go through the whole process of trying to learn how to do it myself. Life's too short to start another field, I just want to get to grips with mechanical watches. I started this thread because another member posted about receiving coils which were damaged in the post and it got me thinking.

Recently I got an early 214 from 1963 that had a faulty coil. The coils on these are in two parts, a cell-coil and component coil, joined by three fine insulated single-core wires. The Cell coil had gone O/C due to water/battery leak rotting out the fine wires where they attach to the soldered binding-posts--Mainly because Bulova hadn't covered a small section of the wire with any protective varnish. A replacement cell-coil was bought from the guy in Bulgaria and the old one replaced on the coil assay. Fitting to the movement, it didn't run. It would go for about 5-10 seconds after plucking the fork, but the hum would slowly die away. I assumed the resistor and capacitor were messing round --so replaced these in the component coil side. Still the same. I checked the transistor--but it looked good in testing--I replaced it anyway, using a silicon device tacked in to test, altering the bias by changing the resistor from 3.9 meg to 2.2 meg, to accomodate the different bias requirements between a Silicon and the old Germanium device it was replacing and tried again. Exactly the same! I monitored the current using my home-made PSU, it would initially pin the meter and that would die away to 5uA, but the movement still not running and no hum either. Plucking the fork, it would run for 5-10 seconds, then the hum would die away, and no appreciable difference in current draw. The clue was the constant current it was drawing after the initial pulse. It was perfectly clear when I dragged the Scope out and checked. The coil set was oscillating at 200 odd KHz! When the fork was plucked, the 360Hz was modulating the 200KHz. I guess a Long-wave radio could have picked it up if it was close by! Fortunately,--Bulova had also run into this problem as well and on some coils added an extra capacitor to the component-coil to damp out the radio-frequency oscillations. A 0.01uF (1 Nanofarad, 1000pF) cap was installed at the point the wires from the cell-coil attach to the component-coil. Its placed between the leads of the drive coil (Red wire) and the feedback coil (Green wire). Doing likewise with an 0805 1nF SMD cap cured the issue completely and the movement runs normally, even self-starting--with lots of wires and components hanging out of it! I just now need to rebuild it all properly and neatly into the component-coil recess--Which should be fun!. I'm guessing that the inductance of certain Cell-coils must be just right to cause this oscillation so they added the extra cap on those causing troubles.

Looking for a good cell-coil for a 214. original is a three-wire coil, but I can re-wire a two-wire cell coil into a three to work in place, if you have one going spare, maybe from a set with a duff component-coil. Thanks.

Hi all , After not winning auctions on a few watches ,.. a similar model to this one , 2 Accutron Astronauts , 2 Omega SeaMasters , I pulled the trigger on this Beauty . It had a BIN price of $899,99 or make offer . I had been watching this watch for about a month along with about 20 or 30 other watchers . The date code N1 places it as a 1971 model . I made an offer that was accepted by the seller and now this Baby is on its way to me .

I have both 2X Barlow and 20X eyepieces, but I don't use either for watchmaking. Accutron movements seems like a good application for the eyepieces, and I'm sure there are occasions when you really want (though probably not strictly need) to get as deep on a mechanical movement, but that seems like a wait until the need arises sort of thing. That scope looks like it's from the same factory as the AmScope, et. al., so I wouldn't worry about inexpensive eyepieces getting hard to find any time soon.

Try it out for yourself. Do you find 22.5x sufficient to oil a pallet jewel? Is 3.5x wide enough to see the whole watch? Like I said, the only time I need higher magnification is when working on Accutron watches. Possible upgrades that you might want to consider are a led ringlight for shadowless lighting and a tiltable microscope mount, so that you won't need a step ladder.

I have an Accutron Railroad (218) somewhere that has two hour hands, like a Gmt. No way to adjust the difference aside from resetting them on their pipes. Always found that weird. Now here's one with two crowns and no GMT. Weird.

If you look carefully it's not your normal screw back as you're already noticed. Typically you see similar things on Accutron Bulova watches where there's an outer ring that screws on. But this ring doesn't look like it's screws it looks like its locked into tabs four of them on the case. The problem with outer rings are ideally you should have a special wrench. Another was it fits into the notches and then you can turn. In the case of Bulova they do have a special wrench. You can use your standard case wrench except. Normally with a standard case wrench to tighten it up and hold the back tightly when you rotate it you do not want to grab the back itself tightly as typically it's held in place with a tab or something in its physical location. So all you want to do is rotate the ring Only.

I thought that was the spare crown in case the primary crown fails you can use the spare crown? Interesting that it doesn't have the other hand or even a bezel to rotate? Then I'm attaching a supplement that covers the thing is that the other crown can do. Bulova-Accutron-2185-Manual.pdf

I have a problem. Ive got this Slava Transistor watch--the one the Russians ripped off in the 60's of the American Bulova Accutron 214.... Its a fairly close match,-- visually they look identical, quite an achievement IMO... My issue is this. Its third wheel has a rusted off pivot, fairly common on the Accutron version due to moisture or batt leaks and there's fair evidence of a leak in this one.. The Accutron 3rd wheel wont fit--2nd Moscow Watch Co (Slava, Seconda, Vostock etc) in their infinite wisdom made their staff smaller in diameter than the Americans, no idea why... My only solutions as trying to find a correct good third for this mega-oddball are near impossible, are- 1/ machine down Accutron third wheel pivots.... 2/ Replace the jewels but dont know if plate holes are the same size and I dont have the equipment to deal with jewel replacement anyway. So--Anyone good with the watchmakers lathe fancy having a look?

Hi All , The postman delivered this Accutron 2180 today . In good condition and running smooth . The dial fades from dark blue to light blue . I installed a new Bulova strap I had and will install a new crystal soon . The date on the back says N3 , which translates to 1973 . Also on Craigslist here on Oahu , Hawaii I picked up this Tissot Visodate Heritage for an offer under $200 . I had been looking at them on the "Bay" , and at the local Auth. Dealer . I'm Stoked...

Hi, Some of the first watches I worked on were accutron 214's and I have always liked them. Anyway a week or so ago I was searching the web and came across this one. It was described as humming but the hour and minute hands were hanging up as well as being 14kt gold. I decided to take a chance and put a $550.00 bid on it. It is turning into one of my favorites .

typically they're not supposed to run fast if they run fast somebody didn't phase the watch correctly. Or they didn't phase the watch taking into account that there now using a silver cell with a higher voltage. perhaps today this is true because were all familiar with quartz watches. At the time in the tuning fork watch came out Bulova discovered the watchmakers were having issues. So they had a several day training program. Unlike the training programs or stuff the other watch companies were doing where you got a certificate just to be there this was different. Two days of intense training with a written and practical exam. Only those people that passed got the certificate and could call themselves a Certified Accutron Technician. as this is an electric watch the same test equipment you have for quartz watches will work fine. Variable voltage power supply with the ability to measure microamps. Unlike quartz watch repair a microscope is necessary to do the phasing. The index wheel and the jewels associated are really tiny and a microscope would be rather nice here. to get you started I have some light reading. The 214 service manual is really where it all get started so it explains about how it works phasing etc. Then there's a fact book that explains similar stuff. then the Omega tuning fork in this discussion wasn't really made by Omega. The Swiss needing their own tuning fork watch designed a new tuning fork watch and it was sold by a whole bunch a Swiss companies. I have the manual for that and this is interesting watch as it implemented all sorts of improvements to make it much easier to work on. then an interesting link. Notice they have a reference to how to phase the tuning fork watch to run at a higher voltage. These watches were designed specifically to run with Mercury batteries and were never meant to run on silver cells with the higher voltage. This requires a slightly different procedure for phasing which is why you require a variable voltage power supply. http://members.iinet.net.au/~fotoplot/acc.htm Accutron 214 ServiceManual.pdf Accutron Facts Booklet.pdf ESA 9162 Repair Manual Omega 1250.pdf

No need to scan the manual somebody else did it for us. I've attached the service manual a specification sheet and the bonus parts list. The reason I use the word bonus is that the parts list came with the boxes of the material. Siege to the various watches at least the tuning fork watches would have a box with a lot of envelopes and due to have these cards that showed you the parts. So here is where someone scanned in all the cards and made a nice PDF for us. I'm probably being nitpicky here but when I think multimeter I'm thinking analogue and if somebody use the word digital multimeter then the fluke would qualify. Accutron 218 --Manual.pdf Accutron Parts 214 218.pdf Accutron_Specifications.pdf

Regarding meters...it is not easy to find a 25ua analog meter. That is why I recently bought two accutron test sets because they use a rather large 25ua FS meter. I am planning on building a test platform using one of them. I know nothing about servicing accutron and don't plan to head that way...just hijacking this thread to add my thoughts on meters