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well I took a chance and splashed out £29 for this piece, bit of a gamble as the seller was quite limited in their description. From what I can see I’m going to need to straighten the hairspring, it looks like someone has true to move the regulator and bent the spring by the stud so hopefully I might be able to get it almost true whilst it’s still attached!!!’

I can see a new crystal is required and of course a major clean and inspection and service.

so the million dollar question is Does anyone know anything about it, I’ve done a limited internet search but not really coming up with much, as I haven’t got it yet I don’t even know the caliper of the movement!!’

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  • 1 month later...

Back again, well I have tweeked the hairspring back into true again, brushed some essence of Renata in the visible “jewel” holes and dropped in a little oil and it runs.

only dial up though, as soon as I go Pendant up it ticks normally for about five seconds then the balance wheel goes really fast for about 5 seconds then it stops. Any idea as to why this might be happening?

Also and just as importantly does anyone have any idea as to the movement cal. I know amida used their own movements but also AS but I have had no luck finding a number as of yet. I will do a deep search in ranft but I don’t think they do a visible escapement in their search. 

As of yet I haven’t stripped cleaned  etc etc all I’ve done is a five minute job just to see if it would tick. I’m curious to get ideas as to why the balance is doing what it’s doing before I strip it down so I can have an idea what to look for as I strip it down and locate the fault, which will help me on future jobs fingers crossed. 

Many thanks for any info, full pictures of strip and service hopefully in a weeks time all being well.

Edited by transporter
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  • 2 weeks later...

Next load as I got the dreaded error 200 whilst uploading the last of the photos.

ok the mainspring and barrel, now I’ve never worked on an 8 day pocket watch before and have only seen the hebdomas versions. Now their mainspring barrels seem to take up the whole of the case. As you can see from this one it’s quite diminutive in comparison with an internal measurement of 23.53mm the main spring Lied nice and flat when out of the barrel and across its widest part measures 55.14mm, it’s thickness is 0.25mm with a height of 1.88mm. I personally can’t see this being enough power for 8 days, but again I have qualifications only a few years of tinkering.

Also in the barrel you can see a sepearate piece of metal that the mainspring connects onto, has anyone else come across this before or is this a clue that the mainspring isnt the correct one?

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Last session for now, all back together again after 2 cleans and rinses. I now have a problem, obviously this being a rather old movement made by Baumgartner, although copious amounts of searching on the net brings up nothing for this movement, even Ranfft draws a blank. Anyway I am now getting over banking, I can only put this down to a freshly cleaned and lubed movement now having more power put through it ( same power as before  but now with no resistance ).

i shall let it run and see for how long before it overbanks again and in what position it is sitting in ie pendant up etc.

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Cheers, it’s running well dial up but as soon as I go pendant up it runs fine for about 15 seconds then the balance plays up a bit by going really fast for about a second then it overbanks. Not sure why, but when I straightened the hairspring I repinned it in the original position but it was squashed on one side so I re pinned it slightly further along its length making it slightly shorter, this would make it run faster but could this be the cause for the overbanking?

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10 minutes ago, transporter said:

Cheers, it’s running well dial up but as soon as I go pendant up it runs fine for about 15 seconds then the balance plays up a bit by going really fast for about a second then it overbanks. Not sure why, but when I straightened the hairspring I repinned it in the original position but it was squashed on one side so I re pinned it slightly further along its length making it slightly shorter, this would make it run faster but could this be the cause for the overbanking?

From what I've read, the overbanking may be resultant from either the mainspring being of an excessive strength, or the modern oils you have used resulting in less resistance/more power being delivered to the escapement than what was originally intended. I have read of some people solving this problem by oiling the pallet pivots... but it's not really best practice and may cause issues down the line...

Edited by JBerry
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Mmmmm that’s what I was thinking, it’s weird that it runs perfectly dial up, i will keep it under observation over the next couple of days, maybe someone else has any ideas 
Maybe the balance is experiencing more resistance in this position and is inhibiting the knocking... Just throwing out ideas here, I'm sure someone will have a better idea

Sent from my Redmi 4X using Tapatalk

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3 hours ago, nickelsilver said:

Is it overbanking or rebanking? It would be very strange for it to have a surplus of amplitude in a vertical position if it's running fine flat. Can you get a vid of it doing the "thing"?

I’ll post a vid in the morning ok

1 hour ago, Nucejoe said:

Hi Transpoter, Good clean, How did you clean, cleaing tools? solution?! please.

Thanks in advance.

I use L&R ultra fine watch cleaning solution and isopropyl alcohol as a rinse. I’ve got an L&R ultrasonic cleaner. The case got cleaned twice aswell then I got my dremel out with my red cleaning compound ( made for silver and gold ).

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14 hours ago, nickelsilver said:

Is it overbanking or rebanking? It would be very strange for it to have a surplus of amplitude in a vertical position if it's running fine flat. Can you get a vid of it doing the "thing"?

Here’s a quick one, it kept very good time over night only lost 3 mins, but as soon as I sit it pendant up the balance does this. Although this morning it isn’t over banking !!! It seems there is now something else stopping the balance.

the photo is of the balance after it has stopped, as you can see it seems to be at rest within the fork.

As for the mainspring I do believe it is not the correct size, as this morning it took 14 turns to wind it up which is just about a full from empty wind, so I think some detective work into what the correct spring size should be, I’m thinking maybe a much thinner spring and therefore longer in length to give a less powerful drive through the train and hopefully somewhere nearer the 8 day running as the dial says. Although me and main spring working out have never really gelled so to say, so any help in this subject would be appreciated.

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Edited by transporter
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Ok that's not rebanking (the balance with amplitude over 330 and roller pin hitting opposite side of fork) and not overbanking (the fork slipping over to the wrong banking). [was it rebanking before in the flat postition? the first vid it looked fine...] It just has almost zero amplitude in that position. You need to check that it has safe lock. Rotate the balance manually until an escape tooth just drops off one of the pins, and see that the next tooth lands on its locking face on the next pin. Then, in that position, check that if you push the fork toward the balance roller, the tooth stays locked. You have some adjustment on the fork by bending that piece where the pins mount. If there is tons of sideshake on the balance/fork/escape wheel the lock needs to be deeper as the adjustment will change in different positions.

If the escapement seems good then check the pivots, particularly the balance and fork pivots. They may need to be refinished. Perhaps run a smoothing broach in their holes. Don't enlarge the holes!

For your mainspring, you can figure out the number of turns necessary by counting the teeth on the driving wheel on the barrel and dividing that by the pinion leaves in the canon pinion. From the photos that shows 72/18 which means 4 hours per turn. My Generale Ressorts book shows a spring for BFG cal. 640 with 23mm barrel at 1.90 x 0.24 x820 (closest they have to your 1.80 height spring), which should give a number of winds of 8.7 turns (this page is excellent for mainspring calcs), which means a reserve of 35 hours. In order to get 8 days you'd need a spring 0.045mm thick and 4.3meters long. Even a Lecoultre 101 doesn't have a spring that thin.

Either my observations are absolutely off or the facon 8 jours printed on the dial means just that, in French, "8 day style".

 

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Edited by nickelsilver
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7 hours ago, nickelsilver said:

Ok that's not rebanking (the balance with amplitude over 330 and roller pin hitting opposite side of fork) and not overbanking (the fork slipping over to the wrong banking). [was it rebanking before in the flat postition? the first vid it looked fine...] It just has almost zero amplitude in that position. You need to check that it has safe lock. Rotate the balance manually until an escape tooth just drops off one of the pins, and see that the next tooth lands on its locking face on the next pin. Then, in that position, check that if you push the fork toward the balance roller, the tooth stays locked. You have some adjustment on the fork by bending that piece where the pins mount. If there is tons of sideshake on the balance/fork/escape wheel the lock needs to be deeper as the adjustment will change in different positions.

If the escapement seems good then check the pivots, particularly the balance and fork pivots. They may need to be refinished. Perhaps run a smoothing broach in their holes. Don't enlarge the holes!

For your mainspring, you can figure out the number of turns necessary by counting the teeth on the driving wheel on the barrel and dividing that by the pinion leaves in the canon pinion. From the photos that shows 72/18 which means 4 hours per turn. My Generale Ressorts book shows a spring for BFG cal. 640 with 23mm barrel at 1.90 x 0.24 x820 (closest they have to your 1.80 height spring), which should give a number of winds of 8.7 turns (this page is excellent for mainspring calcs), which means a reserve of 35 hours. In order to get 8 days you'd need a spring 0.045mm thick and 4.3meters long. Even a Lecoultre 101 doesn't have a spring that thin.

Either my observations are absolutely off or the facon 8 jours printed on the dial means just that, in French, "8 day style".

 

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Sorry I’m late in replying, yes the damn thing isn’t doing what it was yesterday, I shall see if it will do it again and grab some footage or at least a photo of the postition of the balance and fork.

i guess I was mistaken in thinking that it was an 8 day movement, I don’t mind, trust me awhile back hebdomas pocket watches were going pretty cheap but now they fetching good prices.

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Here’s a good picture, I’ve just been starting the investigations, when manually moving the escape wheel there is no movement towards the roller on the balance when the pins are on lock.

The first picture is how it sits right now frozen.

The second picture is after I’ve just nudged the balance and it’s gone straight into being over-banked 

The third photo is showing the position of the pins on the escape wheel whilst overbank 

 

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Ok I’ve just put the balance back in without the bridge screws in place and it ticked away nicely until it froze again in this position. 

Mum starting to think this is balance related, with some unwanted friction on the balance staff pivots maybe.

The second photo is the best, it shows the fork stuck on the roller and the position of the pins on the escape wheel. Thoughts?

The third and fourth photos shows how it has stopped again, this time as I thought the safety piece has no clearance from the staff and has jammed up against it.

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Edited by transporter
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In the second photo from post #19 you have an impulse face on a pin, this is pushing the guard pin against the safety roller. When you manually move the balance the wedging effect there is kicking the fork over to overbanked, before the impulse pin has a chance to enter the horns.

 

Double check your drop and total lock and freedom of the guard pin. I think it's not locking correctly and either the pallet pin dephthing to escape wheel is a bit shallow, guard pin too short, both, or both and excessive side shake on balance in particular.

 

 

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Ok I think I might of sorted this, the pallet and the pins, obviously when the balance was skipping there was insufficient lock, now I’ve adjusted the lock ( trial and error ) it’s running great in all positions at the moment. Amazing how one small problem gets you looking at a thousand possibilities around the movement.

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1 minute ago, nickelsilver said:

In the second photo from post #19 you have an impulse face on a pin, this is pushing the guard pin against the safety roller. When you manually move the balance the wedging effect there is kicking the fork over to overbanked, before the impulse pin has a chance to enter the horns.

Try shifting the tail on the fork which carries the pins toward the escape wheel a little bit. The pins also look pretty rusty, they (and the escape teeth) need to be really smooth, polished.

Yes you were correct mate, it was the pins out of position, so grateful for your input on this, kinda get lost sometimes not being able to see the wood for the trees. I will put on the timer out of interest to see If it gives a trace ( i doubt it ) I’ll turn recase it and test over the next few days in different positions to see how it fares.

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Fingers crossed mate, something else learnt today, everyday is a school day you know, if it plays up some more I now know where to look, at least I’ll go for a deep clean/ polish of the escape wheel teeth and try to polish up the pins as best I can. I take it I can do this with a burnishing tool from my lathe kit but done by hand?

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