Troubleshooting question

[Lc130]

Hi All

I'm still a beginner having "serviced" about ten watches.  I bought an Orient H9 advertised as non running.  Found that the dial foot screw got loose and was stuck beneath the ratchet wheel.

After cleaning and reassembling, the balance wheel is very sluggish and doesn't read on the time grapher.  I've gone through the following tests:

-without the pallet fork, the balance swings happily for 55 seconds after a good puff from the duster.

-the wheels turn freely without the pallet fork

-the pallet fork snaps from side to side with a nudge from a fine oiler.

Could it be the mainspring?  I'm failing miserably with mainsprings having broken many.  Problem is that I can't seem to find used winders that work.

Thanks for any advice.

Charlie

 

 

[yankeedog]

pm sent

[Nucejoe]

Yes it can be poor power delivery. You can manually add power to the barrel, if not by finger, by a piece of wood or to any gear within reach by your tweezers and obsrve the effect.

You didn,t mention your tests for other possible causes, Impulse pin being in beat,the wheel rubbing on fork bridge, magnetization effect, HS rubbing on center wheel.

Regards

 

[Tmuir]

As Nucejoe has said, check it is in beat, ceck the impulse jewel is good, the pallet fork is not damaged.

I had a pocket watch that everything looked good but it wouldn't run, what I tracked it down to was the roller table had split so it was loose on the balance staff so it slipped when the fork gave it an impulse

[Lc130]

The impulse jewel looks good so does the fork.  When I nudge the center wheel, the balance will sometimes stop.  

Concerning beat, I moved the beat corrector in both directions and set it to the midpoint of it's travel range without any noticeable effect.   I watched Mark's video on the subject.  Is sighting the impulse jewel between the banking pins the optimal method?  I'd have to take the bridge plate off for that.

Thank you

Charlie

 

[AndyHull]

6 hours ago, Lc130 said:

I'm still a beginner having "serviced" about ten watches.  I bought an Orient H9 advertised as non running.  Found that the dial foot screw got loose and was stuck beneath the ratchet wheel.

I wonder if that dial screw was backed off for a reason and then fell out. Perhaps try running it without the dial.

The dial feet may be mis-alligned or damaged or for some reason the dial may be fouling on the hands, or there may be a dial washer missing, and the dial is now pressing on the mechanism (probably on the hour wheel).

Edited March 28, 2019 by AndyHull

[Lc130]

The dial and hands are off at this point.

Thank you

[Nucejoe]

Yes, if Balance wheel rests at the position where the impulse jewel is inside the fork horn and  the fork in between banking pin, it would fly with or without brexit.

Your picture shows HS in wrong position, the stud should be on spoke, almost 90deg off. That alone is enough for a flight to nowhere. 

[AndyHull]

Good, that eliminates that possibility.

6 hours ago, Lc130 said:

-without the pallet fork, the balance swings happily for 55 seconds after a good puff from the duster.

-the wheels turn freely without the pallet fork

-the pallet fork snaps from side to side with a nudge from a fine oiler.

Doesn't sound like the balance pivots, but stranger things have happened. The pivot shown above looks good, what about the other one?

Do the balance jewels look OK with no signs of cracking or elliptical or excessive wear?

Have you cleaned them individually?

Do the fork pivot jewels and the fork pivots look OK with no signs of cracking bending of the pivots or elliptical or excessive wear?

Have you cleaned them individually?

The wheels turn freely with the fork out. Is that the case,  even with only a very slight turn of the winder, or only once you have put in quite a few turns of the winder?

Does the pallet fork look complete? Are the pallet fork jewels (as opposed to the pallet pivot jewels) both  seated in the fork, straight and not chipped or cracked?

What does the time grapher output look like?

[AndyHull]

For what its worth, I've done a couple of Orients recently and both were very reluctant to stay in beat. The range of movement of the adjuster from completely rubbish to good to completely rubbish again was a relatively short sweep of the full range of the adjuster.

Take a look on line and see if you can find a picture of a similar movement's balance, and set yours in a similar position and see if it goes a little better.

Show us a picture of the balance etc assembled and I'll see if anything comes to mind.

Which Orient movement is it -> http://www.ranfft.de/cgi-bin/bidfun-db.cgi?10&ranfft&&2uswk

(Search for Orient)

Edited March 28, 2019 by AndyHull

[Nucejoe]

Dose orient use them funny fork? And would the stud then be 90 deg off? 

[AndyHull]

22 minutes ago, Nucejoe said:

Dose orient use them funny fork? And would the stud then be 90 deg off? 

I guess we also need a picture of the fork, to answer that question.

[AndyHull]

One other thing occurs to me.. its an Orient. Does it manually wind at all.

I believe some of them only auto-wind. Manually winding with the stem, will do nothing. You can however wind them with a screwdriver I believe, but this begs the question.. If it does only autowind, is that the issue, does the autowinder actually work? 

Maybe I'm over thinking the problem here... that would be nothing new.

Edited March 28, 2019 by AndyHull

[AndyHull]

The two I have are both 21 Jewel 46943s  - For what its worth, here is a picture of one of them (running well).

You could try the balance in the position shown in the picture. Also to wind this watch, which I believe is autowind only, you can turn the big screw, highlighted in blue, clockwise. When it arrived, the autowinder didn't work, and the crystal was smashed. I sorted out the winder, but I have yet to fit the replacement crystal.

No doubt, I'm barking up the wrong tree here, as your watch probably has an entirely different movement, but I thought it worth mentioning.

 

Edited March 28, 2019 by AndyHull

[AndyHull]

Another thing I've noticed with this particular movement is that it is very quiet, so I have to turn up the gain on the mic in my laptop otherwise the timegrapher software can't hear it and if there is the slightest noise in the house it shows up on the graph.

The watch is actually running fine in this graph, but first the washing machine started to beep, then someone went upstairs, then the shower went on, and finally the fan kicked in on my laptop.  All of which makes for a very confusing looking graph.

 

[Lc130]

Below is a pic of the fork.  The watch is manual wind.  I will try all of the steps you provided tomorrow.  Note that I did move the beat corrector through all of its range without any effect.  

Thank you

Edited March 28, 2019 by Lc130

[Nucejoe]

3 hours ago, Lc130 said:

The impulse jewel looks good so does the fork.  When I nudge the center wheel, the balance will sometimes stop.  

Concerning beat, I moved the beat corrector in both directions and set it to the midpoint of it's travel range without any noticeable effect.   I watched Mark's video on the subject.  Is sighting the impulse jewel between the banking pins the optimal method?  I'd have to take the bridge plate off for that.

Thank you

Charlie

 

Hi charlie, This picture shows the stud positioned on top of the fork, how could that be.

[Lc130]

2 minutes ago, Nucejoe said:

Hi charlie, This picture shows the stud positioned on top of the fork, how could that be.

I'm not sure what you mean?

[AndyHull]

3 minutes ago, Nucejoe said:

Hi charlie, This picture shows the stud positioned on top of the fork, how could that be.

Hmm... I'm not sure about that. Can we some pictures of the fork and balance, installed. The better the images, the more likely we can figure out what is wrong.

[Nucejoe]

The hairspring ends right in front of the impulse pin,  HS end is where the studs mounts on the HS. That is not right.

A picture of the movement helps, I don,t know how this orient looks and where stud normaly is positioned , if anything like normal movements, HS is mounted on the wheel way off.

[Nucejoe]

Just check the picture you posted, where dose HS end?  

That dosn,t look normal no matter how wierd the movement is made.

HS is mounted wrongly on the wheel, way off .

[Lc130]

It's in pieces at the moment.  This is how it looked before I took it apart and after I put it back together.  You can see the loose screw on top of the ratchet in the second pic.

 

[Nucejoe]

Yes balance shows impulse jewel off beat. 

[AndyHull]

@Nucejoe I think you are correct, the impulse jewel should be sitting in the fork when at rest, but from the image of the balance removed from the watch, it appears to be adjacent to the end of the hairspring which is perhaps as much as 180 degrees away from where I would expect it.

Maybe the mage is misleading, but that seems very odd.

Also, is the hairspring correctly fed through the slit in the regulator?

Edited March 29, 2019 by AndyHull

[Lc130]

40 minutes ago, Nucejoe said:

Yes balance shows impulse jewel off beat. 

I'm still learning watch repair.  Are you saying that the impulse jewel should be directly across (180 degrees) from the beat corrector (HS terminal)?

Thank you