Jump to content

Magnetic or Non-Magnetic Screwdrivers and Tweezers?


trigus

Recommended Posts

Complete novice here. After watching a few of Mark's videos on Youtube (great work, by the way) it appears that some of his tools are slightly magnetized.

My question is, in general what tools to you want to be magnetized and which not? Obviously, brass tweezers are going to be non-magnetic. Also I can see the value of having at least one pair of tweezers slightly magnetized. Advice?

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Anti magnetic tweezers are expensive, most people cant afford to have all their tweezers anti-magnetic.

You do not want tweezers or screwdrivers magnetized, magnetism is the bain of mechanical watches and causes all sort of issues, such as causing the coils of the hairspring to stick together making the watch run fast.

If your tweezers are not 100% anti magnetic they will eventually becomes slightly magnetic, whether that is from touching magnetized parts of watches, or just them passing through other magnetic fields.

If you work on quartz watches you will need atleast 1set of tweezers that is 100% ant-magnetic to pick up the rotor for most people a good set of brass tweezers will do.

For everything else rather than have 100% ant-magnetic tweezers having a demagnitizer is more important.

You can buy cheap ones off ebay and you will need one as its quite regular to find that a watch you are working on is slightly magnetized that you will need to demagnetize and so will your tweezers or screwdrivers after touching the watch.

Bottom line you don't want any of your tools magnetized and the only part of a watch you want to be magnetized is the rotor in quartz watches.

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Magnetised tools are a real problem when working on watches especially when working on Hairsprings. I have anti-magnetic tweezers the best and safest material is brass.  Screwdrivers can become magnetised and a quick zap on my demagnetiser sorts this issue. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My advice is this. Whenever you are about to start on a new mechanical watch repair, make sure all your screwdrivers and tweezers and other tools you might use are de-magnetised. It is also good practice to de-magnetise the watch movement before attempting any repair.  It will also save you time.  

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.



  • Recently Browsing

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Topics

  • Posts

    • Heres my watch of today, a Smith 13'" RY . My missus bought me this for this Valentines day a bargain 14.99 with a reduction, the seller has occasional 20% off offers now and then so it was about 15ish with delivery. I love Smiths and i love bulleye dials, this is my first one. The watch arrived non working as stated and i knew what was inside and what would be against me, but i enjoy a challenge, we dont expect a lot if anything from pin pallet movements. A balance pivot was broken and i didnt have another staff but i did have another RY with a battered dial so i robbed the balance and tweaked it around to make it work apart from that mostly just a good clean and relubrication. Keyless works are pretty rough by design and the crown is a bugger to get in and out with the dial on, the setting lever hits the dial before it releases it, so a little mod is needed to help that along. Major problem was the pins on the lever were quite worn which make the old tg have a snow storm fit. Its a similar read for most pin pallets, these were brass as was the escape wheel. But perseverance is me, i didn't change the pins but i did spend some time dressing and polishing the worn areas which improved the trace a lot with some straightish lines 😅 and a beat error of .5 . Not sure what the lift angle should be on these and i Wasn't in the mood to work it out and who believes timegraphers anyway, but at the default 52° it runs with 260ish full 210 after 24 hours dial down , the verticals rates were pretty much all over place. So lets just put it in it's superlight aluminium case and see what happens. Been wearing it now for 3 weeks and it's consistently losing around 1.5  minutes a week winding each morning i think pretty good for an old pin pallet watch. I just love this dial, thanks wifey heres my Valentine's gift for yer sweetie x
    • I have a PDF below that will help. The problem was the PDF wasn't designed for this purpose it was designed to tell you what size watch you  have. Then it doesn't take into account movements come conceivably in different thicknesses.   watch-ligne-size-chart.pdf
    • That would be something! Which brings me back to;  
    • you think you're going to sleep tonight you're not, you're going to ponder the question of what makes you think those of the right parts?  
    • Does anyone knows what size case a need for a dial diameter 20.60mm?
×
×
  • Create New...