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Bucket list repair job


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I'm sure all of us have a watch that we have put off completing the repair. The "One day I'll get to it" watch.

It is usually a watch early in our career/hobby. The one that was beyond our abilities at that time. The one that required a special tool that we didn't have. The one that requires a replacement part that is as rare as "unicorn poo".

Amid the Covid 19 lockdown in so many countries, now is the best time to revisit these projects that we have put off for so long. :D

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I'll start off the 1st one.

This my Waltham 12s pocket watch. Beautiful white gold case. Fully jewelled.

I was a non working watch which I got for a bargain from ebay. I found that the mainspring was broken. I temporarily fixed it by annealing the end of the mainspring, drilling a hole for the catch and shaping it to fit the barrel arbor. It worked fine.

So I proceeded to clean it while I went to order a new mainspring for it. Somehow I got distracted and forgot it was still soaking in my ultrasound. By the time I remembered, the shellac from the pallet stones had disintegrated. :pulling-hair-out:

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I bought and repaired an 1871 Elgin pocket watch only to drop it while doing the final reassembly and broke the balance! I was utterly heart broken! It is still sitting waiting for me to get back to it. When I do, I'll have to source a correct dial and hands and hour gears as I "borrowed" them to complete and even older 1869 Elgin that I still have.

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I had been waiting for ages to get a  Universal Geneve, and finally got a nice 40s vintage Cal 267.

It just need a little tweek to adjust the hairspring overcoil. I bought some Vetus tweezers with a very fine point - but they were quite hard to compress. I gave the overcoil the required tweek, and released the tweezers too soon ..... completely trashed the hairspring.

Still makes me squirm when I think of it.

Of course, hairsprings for these are like the proverbial "unicorn poo". The balance was only used on one other calibre. 

I have a permanent watch on ebay ..... one day.

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I bought some Vetus tweezers a while back and also found them hard to compress so went back to my old cheapies. I also bought to do HS but didn,t risk it fortunately, else I might have been in same boat.  HS not my forte at the best of times !!

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Actually, I have procured all the necessary tools and materials to re-shellac the pallet jewels. Read up and watched many videos on escapements.

Probably the only reason for my procrastination is that after many failed attempts, during my moment of despair I prayed to God that he not let me leave this earth till I finished this job. :startle:

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    • I would go for the dearer spring. You won't need to remove the spring from the carrier ring and then use a mainspring winder to get it into the barrel, for a start. Also that spring is closer to the needed dimensions, especially the length. The length plays a part in the mainsprings strength. If you double the length you will half the force (strength) of the spring and vice-versa. A spring with 20 mm less length would be about 7% shorter, so technically would be 7% more strength, but I find halving this number is closer to real-world findings, so the spring would be about 3 to 4% more strength/force. On a mainspring that ideally kicks out 300 degrees of amplitude, a 3% increase in amplitude would be 309 degrees. Increasing or decreasing the length of the mainspring will affect the power reserve to a greater or lesser degree. It depends how much shorter or longer it is.
    • I recently bought this but not on ebay. I figured if I want something Japanese I better check Japanese auction sites since these don't seem to pop up on ebay. I paid 83 € plus shipping & taxes. I think it was pretty reasonable for a complete set in good condition.
    • Did you take the friction pinion off the large driving wheel and grease it? Although, now that I think about it, that shouldn't have any effect on the free running of the train if the friction pinion isn't interacting withe minute wheel/setting wheel...
    • I did in fact use Rodico to get the spring into general position and "hold" it there while I used a fine oiler to make subtle positional adjustments.
    • The two measurements of particular importance wound be the height and the strength,  the length would obviously correspond with the increase/reduction of half mm of barrel diameter. There is a big difference in price considering that the more expensive one is the shortest. The longer one might be ok ? But then it is taking up more room in the barrel, might it effect the unwinding ? I wouldn't have thought so for just that small amount.  Ideally a pro might reduce the longer one to suit. But there is some information that might help, do you have the one that was fitted to measure up, though not necessarily the right one.
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