Bucket list repair job

[HectorLooi]

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. 

[HectorLooi]

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. 

[watchweasol]

Hi Hector  at least the pallet/fork was clean,        Bit of a pain after the work you did. we live and learn.      Cheers

[FLwatchguy73]

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.

[mikepilk]

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.

[canthus]

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 !!

[HectorLooi]

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. 

[RyMoeller]

"Shelter in Place" has me working on a Movado chronograph I picked up some time ago.  The case is a Taubert/Borgel and needed the pendant tube repaired.  Now with that out of the way I need to cut a new cork gasket and figure out how to squeeze it into the tube (that should be fun).