Who will be my first victim?

[MechanicMike]

On 4/23/2020 at 12:08 PM, spectre6000 said:

I have neither. All of my tools are on the Type 1 VW/Chevy small block/(any of the dozens of other cars and machines I've owned/worked on) scale or dedicated to electronics.

It's also said, "it's a poor craftsman who blames his tools." This is to say both that a good craftsman can work with inferior tools, but also that a good craftsman doesn't mess with them. At the end of the day, this is intended to be a hobby, and one of the things I find most enjoyable is working with quality tools (and conversely, one of the things that frustrates me most is when inferior tools break or or the wrong tool causes problems by being the wrong tool). 

Besides, I have a 3 1/2 month old to keep me occupied. No rush beyond that created by enthusiasm.

reading your threads...pretty close to where I'm at in the game. who did you order tools from? despite all this madness going on, I seem to be having good luck shipping-wise with Esslinger. get any of your doo-dads in the mail yet? btw-where in the name of all that is holy, did you get that stone/honing set? 

i'm still looking to round out my set of tools too. although, being a machinist/mechanic, does one ever really get to an end point of buying tools? 

[spectre6000]

@JohnR725:

The Waltham is definitely first on the gallows. It's no heirloom. Pretty sure I got it at a thrift store back in college. It's an upper-mid grade movement, and it ran OK at first. I don't know if I mentioned it in this thread or elsewhere, but the cleaning crew at the office (many offices ago) felt the need to rearrange my desk one night, and placed it in front of a computer speaker... The hairspring is magnetized still. Demagnetizer arrives this week sometime. 

I think I see what you're talking about with the pallet fork. I have on of JDRichard's videos open in another tab. Watchmaking videos are GREAT for bottles and naptime, and I've been binging them hard. He mentions being careful and sliding the 3/4 plate off due to the pallet fork. my internet is third world terrible (especially now), so it's just a pixellated suggestion, but I get the idea: "Thar be dragons!"

Fortunately, I'm extremely mechanically sympathetic. I'd put money on it running at least as well after as before. Famous last words though...

@MechanicMike:

I got my tools from a variety of places. There was a spreadsheet... Esslinger has likely won the shipping game (I think that lot gets here tomorrow), but the cost of shipping/price delta between them and elsewhere did not win them the majority of the sales. OFrei is delayed for Switzerland being closed for business (they should be opening up tomorrow), so that'll still be a few weeks. Demagnetizer from Amazon gets here this week. Optics from a coin shop in Idaho... They still have the discontinued B&L clip on loupe I wanted, disorganized shop though... Really disorganized. I don't remember what else off the top of my head...

The honing set is homemade. A bunch of large DMT plates (most of the grades, if not all of them) inlayed into some sapele I had lying around. The strop is leather over a steel plate inlayed into some wenge (also just laying around). The guides are all Lie-Nielsen. There's a leather gasket that keeps the lid on and compensates for seasonal movement, and it was all finished with a garnet french polish that could use a refresh after plenty of bench use. I might not have mentioned I'm also a luthier...

Acquiring tools is part of the fun if you ask me!

[spectre6000]

Slight change of plan... A number of things are taking longer than I want to wait. China and Switzerland don't seem to be letting things leave. Screwdrivers and tweezers (among other things) showed up yesterday, and that's really what's required to start breaking things. That said, I don't want to break anything with any value...

So I'm backtracking. I can't really clean or lubricate anything properly yet, but I can get used to manipulating things with the core tool set. I dug out all the crap movements that wouldn't be worth anything even if they were immaculate and flawless. This evening, I started with the Timex. I took it apart over a decade ago, and it's been living in pieces in a ziplock bag. It's not a very typical movement for a number of reasons, so it was difficult for me to figure out exactly where things wanted to be, and I really can't be bothered to look for any pictures or anything. So... "Art bucket". No loss. I got a little bit of practice in with the tweezers, drivers, and optics, so that's a win.

Next I pulled out the Westclox. It kinda sorta ticked a second or two and stopped, but was otherwise in tact. It's somewhat similar to the Timex, and had I done them in the opposite order I might have been able to make better sense of the Timex. Still, that was two hours ago, and I can't be bothered to go look at it again. The Westclox is a full plate movement where the hair spring is affixed to the top plate. I broke it down all the way, leaving only the click spring, part of the keyless works, and part of the motion works, all of which were riveted in. I also left the balance and hair spring attached to the top plate... I think it was taper pinned or something. It was very very dirty with a lot of extra oil all over the place. Once it was broken down, I took a breath, then put it all back together, pausing for 20 minutes or so in the middle of aligning all the pivots to deal with an inconsolable infant who missed her nap and needed some attention. It took quite a bit of fiddling to get all the pivots in their tiny jeweless holes, and I see why it's a hair pulling affair. Still, I got it just fine. I had a bit of trouble with the keyless works (weird design), recased it before putting the hands back on, and nearly lost a screw when it pinged onto my pants (and fortunately no further). It's all back together and running just as well as it did before I started... so it ticks a few seconds and stops. Given how grungy it was and the fact that I didn't clean anything at all, I call that a win! Had I cleaned it, it surely would have run and kept horrible time just like new. I'm very pleased with the result. 

I didn't take any video or photos. Didn't really feel it was worth it, and having an imaginary set of eyes on me while I fumbled around didn't seem like it'd be helpful. Even if I did, my internet connection would not support uploading anything of any substance anyway.

Tomorrow, I'll do the same with either the Seiko 7S26 that was in the car accident with me and also isn't required to run after I'm done, or a Chinese "co-axial" cheap-o that should.

[JohnR725]

5 hours ago, spectre6000 said:

A number of things are taking longer than I want to wait. China and Switzerland don't seem to be letting things leave

one of the problems right now conceivably is the number of flights out of a variety of countries may be an issue. For instance it used to be there was a flight direct from Switzerland to Chicago every single day. But I'm not sure if they're flying right now. One of the YouTube channels I watched you went to an airport in Scotland and nothing was flying out of the airport. Plus he commented you could see the trails of the planes going to Europe there was nothing. So the number of flights has dropped dramatically which is why I've avoided ordering anything for China for fear that I won't see it from once and China was always problematic with how fast they would ship anyway.

Timex is an interesting watch company. What I was in school the instructor had everybody work on a Timex watch one time just so that they would remember and never do it ever again. But I also know somebody who likes to collect Timex watches he likes the variations of how they did things. But they really weren't meant to be disassembled serviced and reassembled even if maybe people have done that in the past.

then the other watch or basically anything that's pin lever or mass-produced cheap is going to be an issue. Even though currently on this discussion group does it leads to people trying to repair and having issues with watches like this. It would be really nice if you could find a basic 17 jewel Swiss movement preferably the bigger the better just to practice taking apart and putting back together.

or here's my usual recommendation go to eBay search for 6497 then restricted to US only and a list of them comes up.I'm currently looking at one for $35 free shipping it's in Ohio. Plus as a whole bunch of other ones. It makes a really good watch the start with. If you had your timing machine my recommendation is usually to time the watch multiple positions of course. Take the watch a part put it back together but it back on the timing machine don't worry about disassembling the mainspring it's fine leave that alone. Just get a feel for things and its cheap in case you break something.

 

 

[spectre6000]

I'm a jump in the deep end kinda guy. I know that the Timex-type watches are not meant to be serviced, but this is about fun for me, and that was a challenge. Given how they're supposed to be back breakers, I figured if I could get it back the way it started without losing anything, it was a solid win; if I couldn't no loss and that was an ambitious way to kick things off anyway. Getting all the pivots to line up took me the better part of half an hour (though I had to stop in the middle for an angry baby, and that reset didn't help). I definitely learned some things that weren't in any of the videos I've seen. It was fun.

I'll be doing larger and Swissier movements soon. Assuming the baby has a better day today, I'll be doing a Chinese automatic tonight. I got an email stating there's been movement on one of my shipments... Two others, including a mission critical one, are still frozen...

[spectre6000]

Last night, I took apart the anonymous Chinese automatic. I never found a single mark indicating who made it save a faintly stamped star on the rotor, and I don't recognize the movement (though I'm sure someone else would, and it's probably even a common one). Everything went beautifully until I removed the cap jewel and balance jewel.

The cap setting looks like an Incabloc (the lyre shaped spring), but my understanding is the spring is not easy to remove with the setting installed (you see where this is going). So I released the Incabloc spring, and flipped it up (like you do), then I accidentally bumped the movement holder with my off hand and thought the jewel popped out. I didn't see it on the bench (or off), and since the plate was otherwise bare, I thought it would be safe to flip the whole contrivance over to shake it loose from wherever it had fallen. That's when the Incabloc spring just fell out. I tried to put it back in (not sure how that's supposed to happen still, but I don't think it was supposed to come out in the first place), and ultimately it sprang off into the ether. I still thought I was missing the jewel, so I spent a fair amount of time on the (dark wood) floor hunting for those things with a flashlight. 

At some point, I moved on, and then the balance Incabloc spring did the same thing! I managed not to lose that one, but eventually broke it trying to get it back in. As easily as they fell out, you'd think they'd go in easy enough, but I could not figure out what angles or directions were required to make that happen.

Comedy break: The spring ultimately flew a few times, resulting in a lengthy hunt each time. In one instance, after a lengthy hunt and finally saying, "screw it", I took my glasses off to rub my nose or something, and there was the spring stuck to inside of the left lens!

Ultimately, I decided this was a sacrificial movement, so no great loss, and the point was to get my feet under me. I proceeded to reassemble the rest of the movement sans balance jewels, and call it enough of a win if everything otherwise went together and was functional, and write the springs off as lessons learned. Then, right as I was finishing off the dial side, the calendar jumper spring took a flying leap onto either the dark wood floor, or the cluttered table top hosting the remains of my office now that it's the baby's room.

At this point, it was late, my wife had been handling the baby all evening, my neck hurt, so I decided to come back sometime the following day with a magnet sweeper to find that spring. I called it a night. All that's left is that spring, the calendar wheel and plate, and reinstalling the automatic works. 

Lessons learned:

- Hopefully, a lesson learned (pending confirmation by the experienced crowd here) is that cheap movements like this have annoying things like loose Incabloc springs. I say hopefully, because if they're all loose like that...

- When manipulating shock protected jewels, do them one at a time, and keep the movement properly oriented while doing so.

- Dark wood floors suck for finding airborne parts. I need to figure out some sort of floor mat that's light in color, uniform in color, and probably on the softer side so things don't bounce, but without texture for things to fall into.

- Cluttered tabletops suck for finding airborne parts. After I find that spring and finish this movement, I'll be doing some serious cleaning in there.

- Airborne parts can fly where you least expect them to.

- The high table tops of watchmakers benches are a good thing for reducing neck fatigue and making optics more effective.

- I need to make up some pegwood.

- The sense of scale will take some getting used to. Watch parts in photos/videos and through optics are much larger than in reality. So when hunting for flown parts, it takes a little mental adjustment to scale everything down to reality scale.

[spectre6000]

I got tied up with the baby, and wasn't able to edit within the edit window...

I forgot to mention, the movement didn't have a drop of oil anywhere save inside the mainspring barrel. Completely, totally dry. Even the cap jewels.

[spectre6000]

I swept the floor with the magnetic sweeper, and found the spring. Installed. Everything is back together and fully functional save the missing balance jewels. Moderate success. If I get confirmation that the Incabloc springs are not actually supposed to come out, and that's just a quirk of a cheap Chinese movement, I'll call it another solid win. If not, then it's something to go on the list of things to work on. 

Next up: trouble shooting the wrecked Seiko. I may even be convinced to repair it if I can find whatever is needed to fix it. 

Last but not least, both overseas shipments exhibited signs of life today! I don't think either has left their respective countries, but both tracking numbers finally appeared as valid.

[spectre6000]

STILL waiting on one of the shipments, but it's less than mission critical. To bide my time and get busy, as stated above, I started messing around with the watches I had zero cares about. Definitely good practice. The not-worth-the-trouble watch I saved for last was the car wreck Seiko 5. Most complicated and nicest watch out of the bunch, but I was convinced it was going to need a wheel or two. 

I got into it, and I was wrong. The mode of failure was... a hair wrapped around the pinion on the escapement wheel! I think... I inspected all the teeth and pivots, and only one gave me much pause; the hair was hard to miss though! Since it was already apart and occupying my parts tray and brain, I went ahead and cleaned, reassembled, and oiled it. I goofed a bit with the mainspring, but I think recovered, and I messed the hairspring up badly enough that I'm going to part out the other 5 and just steal the balance and cock from it. I may steal the mainspring and barrel as well just for good measure and to get a mulligan on that potential screw up. 

Hopefully I can find an hour or two over the coming weekend to finish it up and get it regulated.