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Hairspring probably hitting, but then what?


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Now you can see the flaws of that movement. Before they were hidden by mere force of a too strong mainspring.

Forget beat error for now, it is not your problem. It did not change (you did not rotate the collet?) but changing amplitude simply shows changing B.E. values.

There is a bigger issue with your balance wheel, pivots, poise, hairspring.

Frank

 

 

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Did you check all the basics?

-train freedom after cleaning and assembling, pallet fork out, does the escape wheel spin freely then reverse with a couple of clicks on the mainspring?

-is the endshake for the fork correct? (well the rest of the train too)

-endshake for balance is correct?

-with the fork out, balance in, does it vibrate freely? dial up, dial down, and 4 vertical positions, it should stay in motion for some time with just a little puff from a blower

-is the hairspring true? you mention it has an overcoil, but I haven't found an image of one with an overcoil. If the hairspring is out of flat it can be touching the balance arms.

-is it incabloc or fixed jewels? regardless the balance jewels need to be spotless and oiled correctly.

 

That it had so much amplitude in one of the flat positions with an oversize mainspring, but issues in other positions, tells me maybe someone in the past stuck in the bigger spring to try to get it going without fixing an underlying problem. You have two vertical positions with an enormous drop in amplitude. To me that points to a likely escapement issue. If you have excessive endshake on the balance that can exacerbate it. If the banking pins aren't straight you can have issues between dial up and dial down. If one is closed too much you can start touching the impulse jewel to the fork horns or guard pin to the safety roller, often seen in certain positions more than others. From your pendant positions my gut says the banking on the exit side might be too tight. But hard to say.

 

Can you get some pics with your phone? I can see you have an Apple (haha, reflection on your timer), even if it's old it should be plenty good enough for some decent pics. Would be interesting to see the fork locked on both entry and exit side, and a view of the balance installed and the hairspring.

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15 hours ago, Klassiker said:

Something has definitely changed on the balance (jewels, lower staff pivot) or hairspring between your first measurements and now. Check the hairspring for flatness or dirt.

I feel like you must be right. First go round, the dial positions rebanked with DD worse, and all the pendant positions were about the same. Now, DU is WAY worse that DD, and DD still rebanks on one half of the swing. The pendant positions are now mixed with some being anemic, and others being about right. Between then and now, I tore it down far enough to get the new mainspring in, cleaned the pivots and jewels (rodico and pegwood), put it all back together, oiled everything as usual, and gave it 24 hours to run in. Other than taking a few weeks between finding the right parts, delivery, and finding time to get back to it, I can't think of anything all that significant that could have caused such a huge decrease in performance.

12 hours ago, praezis said:

Now you can see the flaws of that movement. Before they were hidden by mere force of a too strong mainspring.

Forget beat error for now, it is not your problem. It did not change (you did not rotate the collet?) but changing amplitude simply shows changing B.E. values.

There is a bigger issue with your balance wheel, pivots, poise, hairspring.

Even with the difference in mainspring power, where the flaws lie seems to have shifted. I did nothing with the collet. The beat error sucks, but I don't feel confident messing with it at the moment, and like you said, it's really not the problem. It doubled between the before and after though, and it doesn't seem like a difference in amplitude can fully explain it since amplitude is still way high, and the beat error is higher than before.

9 hours ago, nickelsilver said:

Did you check all the basics?

-train freedom after cleaning and assembling, pallet fork out, does the escape wheel spin freely then reverse with a couple of clicks on the mainspring?

-is the endshake for the fork correct? (well the rest of the train too)

-endshake for balance is correct?

-with the fork out, balance in, does it vibrate freely? dial up, dial down, and 4 vertical positions, it should stay in motion for some time with just a little puff from a blower

-is the hairspring true? you mention it has an overcoil, but I haven't found an image of one with an overcoil. If the hairspring is out of flat it can be touching the balance arms.

-is it incabloc or fixed jewels? regardless the balance jewels need to be spotless and oiled correctly.

 

That it had so much amplitude in one of the flat positions with an oversize mainspring, but issues in other positions, tells me maybe someone in the past stuck in the bigger spring to try to get it going without fixing an underlying problem. You have two vertical positions with an enormous drop in amplitude. To me that points to a likely escapement issue. If you have excessive endshake on the balance that can exacerbate it. If the banking pins aren't straight you can have issues between dial up and dial down. If one is closed too much you can start touching the impulse jewel to the fork horns or guard pin to the safety roller, often seen in certain positions more than others. From your pendant positions my gut says the banking on the exit side might be too tight. But hard to say.

 

Can you get some pics with your phone? I can see you have an Apple (haha, reflection on your timer), even if it's old it should be plenty good enough for some decent pics. Would be interesting to see the fork locked on both entry and exit side, and a view of the balance installed and the hairspring.

Lots here...

- I don't know what you mean about the escape wheel spinning freely (got this part) then reversing (?). It does spin freely. I'm super careful about this when installing the train bridge.

- Endshake all around, there is endshake, I don't know what would be correct or not aside from "some, not too much".

- I'll check it out this evening, and report back.

- I didn't inspect it too closely on this last run, but it is 100% for sure an overcoil by design.

- Incabloc. I didn't touch the settings between the before and after.

I noticed while cleaning one of the end stones that it has a wear dimple. That would add SOME endshake, but it seems like it would need to be pretty excessive to... cause... this... ... unless it's enough for the shoulder of the balance staff to drop in and ride on the shock setting shoulder...? That would add friction and cause the amplitude to drop in the one position (it would necessarily have to be the bottom cap jewel for this to possibly be the case).

The banking pins theory makes sense. How obvious would this be, and how would it be rectified? What do you mean by "banking on the exit side might be too tight"?

I'll see what I can do about photos this evening. 

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13 hours ago, spectre6000 said:

- I don't know what you mean about the escape wheel spinning freely (got this part) then reversing (?). It does spin freely. I'm super careful about this when installing the train bridge.

- Endshake all around, there is endshake, I don't know what would be correct or not aside from "some, not too much".

- I'll check it out this evening, and report back.

- I didn't inspect it too closely on this last run, but it is 100% for sure an overcoil by design.

- Incabloc. I didn't touch the settings between the before and after.

I noticed while cleaning one of the end stones that it has a wear dimple. That would add SOME endshake, but it seems like it would need to be pretty excessive to... cause... this... ... unless it's enough for the shoulder of the balance staff to drop in and ride on the shock setting shoulder...? That would add friction and cause the amplitude to drop in the one position (it would necessarily have to be the bottom cap jewel for this to possibly be the case).

The banking pins theory makes sense. How obvious would this be, and how would it be rectified? What do you mean by "banking on the exit side might be too tight"?

I'll see what I can do about photos this evening. 

A really good test of the train freedom is (usually before oiling) to have the watch assembled up to the escape wheel, put 2 or 3 clicks of power, and see that the train spins freely, and when it comes to a stop, the escape wheel reverses direction. It may be 1/2 a turn or several turns, but if it doesn't reverse it's pretty sure there's an issue somewhere.

 

A small dimple in a cap jewel will have an effect on amplitude it that position, but won't create an endshake problem.

 

If a banking pin is closed too much you won't have proper freedom between the roller jewel and fork horns, and/or the guard pin to safety roller. There are entire chapters in books on checking the escapement, I'll have a look and recommend something. It would be too much to type out, hahaha. 

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OK. Found some minutes.

- I checked the end shake on every wheel, the fork, and the balance*. All seemed fine.

- I didn't go so far as to break back down all the way and clean it up to see if it would reverse, but the train definitely spins freely.

- *I noticed with the balance in sans fork, that the balance spins freely for several seconds IF the balance cock screw is backed off a turn or so. With the screw all the way tight (not gorilla tight, just normal tight), it oscillates maybe a half dozen times and stops. I think we've found a problem. 

- Hairspring looks fine.

- Entry lock might be a little deep...? Exit photo is at a bit more of an angle, and more difficult to tell.

- I also noticed what looks like possibly an excess of shellac on the pallet fork.

- I looked closely at the banking pins doesn't show anything obvious.

I think the balance not moving freely is likely a major contributor to, if not the entirety of my problem. My brain says something along the lines of a shim or a dimple, though I'm certain both are generally frowned upon. 

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I made a shim for the balance cock out of aluminum foil, and that fixed that issue handily if hackily... Before the foil shim, if I tightened the balance cock screw all the way, hit the balance with the blower, it would oscillate a half dozen or so times. If I backed the screw off and worked the cock back at an angle, it would go for a good long while. After the foil shim, it goes a while with the screw all the way tight. I don't know what the ideal solution here is, and I'm sure an aluminum foil shim isn't it, but it's working and it's what I was able to figure out with what I have to hand.

Still crap though. I think the entry pallet is engaged too deep. It looks to me like someone has almost assuredly reaffixed the pallet stones at some point in the past, and did so a bit clumsily both in terms of depthing and too much shellac. Soooo.... I'm pretty sure I can remove the excess shellac easily enough, it's redepthing the pallet jewel that's not likely in my skill or toolset just yet. I'm afraid at this point it may need to go into a drawer for down the road when I get the tools/skills. Or maybe I'll find a donor movement or find the part in a parts house somewhere...  I'm definitely open to alternative suggestions though.

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7 hours ago, spectre6000 said:

I don't know what the ideal solution here is, and I'm sure an aluminum foil shim isn't it, but it's working and it's what I was able to figure out with what I have to hand.

I have a question do you consider yourself a newbie or an expert in watch repair?

The reason I ask is often times newbies find all sorts of interesting and bizarre problems because they fail to grasp what the real problem is. Then when you're starting off it takes a little while of successfully just cleaning watches that are running and oiling them and putting them back together and making a run better before you can even start to grasp what a problem watches. Or even what to look for in a problem watch. So starting off with a problem watch from my point of view is newbies not grasping whatever it is they should or should not be seeing will find real and imaginary problems and work out innovative solutions that may or may not be needed.

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8 hours ago, spectre6000 said:

I made a shim for the balance cock out of aluminum foil, and that fixed that issue handily if hackily... Before the foil shim, if I tightened the balance cock screw all the way, hit the balance with the blower, it would oscillate a half dozen or so times. If I backed the screw off and worked the cock back at an angle, it would go for a good long while. After the foil shim, it goes a while with the screw all the way tight. I don't know what the ideal solution here is, and I'm sure an aluminum foil shim isn't it, but it's working and it's what I was able to figure out with what I have to hand.

Still crap though. I think the entry pallet is engaged too deep. It looks to me like someone has almost assuredly reaffixed the pallet stones at some point in the past, and did so a bit clumsily both in terms of depthing and too much shellac. Soooo.... I'm pretty sure I can remove the excess shellac easily enough, it's redepthing the pallet jewel that's not likely in my skill or toolset just yet. I'm afraid at this point it may need to go into a drawer for down the road when I get the tools/skills. Or maybe I'll find a donor movement or find the part in a parts house somewhere...  I'm definitely open to alternative suggestions though.

I clean and move the pallet jewel by hand, apply proxy glue to one side of the jewel, let cure, try it on and observe the results on your tg, repeat until you call it success, then shelac.

Have you seen the video on this subject, no dedicated tool were used,  teacher use a piece of thin wire to move the jewel,  He observes the working of the fork as escapement runs based on which he decides how to proceed further. Understandably you want the fork deliver energy to impulse jewel just as the jewel passes the line connecting staff pivot to escape pivot. 

This would serve you until you recieve the tools, books and lessons of whatever school you choose. 

 

 

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4 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

I have a question do you consider yourself a newbie or an expert in watch repair?

The reason I ask is often times newbies find all sorts of interesting and bizarre problems because they fail to grasp what the real problem is. Then when you're starting off it takes a little while of successfully just cleaning watches that are running and oiling them and putting them back together and making a run better before you can even start to grasp what a problem watches. Or even what to look for in a problem watch. So starting off with a problem watch from my point of view is newbies not grasping whatever it is they should or should not be seeing will find real and imaginary problems and work out innovative solutions that may or may not be needed.

Definitely a newbie. No question. I didn't think I was starting out with a problem watch by any means, and certainly didn't intend to, it's just turned out that way. The watch ran prior to my touching it, it just didn't keep time and given the number of years it spent in my own drawer, it naturally follows that it just needed a little cleaning. Turns out not to be the case. It runs better now, but doesn't keep time for anything. It'll run through a full wind, but because it's losing so much time it takes nearly an extra day or so to get through the mainspring.

The first identified problem seemed easy enough: rebanking and the mainspring was too big. Handled. Then the balance wasn't swinging freely unless the screw was backed off a bit. Handled. It suffices to reason someone slightly more clueless than myself put the stronger mainspring in there to compensate for the balance, and while shims aren't ideal they get the job done when it's the job that needs doing.

With the amplitude continuing to be poor despite everything else on the checklist appearing in order, something must be wrong. The mainspring is known good. The train is running beautifully. That leaves the escapement. The pins look good, the balance is turning freely, the hairspring is immaculate, the escape wheel is perfect.

There is some beat error, which I'm choosing to ignore for now since everything else on the balance appears to be fine...* That beat error says that someone messed with the balance. The shellac on the fork is excessive, and says someone messed with that. The depth of the entry stone looks excessive, and at a minimum is more than double, possibly treble the exit stone's depth. The angle on the photo is poor, but take my word for it, the difference is noticeable enough that I picked up on it despite not looking for anything of that nature. It stands out.

*What if someone messed with the timing screws on the balance... Someone clearly did the balance some disservice at some point, what if they messed with the timing screws? The positional error is significant, but difficult to really consider in light of the poor amplitude... I guess I may also be learning to poise a balance sooner than intended... We'll see what happens with the pallet fork.

Could the pallet lock depth/disparity cause the issues I'm seeing (excluding the beat error)? If I fix this, what are the odds I end up faced with yet another problem that's more likely causing or caused by some other issue? I'm here to learn, and this is shaping up to be a significant opportunity for lessons.

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