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My passel of silver plated(?) French motivated watches appeared today as if by magic. I had written them off entirely, the sell refunded the purchase price, life continued much as before. Then BOOM! What's even more surprising, though I guess not really, is that they all fired right up! I'll have to get with the seller and see if I can't resend the money. I'm sure that'll be doable.

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Got a job lot of 16 in the post last week, £63 + £5.20 postage, so £4.26 each all in, how that is eventually amortised over the bunch remains to be seen! One of them at least is probably beyond saving (the squareish one is missing crystal and it would be uneconomic if not impossible to get a replacement) They are all 70’s ish Swiss, I’ve taken the back off a few and they are all budget, built down to a price with pressed components and most are only 1 jewel. If nothing else I may repurpose the cases for a couple of them to house better orphaned movements.
 

First one I tackled was this Trafalgar 2 hander with a Baumgartner BFG 866, Interesting little movement, it sort of has a keyless works bridge, everything else is on one plate so getting everything in the train lined back up on reassembly was a bit of a challenge (no jewels doesn’t help here either, the tiny holes are difficult to spot!) the pallet fork is an unconventional ‘sideways’ design with metal pin pallets. Seems this movement was also available with seconds hand, day and day/date variants as well as being used in some jump hour watches.
 

This one wasn’t running at all but otherwise in decent cosmetic shape, just needed a good clean to get it going. Now runs solidly with decent amplitude (260+) dial up/down, but positional error is dreadful crown down/up/right/left, amplitude drops below 200 and timekeeping goes from +/- 10s to -400s! Beat error goes up too. Not sure if this is just a symptom of a worn cheap movement or whether I could improve it at all. I’m pretty inexperienced still and positional error seems to be my nemesis on the few watches I’ve tackled! Not really sure where to look, if it was a fully jewelled movement I would check for damaged jewels but here I just have holes, so maybe that is partially to blame?

Will update on the others as I work through them!

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8 hours ago, Pauly said:

Not really sure where to look, if it was a fully jewelled movement I would check for damaged jewels but here I just have holes, so maybe that is partially to blame?

If you have access to a microscope, check all of the "holes" particularly on the balance and fork. Check the fork pins are not bent or heavily worn. Also have a good look at the balance, one of the ends may be worn or bent. Check that the jewels are in place on the balance, that the balance it fitted correctly and the jewels are undamaged, clean, and, if you have had them out to clean them, that they were re-fitted the correct way up. 

I think Cousins has the fork if you need it, and perhaps the balance complete. Whether it is worth purchasing spares is a moot point, since the value of the watch is not terribly high, however it is a nice clean example, so I would be tempted to get it working nicely if I didn't have to spend too much. If you are ordering stuff from Cousins, it makes sense to put in a larger order as it spreads the postage over a number of items and helps keep the cost down, so perhaps wait till you have looked at the rest, and figured out what they need too.

Edited by AndyHull
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Oh wow.. thanks Andy, I didn't even think to look for one, just assumed that anything other than round would be unobtainable! But this actually looks to be (potentially) the one (Bale shape, 27.8, 22.3 square), they only have one in stock, but I'm guessing there won't be much competition for it :) so I'll wait and see if I can get that one running first!

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20 minutes ago, AndyHull said:

If you have access to a microscope, check all of the "holes" particularly on the balance and fork. Check the fork pins are not bent or heavily worn. Also have a good look at the balance, one of the ends may be worn or bent. Check that the jewels are in place on the balance, that the balance it fitted correctly and the jewels are undamaged, clean, and, if you have had them out to clean them, that they were re-fitted the correct way up. 

I think Cousins has the fork if you need it, and perhaps the balance complete. Whether it is worth purchasing spares is a moot point, since the value of the watch is not terribly high, however it is a nice clean example, so I would be tempted to get it working nicely if I didn't have to spend too much. If you are ordering stuff from Cousins, it makes sense to put in a larger order as it spreads the postage over a number of items and helps keep the cost down, so perhaps wait till you have looked at the rest, and figured out what they need too.

I don't have access to a microscope unfortunately (don't give me ideas! I dropped for a lovely vintage MKS staking set the other week that I will barely use probably), the only jewel in the movement is balance top setting! I confess I didn't remove/clean it since that would entail dismantling the balance and reassembling it (non shock) and I am 0 for 3 on that score to date! Re: your thinking on the fork pins, if they were to blame, wouldn't that also affect the running in dial up/down? I'm not questioning your suggestion, just trying to get a better understanding of what the possible causes of positional error can be (i.e. I get that worn pivot holes/jewels could affect running when the pivots are 'on their side' so to speak, but wouldn't a worn/damaged pallet pin/jewel be bad no matter what the postion?)

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A stereo microscope is incredibly useful, I did not know that before I got mine. Check this post out: pivot holes I took me months to figure out whats wrong and the microscope helped me with this. I must say that my lack of experience was also responsible here, probably I could have noticed this with just using a lupe and having a good look at the pivot holes. As Andy said check the pivot holes and all the pivots too. I had a balance pivot with a mushroom effect, it was so bad that i had to use some kind of a force to pull the pivot out from the pivot hole and the watch actually run in certain positions. 

 

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36 minutes ago, Pauly said:

Re: your thinking on the fork pins, if they were to blame, wouldn't that also affect the running in dial up/down? I'm not questioning your suggestion, just trying to get a better understanding of what the possible causes of positional error can be (i.e. I get that worn pivot holes/jewels could affect running when the pivots are 'on their side' so to speak, but wouldn't a worn/damaged pallet pin/jewel be bad no matter what the position?)

It rather depends on what is worn. If you think about it, with the watch in new condition, then all of the bearing surfaces meet as they should, however as soon as things start to wear, then it introduces some slop in to the machine. This slop may be more of a problem with the movement in some positions than it is in others.

If we take a simple example, the balance, and we reduce it to two cylindrical bearings (the top and bottom "holes"), two cylindrical surfaces (the pins in those bearings) and two end stones to stop the balance from moving up and down (end shake).

If one of the cylinders wears to an oval, then the pin in that bearing can move around in ways that it is not designed to. If this bearing is uppermost, then it will have a different effect from if it is lower most.

Similarly if the "pins" wear. Say the top one wears and gets shorter, then with pin that uppermost, the effect may be minor, but flip the watch over, and the whole balance will drop slightly, due to the shortened pin.

This may be sufficient to actually stop the watch, or it may simply make it run erratically, or lower the amplitude. It might cause the hairspring to snag, or it may cause the top pin to drop completely out of its bearing depending on how much wear there is.

You need to think of all of the components in the watch as having tolerances, much like any other machine.

The difference here is that some of those tolerances are much finer than they would be in say something like a sewing machine or a car gearbox. If the components wear to the point that they are no longer within their acceptable levels of tolerance, then things will start to move around in ways that affect performance. Gear teeth may no longer mesh correctly. The hairspring may no longer stay within its designed parameters, and end up touching other parts or itself. Bearing surfaces may not touch, or may lock up and so forth.

Magnification and good lighting is key to observing these things. Initially I suggest you need a good loupe (maybe get a x3 and  x5 to start with) moving on to a decent microscope (say 10x to 40x). These  will help immensely  with observing what is going on, and with checking for dirt and wear.

Search this forum for tips on magnification and cleaning, there is a lot of very useful information here. 

Edited by AndyHull
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That all makes sense, thank you, I was misunderstanding to an extent, I thought you were talking about the pallet 'stones' themselves (which in this case are 'pins') I guess tolerance affects them too like anything, but the pallet pivot holes and staffs would have more positional variation effect I guess. I have 4 loupes, 2.5, 5, 7.5 and 10x I think, I'll have a much closer look at all the pivots (pins and holes) and see if I can spot anything.

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11 hours ago, eezy said:

404 Club?

I would say that qualifies nicely.

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The Accurist name seems to have had an interesting history of ownership and produced a huge variety of time pieces (at various price levels). Perhaps what they are best known for in the UK at least, and to those of us over a certain age, is their relatively short lived sponsorship of the speaking clock in the post privatisation era of British Telecom.

When someone says Accurist to me, I hear "The time, sponsored by Accurist is... " Who says advertising doesn't work...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaking_clock#United_Kingdom

.. although, arguably the more recognisable voice was that of Brian Cobby.

 

Wikipedia has very little about Accurist, which is slightly surprising given their long history and popularity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accurist

.. but they do still exist, or rather they have a recent incarnation here in the UK.

https://accurist.co.uk/

 

Edited by AndyHull
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Personally I have more interest in watches from the 'budget' and low price end of the spectrum. I can wear them, abuse them or use them for projects without losing much money. I prefer quartz because I know my skill limitations.

Accurist, to me, is one of those brands that you used to see in most jewellers shop windows which sets them apart from the Chinese cheapies you buy off a market stall, even though they've probably got the same innards.

 

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I forgot a contribution to this club. Got a bunch of watches in a lot I bought a while ago, think the average price was about 3£ a piece, sometimes one just need one part and end up with a bunch of classic watches, like this which I’m quite sure is the pride of some eastern country watchmaking.
Let me introduce the 39-Day calendar watch! With this one all your vacations becomes a little bit longer  ;)

 



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39 days a month. That sounds like a good deal, so long as I don't have to work those extra days. That might just about be enough spare days to get some of my backlog of 'fixer upper" watches working.

I'm going to take a guess that watch is branded "Winner" somewhere on it. They pop up from time to time in my ebay suggestions. I didn't realise they made you in to a time lord though, otherwise I might have picked one up.

On the down side though, it does appear to be missing some months. Jan, Mar, May, Jul, Sep and Nov appear to be missing, replaced with mere dots, so maybe that is where the extra days have been stolen from.

Edited by AndyHull
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  • 2 weeks later...

The next one from my ebay job lot, a 'Gisa Soleure', another Baumgartner 866 based watch, this time with centre seconds, the dial branding is a bit 'naughty'! I assume the 21 is meant to fool you... (note there is no mention of 21 what!, it certainly isn't jewels!) Many watches from the era seem to employ this ruse, and I've seen Ebay listings where these are stated as '21 Jewels' so it is still fooling/conning people today!

This one was a little dirty and wouldn't wind, crown would just spin, on opening it up I found the setting lever spring/yoke (single part) was broken so it wouldn't stay in the winding position. With it open I held the sliding clutch and wound it a little, but there was then the telltale slipping noise after a few turns of a broken mainspring. Going through the rest of the batch, I found a Regalia also with a BFG 866, it has a badly damaged case,dial and crystal, so I raided it for its setting lever spring and going barrel.

Another note on how clever this movement is in terms of cost down, the four screws securing the top plate, which serves as both train and barrel bridge, also secure the click spring, click spring hold down, balance cock and pallet cock. It does make reassembly a bit more challenging though!

After a good clean, strip and reassembly/lubrication, it functions reasonably well (within a minute +/- all positions which will do so far as I am concerned).  The crystal has some light marks, I have some polywatch on the way to attack it with.

I didn't need to jazz up the seconds hand on this one as it had a funky one already! I quite like it, the dial is a little squint (only a fraction), but the position is fixed by crown and dial feet, and when I look at others online it looks like they all may have been like this! I could resolve it by removing the dial feet, might do at some point if it bothers me. Just fitted with a new strap today and I'm quite taken with it, but I'll probably re-sell this one at some point.

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Edited by Pauly
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  • 1 month later...

$0.99 + $4.50 shipping. Listing photos were limited, out of focus, and no movement shot. Not the worst watch in the project drawer, but I pretty much got what I paid for. Worth breaking for practice. Who knows. Maybe I finally end up with a runner? Case was once gold plated, now just polished. Feels really light, like maybe aluminum, but it's not beat to crap like aluminum cased watches tend to be... I'll check it out with the ol' Teslameter once I have the movement out of the case. If it is aluminum, might be worth trying to strip the rest of the gold off and anodizing it some wacky color... Could be interesting.

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3 1/2 more. $4.50 + $5.something shipping all together. No movement shots, and they showed up in a BestFit baggie, so either another watchmaker couldn't salvage them (in which case I'm doomed) or couldn't be bothered. The Rouon is missing a stem, and no idea if it does anything yet. I got one of the other two to tick briefly. That's all that can be said for signs of life. 

Yet another Baumgartner 866 though... Popular indeed! Parts watch for the other at a minimum.

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I'll probably stop torturing my French victims for a while (they're actually kinda nice), and focus on these more expendable subjects.

Edited by spectre6000
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Two more pocket money pieces for you all today.

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Despite the outward similarity, they are from different corners of the globe, with the Roman dialled one hailing from China and its Arabic numeral cousin, from the USSR. Both are keeping reasonable time, within 15s/day and both, despite being dead on arrival needed nothing more than a clean and lubrication.

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The Chinese number (on the right in this picture) is a ZB1 or SZ-1 variant. The Russian, on the left,  has a Raketa or Poljot 2609.HA

Note that I swapped the brown strap from one to the other, just to confuse you.

Both of these movements are perfect to cut your teeth on as they are fully jewelled and cheap as chips, with no date complications to worry about. They are also pretty robust. I doubt if anyone has looked inside either of these watches since they left the factory. Both are probably from the late seventies or early eighties at the latest, so they have probably endured the best part of forty years without a service. 

Edited by AndyHull
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