How to properly remove Second Wheel arbor extension

[BrianB]

I suspect that this is going to be a stupid, newbie question. I will endeavor to use proper terminology for things, but I'm new to all of this, so please do correct anything I say incorrectly as it helps me learn.

A friend knows I'm good with mechanical things and that I'm learning watch repair (via Mark's courses). He has a watch with an Asian clone of the ETA 2824-2 in it and the watch has never run reliably. When it's running it keeps good time, but it seems to stop whenever it wants, even if it's at a full wind.

After removing the non-display caseback I can see that the amplitude of the balance wheel is laughably low. I can actually see the ends of the back and forth arc. If I were going to guess I'd guess it's about 100 degrees. Anyway, my question isn't about the malady this old movement has - that's a project for another day.

For now what he did was buy a brand new Asian ETA 2824-2 and asked me if I could simply swap the movements. Observing the balance wheel action on the new movement it looks correct and the timegrapher says that it's at about +15 SPD which I'll regulate later.

The swap (my very first movement swap by the way) has gone OK thus far. Pull stem/crown, remove case screws/clamps, remove movement from case, remove hands, remove dial. So far so good.

While contemplating how I'm going to tackle moving the date wheel from the old movement to the new (they are a different color and style of printing) I noticed a difference in the arbors of the second wheels - at the point where the seconds hand attaches.

Attached is an image with pictures I took with my USB microscope. The left picture is the new movement and the right picture is his original. Looking down inside the cannon pinion shaft (with the microscope) it looks like this is just an extension fitted over the arbor of the second wheel. I can see where the larger diameter of the extension ends a few millimeters down inside the cannon pinion.

As I said, this is probably a stupid, newbie question, but I'm not sure of proper way to safely remove this extension. The diameter of the "hat" is larger than the opening in the cannon pinion so obviously it would have to come off first if the cannon pinion were going to be pulled. Can I just grab it with something like a 2-jawed hand puller and pull on it? I pinched the hat between my thumbnail and index finger nail (wearing finger cots of course) and gave a light tug and it did not come off super easily.

I have a cannon pinion puller and was considering perhaps if I put a spacer below the fiber tip that might be a good way to pull on it.

Even though it wouldn't matter a whole lot if the movement were damaged I want to take this opportunity to learn the right way to do things. Also the proper removal technique will probably suggest what the proper installation technique is.

Sorry this post is so long. I hope it all makes sense and I hope this is a stupid, newbie question with a simple answer.

Thanks!

[Marc]

I'm afraid that what it looks like is that the damage has already been done, and the "hat" that you are looking at is actually the seconds hand pipe and should still be riveted to the seconds hand. This suggests that it is either a very tight fit or it wasn't very well riveted in the first place, either way unless you are very careful when removing it and have the facility to re-rivet it, you're going to need a new seconds hand.

Because of the design of the canon pinion you're going to need to pack underneath either hand levers or your canon pinion puller so that you're lifting underneath the brim of the hat. You will also need to ensure that the opposing downward force is onto a solid part of the main plate and not on any wheels.

Your simplest route forwards though, at least with regards to getting the new movement into the watch is to obtain a new seconds hand.

[BrianB]

7 hours ago, Marc said:

I'm afraid that what it looks like is that the damage has already been done, and the "hat" that you are looking at is actually the seconds hand pipe and should still be riveted to the seconds hand. This suggests that it is either a very tight fit or it wasn't very well riveted in the first place, either way unless you are very careful when removing it and have the facility to re-rivet it, you're going to need a new seconds hand.

Because of the design of the canon pinion you're going to need to pack underneath either hand levers or your canon pinion puller so that you're lifting underneath the brim of the hat. You will also need to ensure that the opposing downward force is onto a solid part of the main plate and not on any wheels.

Your simplest route forwards though, at least with regards to getting the new movement into the watch is to obtain a new seconds hand.

Thank you for taking the time to reply Marc and thank you for answering so thoroughly.

I must admit I'm a bit embarrassed that I didn't realize what I was looking at. Now that you say it and I go and look at a replacement seconds hand I see that they have the "pipe" on them.

Of course my first inclination is to wonder what I did wrong, but I tend to agree with your inference that it is either very tightly fitted or was not well riveted. I believe my procedure was good - I dialed all the hands to 12:00:00 and then pulled them all as a single stack.

At least I was right about one thing, it turns out is was a stupid, newbie question. :-)

I'll work up a way to pull this thing off while transmitting the force in a safe manner - unless it's glued on. Lol.

Thanks again for the reply.

[BrianB]

8 hours ago, Marc said:

Because of the design of the canon pinion you're going to need to pack underneath either hand levers or your canon pinion puller so that you're lifting underneath the brim of the hat. You will also need to ensure that the opposing downward force is onto a solid part of the main plate and not on any wheels.

Perhaps an overly simple solution but I opted to put the dial back on, used a Bergeon 6938 dial protector to protect the dial, and then just used the cannon pinion puller to pull the part off. It did seem to be on there quite a bit tighter than I would expect for something like a seconds hand.

I suspect you are right that it was probably a twofold issue - the pipe was a bit too tight and the hand riveting to the pipe wasn't as strong as would be necessary to survive that force.

I can replace the seconds hand pretty easily and inexpensively but I am going to try to repair it for the practice.

It's funny, the part looks so substantial in the microscope but it's like the size of two grains of sand.

Thanks again for your help.

[JohnR725]

2 hours ago, BrianB said:

Of course my first inclination is to wonder what I did wrong, but I tend to agree with your inference that it is either very tightly fitted or was not well riveted. I believe my procedure was good - I dialed all the hands to 12:00:00 and then pulled them all as a single stack.

One of the problems with the procedure you describe above is that you weren't necessarily pulling on the second hand in the correct location. It was being pulled up By the force of all the other hands. As the other hands have bigger holes the hand was being lifted up by the hand itself not the protruding part of the tube you have photographed above. That's why the hand came off more than likely. 

[jdm]

3 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

One of the problems with the procedure you describe above is that you weren't necessarily pulling on the second hand in the correct location. It was being pulled up By the force of all the other hands. As the other hands have bigger holes the hand was being lifted up by the hand itself not the protruding part of the tube you have photographed above. That's why the hand came off more than likely. 

That is right, but if you think about it, even if pulling the seconds hand alone with levers, the force is on the hand, not on the tube, which is impossible to grab propey, as its lower edge is well within the minute hand or cannon pinion. 

Now, it is true thay generally watchmakers like to use levers to better control force as opposed to a presto type. I have only split a seconds hand once with a presto tool, and kind.of switched to levers now.

In the recent video below Mark shows the use of a tool that pushes on the pivot instead than on the dial, I suppose that helps even if the pulling force is always on the hand anyway.

 

[BrianB]

9 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

One of the problems with the procedure you describe above is that you weren't necessarily pulling on the second hand in the correct location. It was being pulled up By the force of all the other hands. As the other hands have bigger holes the hand was being lifted up by the hand itself not the protruding part of the tube you have photographed above. That's why the hand came off more than likely. 

Thanks for the feedback. Given the dimensions clearly the seconds hand itself was being pressed on and not the collet. I measured the collet and the minor outer diameter is 0.44mm and the major outer diameter (the "hat") is 0.76mm. The hour and minute hand hole sizes for the 2824 are 1.5mm and 0.9mm respectively.

That said, I'm not aware of a technique for removing the seconds hand that wouldn't pull on the hand instead of the collet. I've only ever seen hand removal done where all 3 hands are removed together - whether done with levers or with a presto style puller.

The tool in Mark's video that JDM posted is pretty cool. I've never seen that tool before. It appears that tool would be capable of pulling this second hand while putting force on the collet as the smallest extractor in the set has a 0.6mm slot (smaller than the hat diameter of 0.76mm) and the smallest pin in the set is 0.15mm (smaller than the seconds hand hole diameter of 0.25mm).

Is it common to remove the seconds hand separately from the hour and minute hands? If so, other than the tool JDM posted what is the technique for doing so?

Thanks for all the knowledge.

[BrianB]

6 hours ago, jdm said:

That is right, but if you think about it, even if pulling the seconds hand alone with levers, the force is on the hand, not on the tube, which is impossible to grab propey, as its lower edge is well within the minute hand or cannon pinion. 

Now, it is true thay generally watchmakers like to use levers to better control force as opposed to a presto type. I have only split a seconds hand once with a presto tool, and kind.of switched to levers now.

In the recent video below Mark shows the use of a tool that pushes on the pivot instead than on the dial, I suppose that helps even if the pulling force is always on the hand anyway.

I have a set of nice Horotec levers on order (man those things are expensive), but as you note, the same thing would have happened as I still would have attempted to lift all 3 hands at once.

That tool shown in Mark's video you posted is really cool. That might be a nice addition to the tool box at some point. As I noted above, given the stated dimensions of the pins and extractors that come with the tool it probably would have been able to pull this seconds hand by the collet. Thanks for posting it!

[JohnR725]

One of the problems we're having here is the video is talking about chronograph hands not the general hand you find. I don't think Mark mentioned it in his video but some of the watch companies actually drive their Chronograph hands-on with Very extreme force with the intent that their service people will break the hands removing them. So for the service people they have an entire set Of brand-new hands.

10 hours ago, jdm said:

That is right, but if you think about it, even if pulling the seconds hand alone with levers, the force is on the hand, not on the tube, which is impossible to grab propey, as its lower edge is well within the minute hand or cannon pinion

One of the problems and watch repair is that despite the fact that it's a watch and all watches are kind of similar all watches are also entirely different. Everyone has different experiences different something. So we end up with lots and lots of variations. Where conceivably one technique that works great won't work in another situation. If the secondhand is up far enough that you can get your presto tool between the secondhand and the minute hand then you can squeeze and gently pull straight up. Your presto tool ideally should be under the lip holding the secondhand on. Of course situations were those tubes that don't have lips then we might have a problem. Then there are situations where you will have to pull all of the hands up. There's too many variations here.

So in my particular case for hand removal I have both the presto tool and the levers and some other ancient hand removing tool which can put more force when popping pocket watch hands off sometimes. Which tool do I use whichever tool fits the situation.

4 hours ago, BrianB said:

That tool shown in Mark's video you posted is really cool. That might be a nice addition to the tool box at some point.

I was thinking maybe you do need a few more tools for your toolbox so Here's some websites with catalogs to give you some ideas of what you need. Then the last link a book or two just in case you need a book for some reason.

https://www.horia.ch/en/index.html

http://horotec.ch/download/%3D+Catalogues/1/06.2016+(English)/48

https://www.bergeon.swiss/

http://www.booksimonin.ch/home.php

[BrianB]

3 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

I was thinking maybe you do need a few more tools for your toolbox so Here's some websites with catalogs to give you some ideas of what you need. Then the last link a book or two just in case you need a book for some reason.

I will never have all the tools I want. I am definitely a "tool buying" person. I'll often spend way more on tools than it would cost just to pay someone to do the job. I figure after I have the tools and do the repair, then I still have the tools for next time. And self-sufficiency - which is worth more than money sometimes.

I try to buy mostly Bergeon and Horotec. Occasionally I'll buy a Chinese knockoff when it seems like the right thing to do. How often will I use it? How well will the Chinese one do the job versus the Bergeon/Horotec? And so on.

Like the hand puller in Mark's video that JDM posted - the version of the tool that Mark bought is around $350 from Esslinger. I can get the Chinese knockoff for around $70. I know the Chinese knockoff won't be anywhere near the quality, and I might even have to do some work on it to make it "good enough", but I'd really like to have that type of tool and I just can't justify $350 for the Horotec - especially since I do this only for fun and will never be charging money for it.

That said, I've probably spent about $700 on tools so far in my pursuit of this little hobby. I know that's a drop in the bucket compared to the investment professional watchmakers have invested in tools - but I'm not a professional watchmaker. 

[BrianB]

With a little microsurgery I was able to put the seconds hand and collet/tube back together again. The hand seemed to snap on pretty positively but I'll probably still put a couple micro-dots of adhesive on the bottom for good measure.

Man, these parts are tiny. It makes that "Operation" game we played as kids seem ridiculously simple by comparison.

Some microscope shots of the reassembled hand and tube.

 

[JohnR725]

2 minutes ago, BrianB said:

but I'm not a professional watchmaker.

Unfortunately for tool buying that is going to be much worse. Quite a few professional watchmaker's work in service centers all the tools are provided. Of course that brings up the problem of why did they spend so much money buying tools to go to school and not Be able to use them? As a hobbyist watchmaker if you see something that you fancy you don't have to justify it. Although by theory business owners could write off their tool purchases watchmakers in a profession tend to be a lot of times cheap on what they do.

I should go and find the book one of my books has a reference that watch repair tends to be really Tool extensive. You end up with a lot of specialty tools that you only occasionally use but when you do have to use them it's very very nice to have.

 

[jdm]

On 8/17/2020 at 8:57 AM, jdm said:

In this recent video below Mark shows the use of a tool that pushes on the pivot instead than on the dial

Let's congratulate Mark graduating to  toolmaker fabricating the jig for the Horotec tool.

 

On 8/17/2020 at 8:11 PM, JohnR725 said:

I don't think Mark mentioned it in his video but some of the watch companies actually drive their Chronograph hands-on with Very extreme force with the intent that their service people will break the hands removing them.

Yes he does right at the beginning. The tight fit is needed because of the sudden deceleration to which cronograph hands are subjected to when resetting.