Orient watch keeping erratic time

[FreelanceAstronaut]

I have an Orient Star open heart watch that is about 4 years old. I haven't been wearing it often, and when I wore it the first time in a while, I noticed the time was off. I have successfully regulated watches in the past, so I attempted to regulate this one. It is all over the place. I don't know if I did something to mess it up (maybe accidentally hit the hairspring?), but now it does not keep good time.

To prepare to ask this question, I wound it almost all the way (probably 38 out of 40 hours worth) and kept a log of its accuracy. Throughout the whole test it sat on a desk dial up and was never moved. Here's what I found:

Saturday

3:03 pm: synced

4:06 pm: -3 seconds

5:00 pm: -6 seconds

6:00 pm: -9 seconds

7:47 pm: -15 seconds

9:30 pm: -19 seconds

Sunday

10:56 am: +1 second

11:34 am: +33 seconds

12:35 pm: +38 seconds

4:15 pm: +180 seconds

As you can see, it is all over the place. It starts out pretty regular, losing about 3 seconds per hour. But at some point overnight it reversed and started gaining time. By 4:15 in the afternoon, it was a full 3 minutes fast!

 

Can someone help me diagnose what is wrong with it, and then give advice on how to fix it?

 

[anilv]

Questions.

1. Did you regulate the watch with a timegrapher? The stud holder will sometimes move when the regulator is shifted and this messes up the beat.

2. Has the watch been serviced? If it was running fast it needs to be serviced. Adjusting the regulator only addresses the symptoms and does not address the root of the problem.

3. If you did not wind the watch on Saturday night, the speeding up is typical as the balance amplitude gets less as the mainspring gets to the end of its power reserve. If the balance stud holder was moved it will make this issue worse.

4. I note the watch starts running worse after 24hours... another indication the watch needs a proper service.

Good luck

Anilv

 

 

[JohnR725]

Before you attempted to regulate it did you run any kind of test to understand what's going on? It's always nice to have a before you did something and after you did something so we can figure out if the problem was A pre-existing problem or something you did or both.

Then I wasn't sure what an open heart watch was the link below indicates it's just a opening To see the balance. Then thinking about the balance wheel we could see it would be nice if we had a picture from the backside of the balance wheel hairspring etc.

33 minutes ago, anilv said:

. Did you regulate the watch with a timegrapher?

I'm guessing when you get back to us that you don't have a timegrapher Or sometimes called a timing machine? The Chinese 1000 or 1900 available on eBay very inexpensive extremely worth the money when regulating a watch unless you only have one watch because it gives us all sorts of diagnostic information.

Usually for timekeeping even on the timing machine we look at seconds per day the only time we look at seconds per hour On watches that are having extreme problems. it looks like your first day are running about 80 seconds a day slow which is too slow. Then the next day when it runs out of energy it's now fast

unfortunately this isn't a classic problem that we can look in the book of symptoms and instantaneously give you an answer. Having a timing machine Hopefully would helpful to give us some information that we don't have.. Not having a before of what the watch was doing all just have to make the assumption that you did something undesirable. It's very easy when moving the regulator on modern watches That have floating studs that you move the stud also. Also the amount of movement to regulate the watch varies from watch the watch it's not always an exact science then it comes back to it be nice to have the timing machine again.

 

 

https://www.orientwatchusa.com/products/ra-ag0005l10a/

[FreelanceAstronaut]

Thank you for your responses. I will try to answer the questions.

I don't own a timegrapher, but I used an Android App (Tickoprint) that does a reasonably good job. I was able to regulate a nicer watch (with an ETA 2895-2) down to within about 3 seconds per day using this app. Feeling confident, I tried this watch. I know I didn't do a good job. For some reason I couldn't find a good spot with my timegrapher--maybe because of the beat issues? This timegrapher app I used doesn't really tell the beat error or amplitude (that I have seen), so all I could go on was the gain or loss per day.

I was having trouble getting it close, so I just decided to replace the back and wear it. I wore it a couple days and noticed it was WAY off, so I wound it on Saturday and recorded what was happening.

I'm not sure what was going on before I regulated it, unfortunately. I don't have a good baseline.

If I bumped the balance stud when regulating it, would that mean that with a real timegrapher I would be able to get it back in place? I've never intentionally moved that, so I'm not sure how to change it.

The "open heart" part of the description was extra info. Here is a picture of the model of the watch: https://images.app.goo.gl/C7e9oRavaQGHjrih9

I'll try to get a picture of the balance wheel of my watch from the back tomorrow.

Again, thank you for your responses.

[JohnR725]

Nice that you explained you using an app. One of the things we've found with the apps are they don't work the best. True a variety of people will show how wonderful AR but when diagnosing problems with the watch is less-than-perfect signal we've been down this rabbit hole before and it makes it really hard to diagnose if the timing Sucks. Sorry to be blunt about this but they're not the best.

It's very hard modern watch to regulate without moving the stud. The real timing machine will make it better but if you're grossly out of beat then we have to do a manual alignment. One of the problems with beat error is we don't get up plus or minus just a number. So you can be moving it towards zero and blink your eyes and go past and hopelessly get lost.

So basically with a real timing machine if we get holy crap on the screen and can't really figure out anything that actually is helpful in that it tells us your watch is really screwed up. Doesn't tell us necessarily where that went. Another thing you might try to do is it may be hard to let the power off but let the watch run all the way down until it stops. Then look at the hairspring and make sure it's flat this is also why we need a picture and that would be a good time to take a picture so we can see what they hairspring looks like.

 

 

[jdm]

17 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

So basically with a real timing machine if we get holy crap on the screen and can't really figure out anything that actually is helpful in that it tells us your watch is really screwed up.

That is the keynote statement. If the OP thinks that as a watch enthousiast he can afford a timegrapher he should get one, or bring the watch to a repair shop. Another thing to try even before is to use a cheap blue box to demagnetize.

Edited August 24, 2020 by jdm

[Watchtime]

Maybe a service would help?

[Nucejoe]

I demag, if no good,

Check hairsprings end curve.