Funny watch repair stories:

[KarlvonKoln]

I'll start.  But first, the backstory: what I didn't know beforehand was that one of my daughters "borrowed" my *brass* tweezers to apply some stickers, and put them back before I knew about it. I found that out later.

So there I am, bit of sinus trouble making me groggy, working on a practice movement to take my mind off it.  I'm unscrewing the balance bridge, and I go to grab the screw with the tweezers and put it in my tray. I hold it over the tray and let go, but it stays on the tweezer tip.  I think "That's not good".  So I put the screw and the tweezers on my demagnetizer and hit the switch. I lift the screw and drop it in the tray. And as I watch myself lifting *brass* tweezers off a demagnetizer, I realize how tired I am and go to bed (resolving to figure out why the screw stuck sometime later).

Anyone else have a funny watch repair-related story to tell?

Edited August 30, 2020 by KarlvonKoln
Edited for misspelling

[jdm]

2 hours ago, KarlvonKoln said:

And as I watch myself lifting *brass* tweezers off a demagnetizer, I realize how tired I am and go to bed (resolving to figure out why the screw stuck sometime later).

Science is demonstrated by experiments, so nothing is wrong repeating these sometime. The other day I found that my brass tweezers reject small screws, even after being demagnetized (the tweezers). I only went far enough to learn that brass is not actually totally amagnetic, did not try to demag the screws and just moved on.

[Nucejoe]

I gave a used quartz watch to our houseman, couple of days and he comes complaining he doesn't want it for it looses time dispite him winding it everyday.

 

[nichod]

I haven't posted in a bit so:

The LCD wristwatch was a new thing.  When was that?  '79, '80, not really certain.  I purchased my first one, a Seiko in '81.  Lifetime ago...  I was pulling night watch on the fall back from daylight saving time to standard.  Remember the rules said to set it back at 0200.

It was 0300 when I heard a shout from the desk sergeant who proclaimed his watch had died.  I look at it and saw the 00:00 on the display.  It seems he did not know how to set the watch so at 0200 took the back off and removed the cell for an hour then put it back in thinking the timepiece would stop for an hour and then display the correct time.

Armitron as I recall.  I bailed him out, of course.

[luiazazrambo]

It's not a story of repairing, and its not a watch but a clock! Tried to escape from me, but I caught it, to make my life more difficult it tried to disappear in pieces. We had heavy wind today and my clock was placed on the window sill, seems it teamed up with the curtain and with a little help it went trough the window. I managed to collect every piece with the help of a ladder and even though the case suffered a bit it is still going.  

[nichod]

That's painful!

Suddenly my day just seemed a little brighter by comparison.

[KarlvonKoln]

Thanks again, my daughters.  So apparently one of my daughters has a little prism-like kaleidoscope toy, which gives one "insect vision", and also looks a heck of a lot like my black loupe.  So guess where she leaves it laying about, just for giggles.
If you guessed "On my workbench", you win the prize.  Sat down to look into works of another daughter's little quartz watch, took off the back, grabbed the loupe, and saw about TWENTY BATTERIES back there!!!  Recoiled a little, and looked at the "loupe" and had to laugh.  Yep, she got me good.