Transferring a Hairspring

[Rafael]

Hi!

Couldn't find any useful information in this respect so i thought I'll open a new thread - If I have a broken balance staff and a good hairspring, and i managed to source a replacement balance wheel with no hairspring but with a non-broken balance staff of the same caliber and manufacturer*, can I replace the hairspring between the two? Would it keep decent time or I will need to vibrate the hairspring on the new balance wheel? (Which of course, I'm not able to).

 

*P.s. balance complete is sourceable but very expensive so I first want to find an alternative. 

P.s.2 Replacing only the balance staff will be problematic as well given the complexity and lack of tools.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Rafael

Edited October 9, 2020 by Rafael

[Nucejoe]

Depends on the caliber. What caliber are you working on?

In case the new balance runs way fast with your old hairspring( free sprung) , there is nothing you can do to build a balance complete out of the two. 

Screw balances provides little to alter rim mass distribution of the wheel, which normally translates to order of seconds to min at most.

[Rafael]

23 minutes ago, Nucejoe said:

Depends on the caliber. What caliber are you working on?

In case the new balance runs way fast with your old hairspring( free sprung) , there is nothing you can do to build a balance complete out of the two. 

Screw balances provides little to alter rim mass distribution of the wheel, which normally translates to order of seconds to min at most.

Hi Nucejoe, thanks.

 

On a Rolex 1520. I might note as well that the replacement wheel is a used one, not NOS (which from what I could find, does not exiat).

Edited October 9, 2020 by Rafael

[aac58]

I have exactly the same dilemma. I've got a few Seiko 700x and 61xx balances, and I've been wondering if I can use them to build some good ones, so I'm very interested in the expert's opinion on this subject.

I've been reading about vibrating the hairspring. It's the process to adjust the hairspring so the balance/hairspring set vibrates at a correct rate with a balance wheel with a specific weight, isn't it?

If the old and new balances are not very different, would the regulator on the balance cock be enought to compensate?

Edited October 9, 2020 by aac58

[praezis]

Rafael,

- yes, you can do it.

- yes, you will get a huge rate error then.

My advice, don't make things even worse, have the staff replaced by a watchmaker.

Frank

[Rafael]

18 minutes ago, praezis said:

Rafael,

- yes, you can do it.

- yes, you will get a huge rate error then.

My advice, don't make things even worse, have the staff replaced by a watchmaker.

Frank

Thanks for your input Frank! I can of course take it to a professional watchmaker / Rolex service center but that takes out all the fun of fixing it yourself

[Nucejoe]

Considering its the same exact caliber and not a real old movement, it will vibrate, however, all I see in images google brought me are anulare wheels, that means you will need to remove material to poise and achieve the percision expected of Rolex.

Overall, I wouldn't go for it.

[Nucejoe]

2 hours ago, aac58 said:

I have exactly the same dilemma. I've got a few Seiko 700x and 61xx balances, and I've been wondering if I can use them to build some good ones, so I'm very interested in the expert's opinion on this subject.

I've been reading about vibrating the hairspring. It's the process to adjust the hairspring so the balance/hairspring set vibrates at a correct rate with a balance wheel with a specific weight, isn't it?

If the old and new balances are not very different, would the regulator on the balance cock be enought to compensate?

The problem you will face is, collets on calibers you mention might not be removable.

So, we are talking mutiliation of the old non-removable collet without damage to the balance, make or come up with a collet that fits, collet the good hairspring instal for a good chance of compatibilty of the two. 

[aac58]

You mean the collets could be fixed to the staff? I don't think they are, but I need to check it. I will take two 700x balances and try to get a working one and see what happens.

[praezis]

1 hour ago, Rafael said:

Thanks for your input Frank! I can of course take it to a professional watchmaker / Rolex service center but that takes out all the fun of fixing it yourself

I understand , but this is not a beginners task. If you want real fun, wait till you have the skill, experince and tools.

Else, no Rolex service center needed! It is an easy task for any watchmaker located near to you (who has a workshop!).

Frank

[Nucejoe]

54 minutes ago, aac58 said:

You mean the collets could be fixed to the staff? I don't think they are, but I need to check it. I will take two 700x balances and try to get a working one and see what happens.

Right, that is what I meant, collets are fixed on 7009 and 6309 staring at me right now. 

I guess not so on all calibers

[aac58]

That's too bad, thank you Nucejoe

Edited October 9, 2020 by aac58

[JohnR725]

6 hours ago, Rafael said:

Thanks for your input Frank! I can of course take it to a professional watchmaker / Rolex service center but that takes out all the fun of fixing it yourself

yes we are a fun bunch of people so I recommend proceeding with the repair and disregarding all the naysayers.

because we seem to be having 2 discussions going on at the same time a Seiko and the Rolex am a little confused? If I understand correctly you have a good hairspring on a bad balance wheel? Then you have a good balance wheel with no hairspring? So once you get both balance wheels together all you have to do a swap the hairspring and once you do that we will go on from there no problem. As you said you'd like to have some fun and we all like fun on this group.

then to limit how much fun were going to have just as a reminder I looked up the 1520 and the only balance wheel you can swap would be a 1525. but when I looked the balance staffs there appear to be some variations and it's hard to tell from the variations whether that's going to affect swapping the hairspring or not? this is because normally people don't swap the hairsprings. As far as vibrating goes traditional you need a vibrating pool what you're not going to ever lay hands on. So once you swap the hairspring we will see what if anything we can do with the timekeeping problem you might have to live with the issue of the watch going super slow or fast and then will make up a conversion table for USO in other words if the real time is 12 noon at your watch might say 1 o'clock and you'll just have to remember that you're running 30 minutes fast per day. But that's going to be fun and make things much more interesting for you. But we will see what happens as soon as you get your balance wheels and we swap the hairspring.

[JohnR725]

9 hours ago, aac58 said:

have exactly the same dilemma. I've got a few Seiko 700x and 61xx balances, and I've been wondering if I can use them to build some good ones, so I'm very interested in the expert's opinion on this subject.

technically you do not have the exact same problem because if you had the exact same problem you would have Rolex watch. It makes for a very confusing discussion if somebody posts a question that seems similar but is not it should really be in a separate question.

So you have the exact same problem which is a broken balance staff and another balance that has a good hairspring so it be nice to have some pictures and let's swap those hairsprings.

5 hours ago, Nucejoe said:

collets are fixed on 7009 and 6309 staring at me right now. 

oh wait somebody appears to be negative? Maybe you don't have the exact same problem an unfortunate problem in modern watchmaking especially production watches are how they save money. For instance there is at least one Rolex watch that the only way you can remove the hairspring is by driving the balance staff out with special tools. As somebodies indicating Seiko has perhaps permanently attached the hairspring. Because?

I know I'm being a naysayer and being negative but traditionally with the exception of American pocket watches and a few other watches hairsprings never came separate from the balance wheel. So in the case of modern manufacturing I could company like Seiko is a lot easier to make a permanent le made balance wheel than one made out of a whole bunch of little components that can be separated.

although for the 7009 the balance staff is available separate which means they hairspring has to build come off it's not attached the balance arms or the balance wheel if it's a separate staff they hairspring has to come off.

on the parts listing for the 6309 a is something peculiar it is listing a number for the staff but it says it's not available? Now that's not the same as where it's listed and it says it's unavailable or it's discontinued their implying that it is not available at all. That might suggest that on that watch that is an entirely and assembly of a balance complete which would make it problematic of swapping hairsprings. So were going to need pictures of your balance wheels to see what we can do to swap them.

[aac58]

4 minutes ago, JohnR725 said:

if you had the exact same problem you would have Rolex watch

Sorry, when I was writing my post the OP didn't say the make of the watch. 

[JohnR725]

1 minute ago, aac58 said:

Sorry, when I was writing my post the OP didn't say the make of the watch.

it's a problem withwatch repair where people posting original questions assume that somehow we will magically know exactly which watch their talking about. Then don't worry it's a common thing to do what I call thread hijacking the assumption that my watch is having the same problem is your watch isn't entirely true.

Then to be realistic about this there's a reason why hairsprings were never with the exception American pocket watches separate components because they do not swap. Only in the very newest watches with silicon hairsprings made with super exacting specifications they may be able to swap perhaps.

one of the problems that people forget about is that timekeeping of watches is? let's see have this amusing little booklet from Switzerland on understanding watches and on the back it has did you know this? So one of the little pieces of facts they give is this watch is in every day use have a degree of precision which exceeds that of many laboratory instruments. A variation of one second a day represents a deviation of only 0.0011% from absolute accuracy and a watch that varies by 10 seconds a day is still precise to 99.9885%.

This is why traditionally hairsprings are vibrated to every single balance we. In a factory situation with the machines they had as I've ask he seen it done in the factory it only takes him a minute or two to do it. Unlike if you are hand vibrating it's going to take a lot longer-that's. So they a special machines they can do it really really fast.

so simplistic is balance wheels cannot be manufactured at least until possibly now to the accuracy that you can just swap hairsprings. But if you have some Seiko balance wheels if they hairspring indeed does come off and you can swap it let's see what happens what's going to be the harm? It's not like this is a customer's watch and somebody's going to be very pissed off that you let's have some fun. It's possible honest Seiko with the floating regulator and stud that you might be able to regulate out the differences perhaps but as I said the only way we can really find out for sure is somebody has to do it.

[Nucejoe]

I vibrate the balance completes I build , right inside the movement, Usually in two tries and despite no tg nor a vibrograph.

Must be nice to have one of them vibrating tools

 

[JohnR725]

16 minutes ago, Nucejoe said:

vibrate the balance completes I build , right inside the movement, Usually in two tries and despite no tg nor a vibrograph.

Must be nice to have one of them vibrating tools

obviously you have skills for the newbie whether they had the vibrating pool or whatever they lack the skills.

having a vibrating tool is just half the battle in a way. If you are vibrating a hairspring from scratch to retire all the components namely they hairspring as a no longer make generic hairsprings you would need old stock. To break out the center depended in the collet requires skill set. If your students in school hairspring vibrating I suppose depending on your point of view could be like you've entered hell for several weeks. It takes a lot of time and effort to learn how to just get the hairspring on the collet. Then you got a put it on the tool and because it's a new hairspring versus one that's somewhat close get into that somewhat close point can take some time.

a better way to vibrated hairsprings is electronically. A while back somebody posted a video of a Swiss school teaching traditional watchmaking. They were making a watch over several years. But I was very disappointed at they hand for the hairspring vibrating the used to machine. Probably because the quantity of hairsprings left the vibrate is nonexistent. But still to use a machine to vibrate their hairspring seem like cheating.

I have some links below you might find them interesting.

https://watchmaking.weebly.com/hairspring-vibrating-tool.html

https://youtu.be/htckrH3ae54

https://youtu.be/yWHm9YOrGqE

[JohnR725]

thhere was another video I wanted to have above I found it. The only problem with this video is it would've been nice to have a time lapse of starting with the raw hairspring and showing all the steps to get to this point. Then how long did it take to get to the point where he showing us. You'll notice the stopwatch that's because at the very beginning of the video there's a reference to a school and when this person was there. In order to get the instructor to pass the hairspring the stopwatch is required because they have to stay synchronized for certain length of time.

https://youtu.be/M5LEN66vxgc

[Rafael]

12 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

yes we are a fun bunch of people so I recommend proceeding with the repair and disregarding all the naysayers.

because we seem to be having 2 discussions going on at the same time a Seiko and the Rolex am a little confused? If I understand correctly you have a good hairspring on a bad balance wheel? Then you have a good balance wheel with no hairspring? So once you get both balance wheels together all you have to do a swap the hairspring and once you do that we will go on from there no problem. As you said you'd like to have some fun and we all like fun on this group.

then to limit how much fun were going to have just as a reminder I looked up the 1520 and the only balance wheel you can swap would be a 1525. but when I looked the balance staffs there appear to be some variations and it's hard to tell from the variations whether that's going to affect swapping the hairspring or not? this is because normally people don't swap the hairsprings. As far as vibrating goes traditional you need a vibrating pool what you're not going to ever lay hands on. So once you swap the hairspring we will see what if anything we can do with the timekeeping problem you might have to live with the issue of the watch going super slow or fast and then will make up a conversion table for USO in other words if the real time is 12 noon at your watch might say 1 o'clock and you'll just have to remember that you're running 30 minutes fast per day. But that's going to be fun and make things much more interesting for you. But we will see what happens as soon as you get your balance wheels and we swap the hairspring.

John,

not sure if you're being sarcastic or not since your answer was a bit confusing but you can definitely source a 1520 balance wheel (8055 part which is listed in the parts list of the 1520)- 

See here for example and pictures of my movement and balance below - 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ROLEX-Unruh-ohne-Spirale-cal-1520-1525-part-8055-balance-wheel-without-spring-3/

The goal of course is to have an accurate watch. This is why I asked and not just bought and tried.

Anyway, thanks for your input, although it didn't made much sense.

Rafael

 

 

 

 

Edited October 10, 2020 by Rafael

[JohnR725]

5 minutes ago, Rafael said:

not sure if you're being sarcastic or not since your answer was a bit confusing

sometimes my answers are confusing because I use dictation software. Sometimes dictation software does not like me and words aren't always correct.

If I tell you swapping hairsprings does not work and is bad especially if you're new to watch repair the general reply is you want to do it anyway so the best way to learn is to do it. I'm not the one spending the money and you're the one who gets to learn the lesson.

I was trying to find something about the watch and the link below will be helpful. As far as I can tell for replacement parts especially on the balance complete its either the 1520 with a 1525. On eBay they sometimes include other numbers are other calibers and I'm not sure that that's technically correct.

only curiosity you have a service bulletin for this watch? The parts list has something of interest possibly helpful possibly not.

So traditionally you cannot swap hairsprings on balance wheels because the hairspring has been matched to that specific balance wheel. But you physically can swap the hairspring they just are not going to match in timekeeping will suffer. The problem will be as to how the timekeeping sufferers?

I was studying the balance wheel on eBay and it has those peculiar things on the balance arm. Rolex calls them inertia blocks. So looking at the technical sheet in the parts list we get something interesting? There is a reference to washers which the wording is really strange ethical snip out the picture for you. There is no place to put timing screws on a screwless balance wheel but maybe they put washers under the under inertia blocks? Otherwise I don't know what these washers are and they're not clear specifications are interesting. If they are timing washers between the regulator the blocks themselves and timing washers it would give you a much greater range of adjustment. But zero idea whether that would be enough to get the watch to keep time. Because changing the existing hairspring is also considered a bad thing to do.

so no matter what swapping in the hairspring and getting the watch to keep Rolex time is going to be problematic. it would be better to find somebody to change the balance staff. 

 

 

 

 

 

https://watchguy.co.uk/service-repair-rolex-air-king-5500-calibre-1520/

[Rafael]

Thanks John, it makes a lot more sense now.

 

So my options as I see it are either (a) source a balance complete or (b) source a balance staff and take it to a skilled watchmaker / buy a staking set and experiment 

 

[Rafael]

Update:

So following your suggestions and calculating the two options I had - I've purchased a balance complete off ebay.