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CharlesMouse

By CharlesMouse
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CharlesMouse New Member

CharlesMouse

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I thought I'd introduce myself having just registered with this forum.

A little watch-related history:

I have frankly never had an interest in watches as such, having rarely worn any watch up until recent events. The only watch I owned for many years is a gold-plated Accurist dress wristwatch given to me by my father for my 16th birthday. Some day I will get round to refurbishing it as the case could do with some attention and while it works fine these days it drains a battery in about 6 hours! No idea why, Accurist not interested, and the last local watch repair shop closed years ago. Quartz it may be but it wasn't a cheap watch at all and I am quite attached to it.

On the to reason I joined this good forum:

Some months ago while browsing eBay, as you do, I noticed a rather lovely gold Elgin Hunter of roughly 1925 vintage that was listed as having a "broken" balance. Taken with the watch I googled "broken balance" to see what that was about, I really had no idea at all! Not put off by the reported issue that had seemingly put off other potential buyers I bought it and after further googling bought a dirt-cheap watch repair kit, some decent oil and grease, and some seemingly appropriate lighter fluid for cleaning.

I also bought a new lens for the watch along with the right balance shaft on the basis that the former was missing and the latter was probably the problem., oh what a rabbit hole that is when you are starting from zero...

...a few Youtube videos later and a better set of watch-maker's screwdrivers and I had the thing apart, cleaned, and examined. As it happened the shaft was fine, as seemed the rest of the movement. The issues seemed to be being horribly dirty and a hair spring that looked like it had been mangled by a toddler - not me! So I cleaned, oiled and greased the watch as per my limited understanding and with the help of Youtube set about the amazingly tedious task of turning the hair spring back in to a hair spring. Certainly not perfect, but what-the-hey with the watch reassembled it worked fine. Fantastic!

Fired with enthusiasm I built a skeleton double hunter from scratch using brand-new parts built around a rather pretty ST3620k movement . I even painted a couple of miniatures for the insides of the front and rear covers  although it got an antique dial rather than the custom one I gave up on - I'm not a patient person by nature and I was loosing the will to live by that point. That went to my brother as a 60th birthday present, sadly I didn't take any pictures.

Last gasp:

After my adventures so far I have come to the conclusion that I really don't have the patience for playing with watches as a pass-time, although I have a new passing interest and I shall certainly put my new-found if meager skills to use looking after the two watches I have - my wrist watch still needs attention but I presume this isn't the forum for that. Learning to repair one was a kind of fun, building a new one from scratch had a satisfying result but I can't say I enjoyed the process...

...but as a possible "last hurrah" I spotted a lovely, working, 1897 Elgin 16s 17J 3FB Grade 248 OF Pocket Watch Movement, on fleaBay once more. Nothing wrong with my repaired movement other than even to my eye and ear it's a bit worn from neglect. So I hatched a plan to remove the original movement to preserve it with the watch and transfer in the 3FB movement in to the case as a daily driver. It turns out I much prefer pocket watches to wrist watches even for practicable use, I wonder why they are now so little used?

This went very well and I was pleased with the results... until I made the mistake of doing a cursory clean and oil of the 3FB movement. It was fine, it was clean, and it had obviously been well looked-after. But as I had it in my had I thought I'd spruce things up just a little until I had summoned the patience the pull it apart and give it my interpretation of a good service. The movement was working fine, and still does, but whatever I did with the very lightly applied good quality oil the darn thing started running far too fast and even with it on the limit of negative adjustment it still gains about 30mins a day! It did keep excellent time until I messed with it, the balance was set a smidge in the positive. Most annoying and frustrating!

Anyway, apart from this lengthy introduction, I hope to post a request for advice just as soon as the relevant sub-forum stops being grayed-out. I'll post pictures of my Hunter in that thread when I can. 

Edited by CharlesMouse
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