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Mainspring lubrication, manual and automatic


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It was GR2378X I fitted. As it was new, I didn't lubricate it. 

Does the amount of grease on the barrel wall make much difference ?

8213 is listed as 'strong braking' grease. I wonder if there's much difference with 8217 'anti-sliding'.

I had this problem once before, on an Omega 10??. I ended up using wet and dry on the barrel wall which seemed to work. I guess that's the next thing to try.

Being Seiko it's a reverse wound spring, and as I don't have reverse winders, I wind it in back in to the washer the spring came in - always a bit fiddly.

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12 minutes ago, mikepilk said:

It was GR2378X I fitted. As it was new, I didn't lubricate it.

Measure the old mainspring to see if it meets GR2378X description.

I always measure ID of the barrel as in some cases it varies for Omega for example (11.5 Vs 12 Vs 12.5). Thus, a different mainspring would be needed. As for "anti-sliding" grease - i use 8217 - three small drops applied on the wall 120 degrees apart. Works fine.

8213 is listed for brass barrel walls.

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20 minutes ago, mikepilk said:

I had this problem once before, on an Omega 10??. I ended up using wet and dry on the barrel wall which seemed to work. I guess that's the next thing to try.

I would look at the bridle shape and how soft it is. There is no guarantee that the Swiss spring was made specifically for this Seiko.

4 minutes ago, Pinetreepete said:

Is it possible that the new spring is slipping on the winding arbor.

Unlikely. That would produce a distinct click and probably happen on the first turn.

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9 minutes ago, Pinetreepete said:

Is it possible that the new spring is slipping on the winding arbor.

Possible, but I think I would be able to feel that happening. Once the spring starts to  wind around the arbor, the winding spring holds the inner coil more firmly in place. I will check it.

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13 minutes ago, Poljot said:

Measure the old mainspring to see if it meets GR2378X description.

I always measure ID of the barrel as in some cases it varies for Omega for example (11.5 Vs 12 Vs 12.5). Thus, a different mainspring would be needed. As for "anti-sliding" grease - i use 8217 - three small drops applied on the wall 120 degrees apart. Works fine.

8213 is listed for brass barrel walls.

The old spring is spot-on for GR2378X : 0.95 x 0.12 x 400

 

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13 minutes ago, jdm said:

 

I would look at the bridle shape and how soft it is. There is no guarantee that the Swiss spring was made specifically for this Seiko.

Unlikely. That would produce a distinct click and probably happen on the first turn.

By "soft" I assume you mean a shallow angle between bridle and spring?

This is the old spring, I'll check the new one when I take it out.

PS I changed the spring because of that kink !

20201206_170717.thumb.jpg.9ac21d9c9f2f3e1a10a133b055e85aac.jpg

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32 minutes ago, jdm said:

No, just gently compare by hand the force needed to bend it to an half circle or so.

Good point. I seem to have had quite a few new springs incorrectly hardened and tempered - especially breaking too easily when trying to tighten the inner coil. I had one that wasn't hardened at all - you could bend any of it to any shape.

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Done a few Seiko's and always used 8217 braking grease with no problems.  As amplitude is ok (for Seiko). I would suspect that you have been over-generous with the grease. I would remove barrel/mainspring and thoroughly clean. Then apply only a very small dab of grease as mikepilk says at 120 deg around barrel wall and try and keep it off the bottom of the barrel.  Refit the new spring dry and try it again. Do not lube the spring only the arbor bearing surfaces once the barrel is assembled. Too much grease will produce 'wedge of grease' which will allow the spring to slip too much.  Maybe a case of less is more.

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Why not manually wind the mainspring, removing the balance beforehand, counting how many rotations it takes, then go for a walk for half an hour and come back and let the spring down, counting how many rotations it takes. This way you can see if the spring is slipping early.

 

I dot the circumference of the barrel wall with 8217, at the upper most edge so that when pressing in the spring it spreads along the height of the wall and not pushed to the base, and then rotate the barrel on a piece of sharpened pegwood whilst spreading it using a thin oiler tip.

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2 hours ago, Bodo said:

Why not manually wind the mainspring, removing the balance beforehand, counting how many rotations it takes, then go for a walk for half an hour and come back and let the spring down, counting how many rotations it takes. This way you can see if the spring is slipping early.

 

I dot the circumference of the barrel wall with 8217, at the upper most edge so that when pressing in the spring it spreads along the height of the wall and not pushed to the base, and then rotate the barrel on a piece of sharpened pegwood whilst spreading it using a thin oiler tip.

That's what I did. I fully wound it using a screwdriver, no manual wind on this movement, then let it down, again using a screwdriver. It only wound down two turns

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  • 1 month later...

A stupid question but lately I heard some people said you can leave the mainspring clean and dry. Just set it back to the barrel it will function just fine.

The reason for that is when it's wind-up the spring wont touch each other (I doubt that) so no fiction and thus no need to lubricate the mainspring.

Any opinion? 

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The coils rub as the watch runs. Modern new springs are coated with a teflon type coating and don't need lubrication. If they've been cleaned  then they should be lightly greased, usually before installing, but we were also shown in school to put 5 little drops of heavy oil on the coiled spring in the barrel and 3 to five in the open space in the barrel; this wicks into the coils.

 

What you want to avoid is contaminating the braking grease on the barrel wall with a regular lubricant when woking on an automatic watch.

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2 minutes ago, nickelsilver said:

The coils rub as the watch runs. Modern new springs are coated with a teflon type coating and don't need lubrication. If they've been cleaned  then they should be lightly greased, usually before installing, but we were also shown in school to put 5 little drops of heavy oil on the coiled spring in the barrel and 3 to five in the open space in the barrel; this wicks into the coils.

 

What you want to avoid is contaminating the braking grease on the barrel wall with a regular lubricant when woking on an automatic watch.

Thank you. How to determine if the Mainspring is coated?

But anyway if it's an old mainspring then it's better to clean and lubricate it with some oil right?

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In case of selfwinders you want the friction between spindle and barrel wall within a certain interval, so it would release the extra wind.

There is also the possibility of spring rubbing on barrel bottom plate or lid, so I like to stay on the safe side as much as I can.

 

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48 minutes ago, EatPeach said:

Thank you. How to determine if the Mainspring is coated?

Not all mainsprings are coated some of them supposedly because of the alloy they don't need Teflon or anything. But you still caught with the same problem basically it's invisible.

If you clean the mainspring and it had an invisible lubrication it now does not.

49 minutes ago, EatPeach said:

But anyway if it's an old mainspring then it's better to clean and lubricate it with some oil right?

The problem with invisible lubrication is you don't know it's there. Which means if you clean it you remove it but since you don't know if it's there or not that doesn't matter. If the mainspring has old oils are greases they definitely have to come off because they will be sticky. if you have a nice clean mainspring it should be lubricated with something. Just don't get carried away with putting too much on otherwise it leaks out of the barrel.

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53 minutes ago, mikepilk said:

I was surprised to find people using 8200 on the barrel walls and not breaking grease.

It's the problem with so many things the lack of knowledge of what people are supposed to be doing. I suppose technically all lubrication's are breaking lubrication's. That's because they have surface tension but typically we don't think of oil and standard grease as a braking force. This means that using 8200 totally sucks is a breaking grease. But obviously some people don't pay attention to that.

On 1/20/2021 at 11:02 AM, nickelsilver said:

we were also shown in school to put 5 little drops of heavy oil on the coiled spring in the barrel and 3 to five in the open space in the barrel; this wicks into the coils.

The modern schools are now using 9501 for the grease on the mainsprings. Which is interesting because they try to follow the modern techniques and the modern techniques are not to lubricate the mainspring. Omega has a guide for recycling mainspring barrels And mainspring. they remove the mainspring and gently wipe it with a lint free cloth before reinserting and of course they put breaking grease In the barrel.

 

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1 hour ago, mikepilk said:

I've serviced a couple of Seiko automatics recently - and as I don't have the Seiko lubricants, I was looking up what others were using. I was surprised to find people using 8200 on the barrel walls and not breaking grease.

That would've been a mistake. Who did that? Let them know to use breaking grease instead on the barrel wall for automatic movements.

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