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Hamilton Model 23 balance issues


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I recently acquired a Hamilton Model 23 military chronograph pocket watch.  It was a non-runner stuck fully wound.  It had a broken pivot on the pallet fork, broken seconds pall and broken winding pinion.  I sourced the new parts, ran it through the L&R Master cleaner and re assembled the keyless, train and escapement. Thoroughly cleaned the upper and lower balance gem assemblys (confirming with microscope) After winding, I installed the balance and it did not start.  A tap with a tweezer did not help. It rotates a couple of time and stops. However, a large puff of air to start the balance, and the watch runs perfectly.   If I stop the balance it will not restart without a large puff of air.   

What can I do to troubleshoot this? 

See pics on timegrapher.  

20210228_171951.jpg

Edited by thecodedawg
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How long would say it runs when does? 

 Could be loose impulse jewel, that throws it out of beat.

Check the lock on pallet, excessively heavy lock or way out of adjustment pallets, pallets alignment.

Check the end shakes on all high speed arbours.

Good luck

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2 hours ago, thecodedawg said:

broken pivot on the pallet fork,

Did you get a new pallet fork or did you replace the arbor only?

Fortunately with your video it looks like I can download it and look at it slower and it looks really weird. Did you do anything with the balance wheel? When the balance wheel looks like it stops and ends just rotating the weird part is they hairspring is not moving the way it's supposed to its almost like the balance wheel of the hairspring are not exactly attached to each other? So your video just raises lots of questions and it be nice if it was longer.

2 hours ago, thecodedawg said:

large puff of air to start the balance, and the watch runs perfectly.

When the power is off is the balance wheel in beat? When the watch stops and acts weird if you take the power off is it still in beat?

20 minutes ago, Nucejoe said:

How long would say it runs when does? 

In the video it's running it comes to a sudden stop yet you said is running fine when you puppet with the error so how long does it run will it just stay running continuously or is the video misleading?

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Echoing John, did you replace the fork or just the fork arbor? How does it run in other positions, dial up, and especially vertical with the balance positioned over the escapement? Have you checked that you have fork horn and guard pin clearance?

 

It is quite odd that you would have such a clean line and it be so hard to start (it should be self starting).

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Echoing John, did you replace the fork or just the fork arbor? How does it run in other positions, dial up, and especially vertical with the balance positioned over the escapement? Have you checked that you have fork horn and guard pin clearance?

I have a Factory new old stock Pallet fork complete.  So the entire fork is new.  When it is running, it remains running in all positions and only varies +- 4 seconds.  It runs at 0s in DU and DD, and +-4 seconds from 0s in PU PD PR PL.  Once it is running, it stays running. 

The pallet fork had some excess shellac on the tip of one of the stones, but I cleaned that off with a bit of alcohol and and a small foam paint brush (being careful not to get any alcohol on the shellac holding the stones in place) That did not change anything.  

Its a double roller so it is hard to see the guard pin.  I will check for clearance. 

Both the upper and lower escape wheel jewels are perfectly round, and the pivots on the escape wheel are in good shape. No pock marks and not bent.  The upper and lower pivot jewels for the pallet fork are also in great shape. Perfectly round. Neither have any pronounced side shake.  The pivots on the NOS fork are shiny and new.  (I have a Spencer A/O stereo microsocpe)

I am a bit worried that I may need to reposition the pallet stones and it is possible that they are over locking enough to keep it from staring, but not enough to stop it from running.  
 

I will try to get some pics of the lock and drop.  

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31 minutes ago, thecodedawg said:

I am a bit worried that I may need to reposition the pallet stones and it is possible that they are over locking enough to keep it from staring, but not enough to stop it from running.  

Any time you change a pallet fork you can have issues but. This is really equivalent at least a lot of the components to the Hamilton 992B their very solid watches. The pallet forks were mass-produced they should be right. Except yours had shellac where it wasn't supposed to be? If the locking is too deep it usually shows up as a amplitude issue and you don't appear to have that?

15 hours ago, thecodedawg said:

After winding, I installed the balance and it did not start.  A tap with a tweezer did not help. It rotates a couple of time and stops. However, a large puff of air to start the balance, and the watch runs perfectly.   If I stop the balance it will not restart without a large puff of air.   

Your paragraph above kinda disagrees with the timing machine results? Timing machine looks quite perfect super amplitude outstanding beat great time Maybe we should just ignore the timing machine?

With no power is the balance wheel in beat? If you give the balance wheel puff of air does it oscillate back-and-forth and take a long time to come to a stop? With the balance wheel out check the end shake of the pallet fork. With a little bit a power and you should've noticed this when you are lubricating your escapement. Push the pallet fork back-and-forth Does it snap nicely or is sluggish? Also possible when the pivot broke that it damaged the jewel or You're having it end shake issue except a lot of the stuff we shall put the timing machine as reduced amplitude.

Then for timing especially when you're having an issue always nice to have more than just one position. At a minimum dial-up and dial down and at least one crown/pendant position. Personally I like six position timekeeping on the machine just to look for things. But dial up dial down pocket watch crown up a wristwatch crown down three positions minimum helps fruit seeing problems.

 

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  I would let the movement run for several minutes in each position, specially( oscilator on top of the fork)  if the oscilation did grind to a hault , but kept on running in other positions, we can suspect guard pin to be rubbing on the roller table.

What ever might be slightly rubbing may take a while to stop the oscilator.

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Nucejoe said:

  I would let the movement run for several minutes in each position, specially( oscilator on top of the fork)  if the oscilation did grind to a hault , but kept on running in other positions, we can suspect guard pin to be rubbing on the roller table.

What ever might be slightly rubbing may take a while to stop the oscilator.

 

 

 

Yeah, while working, I had it on my desk in the movement holder at the home office. Once every hour to hour and a half, I changed the position. I am on pendant down as the last position and it has run for about 8 hours with the chronograph complication engaged.

 

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3 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

With no power is the balance wheel in beat?

I'm not sure how to answer this. This seems like division by 0.  If there is no power, then the balance wheel is not moving and there is no beat.  So, if I assume that you mean, "is the impluse jewel centered in the pallet fork?" Yeah it seems very close to centered.  The fork itself is in a intermedate non locked posistion on either of the stones when the balance is at rest.  When power is applied, the "does it snap back and forth" test is a positve.  Yes it snaps which is why I am confused as to why it wont start on its own.  

I checked the beat and amplitude in all 6 positions for at least one trace across the screen.  It stabilized quckly after the motion and DU, DD it ran 0s/day. in PR,PL,PU,PD, it varied no more than +-4 seconds/day and towards the end of the trace before I moved to the next position, it tended to converge toward 0s/day.  

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Given that it is visually “in beat”, I would get it into its fault state (potentially repeatedly) and give it a slight wind and see if there is anything obvious going on which stops it from automatically starting. 
 

It could be excessive depth of lock which is difficult to overcome from static. I’m guessing these watches have adjustable banking pins (or equivalent). 

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With the fork out, put the balance in and check its freedom. It should be totally free, to the point that just moving the movement holder gently will make it move. When that is OK, check with the pallet fork bridge and screws. Then put the fork back in. If you then have your original issue there is a problem with the interaction of the fork and balance.

 

In the past I was assembling a small series of tourbillon watches for a client. I suddenly was having big issues with the running; at full wind 300+ degrees of amplitude, they ran great. Drop the power and go below 270 and they were terrible, and were almost like your case needing a good shove to get going. Turned out to be a micro burr at the corner of the fork slot and fork horn. Really tiny, barely visible at 30x magnification. Removed that and all was well.

 

Another time I was working on an older piece, very nice LeCoultre. It had run pretty darn well prior to service; after service I had barely 180 degrees of amplitude. Now, I've been doing this for quite some time... I spent almost a day to discover that a tiny fiber was stuck under the barrel bridge and was absolutely invisible except at a certain angle with a certain light. That was the culprit.

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I am with john on this, hard to accept what TG shows, symptoms indicate out of beat or heavy lock which makes 310 degree amplitude unreasonably excellent.

Visual check of the lock isn't hard and be nice if you are set up to show us a close up of it. 

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23 hours ago, rodabod said:

Given that it is visually “in beat”, I would get it into its fault state (potentially repeatedly) and give it a slight wind and see if there is anything obvious going on which stops it from automatically starting. 
 

It could be excessive depth of lock which is difficult to overcome from static. I’m guessing these watches have adjustable banking pins (or equivalent). 

It actually does not have adjustable banking. I was surprised.  The pins, however are not bent.  

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The only picture we have of your watch on the timing machine is at the very beginning of the discussion. It would be nice to see images on the timing machine about one half hour after the watch is wound up and 24 hours later. A lot of times in fact we all do we wind the watch up nice and tight put on the timing machine and its wound up nice and tight the results are not typical of what the Watch is going to do over the next 24 hours. This is why most manufacturers recommend waiting a little bit 15 minutes to an hour before putting on the timing machine. This will give you more realistic numbers. Then 24 hours to see how things are looking for they still running fine.

Did you change the mainspring in this watch?

On 3/1/2021 at 4:08 PM, thecodedawg said:

I'm not sure how to answer this. This seems like division by 0.  If there is no power, then the balance wheel is not moving and there is no beat.  So, if I assume that you mean, "is the impluse jewel centered in the pallet fork?" Yeah it seems very close to centered. 

I suppose technically it might've been better if I said what is the visual beat error look like? Then yes you did answer my question in the paragraph above because I was curious as to visually how did it look versus what the timing machine says. Sometimes the timing machines are not entirely truthful.

 

 

 

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In addition to John's suggestion above, it would be interesting to see how it does with just 1/2 turn of wind.

 

Without getting into a course in escapement checking and adjusting, there is an excellent article with some very good basic checks by Joseph Rugole from the Horological Times magazine. Normally you have to be a member to access the old issues but for now they seem to be available online (all of his articles were offered as a book by AWCI as well).

His article starts on page 44

https://www.awci.com/wp-content/uploads/ht/1979/1979-09-web.pdf

 

 

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  • 2 years later...
On 3/3/2021 at 12:29 PM, nickelsilver said:

In addition to John's suggestion above, it would be interesting to see how it does with just 1/2 turn of wind.

 

Without getting into a course in escapement checking and adjusting, there is an excellent article with some very good basic checks by Joseph Rugole from the Horological Times magazine. Normally you have to be a member to access the old issues but for now they seem to be available online (all of his articles were offered as a book by AWCI as well).

His article starts on page 44

https://www.awci.com/wp-content/uploads/ht/1979/1979-09-web.pdf

 

 

Dear Nickelsilver,

May I ask what the title of the book is?

Best regards

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8 hours ago, ara said:

Dear Nickelsilver,

May I ask what the title of the book is?

Best regards

The book is the same title as the series of articles, Watch Adjustments by Joseph Rugole. It's out of print, but if you go to the link and plug in different months you can get the whole series of articles. It's about 88 pages total.

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