I made a pretty flower

[AshF]

Does this count as an achievement?

[HectorLooi]

29 minutes ago, AshF said:

Does this count as an achievement?

Definitely! 

[Nucejoe]

Untangle and place the spring on a flat surface, see if you have damaged it any, who knows.

 

[watchweasol]

Hi I should enter it for the Turner prize.  If Tracey Emin's unmade bed could win you stand a chance.

[JohnR725]

Yes that counts as an interesting achievement.

But unfortunately mainsprings functional mainsprings do not like those kind of achievements. Mainsprings tend to be very intolerant of how their handled. So I gets untangled it has to be absolutely smooth otherwise you'll have slight running issues. Even if you do everything a writer almost right with the mainspring winder like if you try to cram it into a Winder too small you can end up with the mainspring having almost like facet sonnets little bumps. It's amazing how easy it is to damage a mainspring. Where casually it looks okay but it's not. Which unfortunately makes for a bad achievement that visually looks interesting.

[AshF]

A rookie mistake with my winder but it's all a learning experience.  After untangling it looks like this.

I had a go at smoothing it out but I'm not happy with the results.  A shame since it was in good condition out of the barrel.

[JohnR725]

What you should do for a learning experience is put in it anyway and see what happens. Basically once a mainspring gets the little bends like that there's nothing you can do. But shoving it in and seeing the effect should be interesting. It should cause uneven power which will cause some timing fluctuations which may or may not show up on a timing machine.

[Paulbmth]

5 hours ago, AshF said:

Does this count as an achievement?

pretty but is it art ? lol

[VWatchie]

3 hours ago, AshF said:

After untangling it looks like this.

Just put it back in there! Who's gonna know!? 

Joking aside, at least that's better than what I have found in some "newly serviced" Russian watches I've bought on eBay.

Anyway, thanks for sharing. Makes me feel a lot less lonely!

[JohnR725]

1 hour ago, Paulbmth said:

pretty but is it art ? lol

Art is in the eye of the beholder so some can claim this is art others can be happy it wasn't us. Not to say that I haven't seen it usually not that bad. Pocket watches usually don't white look like that but they can form some interesting patterns that are all not desirable.

15 minutes ago, VWatchie said:

Just put it back in there! Who's gonna know!? 

Joking aside, at least that's better than what I have found in some "newly serviced" Russian watches I've bought on eBay.

Sometimes when you see what's inside a barrel your right who was going to know. Then I still think putting it back in would be an interesting experiment as long as it's not curved too far out of flat it should function it will just have uneven power which will make for uneven timekeeping but the watchful average that out perhaps.