Pivot Burnishing

[Stevelp]

Hello everyone, I hope this message finds you all healthy.  So I've decided to broaden my horizons a bit and would like to start attempting some repivoting.  As I've been doing research on the needed equipment and techniques I have found little on repivoting pallet forks arbors.  I have an old DOXA pocket watch circ. 1905 on my shelf with a broken pivot that I cannot find a fork for and would like to attempt to repivot it someday.  When it comes to burnishing a new pivot in a jacot tool, can the tool accommodate a pivot for a fork that is that short?   I know they can do balance staffs without a problem, but I have never seen this tool in person so I'm not sure.  Also, how would the tool rotate the fork itself for the burnishing process?  

[JohnR725]

On 4/19/2021 at 11:23 AM, Stevelp said:

repivoting.

what if there was a way other than re-pivoting to fix the problem?

On 4/19/2021 at 11:23 AM, Stevelp said:

broken pivot that I cannot find a fork

pallet forks are interesting because a lot of times you can get a replacement arbor.

then another option because the arbor is kind of like a staff in a way would be just to make a new arbor.

[Stevelp]

Hi JohnR725, thanks for you reply!  This pallet fork does have a screw in arbor so I have talked to a number of supply houses in Canada and the US and no one seems to stock anything.  But I haven't been able to properly ID the caliber of the movement so I don't have as much info as I could for my search.  I did purchase a parts watch with an identical movement but apparently the bottom plate is different and the fork arbor length is different.  I had considered making a new arbor but since it is a screw in I don't have the proper die to cut the threads.  This is the watch that I am dealing with.  

doxa1.jfif doxa2.jfif doxa3.jfif

[JohnR725]

always helpful when starting one of these discussions to give us pictures. I can picture the pallet fork because screwed in pallet fork presents challenges. But you should build unscrew it and put it in a lathe depending upon which end you broke. It presents both good and bad options. But it does make it a lot easier to work with it if there is no pallet fork.

Pictures are always outstanding but? If you want people a look at your pictures they can only be JPEG if they're the extension you have a notice their attachments so only somebody has whatever program needed to look at those, those. So you need to convert those the JPEG so we can see what were talking about.

As you discovered one of the problems with and I'm going to assume that this is a vintage watch is a vintage watches even if they seem to be mass-produced can still be hand fit. Often times people think especially with American pocket watches made 100+ years ago that they can look in the catalog say they need this part find another watch or something and it just a pop in and probably walked.

Once we get some pictures that should make it helpful to see what a solution might be.

On 4/19/2021 at 11:23 AM, Stevelp said:

jacot tool,

then I was kinda hoping that those people familiar with the jacot tool would come and join us in this conversation because I'm reasonably sure you can burnish balance staffs without the balance wheel attached. Which means you can easily handle a pallet fork arbor and getting rid of the pallet fork would really help should be no problem. Drilling a hole to put the pivot in that probably requires a lathe and if you had a lathe you really wouldn't need the jacot tool perhaps.

so picture that we can look at would be nice and then we'll see what we can do from there

[Stevelp]

Ooops my apologies!  I’m not sure what happened there.  I’ve posted many pictures before and they’ve never posted as JFIF files.  I’ll see if I can’t get those converted and get a picture of the arbor as well.