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Waltham military-era watch. Not a hack watch.

LittleWatchShop
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LittleWatchShop Distinguished Member

LittleWatchShop

Posted
Posted

Got this on Ebay...more amusement for me and practice (as if I don't have a ton of watches here already in the queue).  It is fun to work on something I am familiar with.  This is no doubt the simplest watch I have worked on since there is no sweep second hand to deal with.

It was pretty froze up.  I guess oil dried up in the barrel.  I had to manually let the power off with a screwdriver as the mainspring could not overcome the friction.

Anyway...disassemble and cleaned the proper way.

Always my biggest challenge for these non-shockproofed watches is the reassembly of the balance wheel after removing it from the cock in order to remove the cap jewel.  Extremely tedious and very time consuming.  Hey...I am an amateur...have not learned the tricks to making this easy...give me time.

Here it is...running.  I have not timed it yet.  You can see that it has a new crystal.  Another one from a box of crystals I bought off of Ebay.  Steadily improving my ROI.  But, frankly, just being able to grab something from stock is very satisfying!!

Oh...I was surprised to find that this was a snap-together case vs. screw back.

I removed the lume from the hands carefully in a baggie in case it was radium.  Baggie is sealed and in the trash.  Hands are a little rusty.  Need to research cleaning them up.

2021-05-19 18_52_13-Photos.png

2021-05-19 18_51_44-Photos.png

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  • 2 weeks later...
chadman Member

chadman

Posted
Posted

Sweet LWS!  I really like the style or font of the numbers.  I wouldn't have given the case a second look regarding authenticity but once you pointed it out...it does seem a little at odds with the style of the dial and hands.  But so what if you like it? 

Are you going to re-lume the hands?  I haven't ever done it but someday....BTW, I agree on the non-shock cap jewel balance cleaning.

JohnR725 Distinguished Member

JohnR725

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, LittleWatchShop said:

A friend loaned me a geiger counter...it is radium!!

obviously a defective Geiger counter. Didn't we decide they discontinued radium like a century ago? Yes it is one of the sad problems of if you're going to get upset about these things the radium hands are still amongst us. At least with the Geiger counter you can check your bench and everywhere you worked with it just to make sure you didn't leave anything lingering behind.

3 hours ago, LittleWatchShop said:

Dunno...kinda want to re blue the hands, but reading this forum...seems it is not for the faint of heart.

the bluing pard isn't exactly the problem somewhere in the group were having a discussion. The part I would be concerned about is those are not pocket watch hands and attempting to polish them in any mechanical fashion which you would have to do to remove them is going to be problematic. I'm not sure it probably turn out to be hideous mess but you can probably use a liquid rust remover to clean up the hands which will unfortunately take the bluing off. Then you may build a use some sort of a chemical bluing at least turn the hands blackish in color as opposed to broken hands. But that would probably just be me if I tried to polish them. Then if you have darkened hands that are rusty you can read Lu or just remove what you have.

 

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