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The bad, the worse, and the ugly...but a contented conclusion.

chadman
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chadman Member

chadman

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Hi there,

Being brand spanking new at my hobby, I began by supporting the Swiss economy by buying some of their tools and utilized other sellers as well whenever possible.  I cleaned out a vacant room and established a work area.  I soon realized the value of a good work light and was thankful I bought the tools I did.  My first watch repair efforts are still in progress, having bought by lot a group of junk, non-working movements for cheap.  Those movements were the only cheap things I bought.  These tools are expensive after awhile.

The only watches I've worked on are old pocket watches.  My first was a Waltham which I got working, at least to where it would tick for about 30 seconds.  I'll go back to it another time to see if I can get anything more out of it.  The second one was an 1889 Illinois which had a broken pallet stone and a bent safety pin.  Failure on that one.  The most recent was a 1904 Elgin with a 289 movement, not running.

I dis-assembled it, the Elgin, and did not take pics of that process, thinking I could manage on my own.  More confidence than smarts it turned out.  After cleaning by hand with alcohol I put the parts in an ultrasonic with L&R cleaning solution, new.  I was dismayed to see a jelly-like substance on the parts and floating around.  Verdigris?  I then cleaned in the matching cleaning solution followed by dipping in alcohol.  The alcohol removed the material, whatever that was.

While cleaning I inspected all the parts and found that a couple of train pivots were damaged and someone dropped a glob of something, maybe shellac, on the top of the entry pallet.  But I soldiered on.  Re-assembly was difficult as I should have taken pics.  Lesson learned.  I also thought I was clever by installing the center wheel first as it's secured by the barrel bridge.  Well on this watch it's better to put the wheels in from the escape wheel to the center wheel and then install  the barrel and its bridge.  This took more time than it should have.  I hadn't messed with the mainspring because I just wanted the watch to work, then if it did I'd go back to it.  But, no power was coming from the spring and after spending, again, more time than necessary I realized someone had installed the arbor upside down.  Lesson learned there too.  I had a heck of a time trying to figure out how the "floating arm" could stay engaged with the ratchet wheel.  This floating arm is a bar which has the crown wheel, per se, in the middle with an intermediate wheel on either side, and these wheels engage with the ratchet or minute wheel, respectively.  I had no crown or stem so I had to use a bench tool with a pin vise to try to keep the thing engaged which was tricky for me.

I finally got the thing together.  Oh, and the mainspring was all bent up at the terminal where it meets the arbor.  Didn't break fortunately.  Gave it a little wind, dropped in the balance, and yes, it works!  Not well, really badly actually, but it runs for a few hours.  I think the other end of the mainspring may not be seated in the barrel properly or is broken as I think that's why I don't get the power I should.  I'm not going to spend any money to find out, I'm just happy it works.  Well, I'm content, hence the use in the title. 

I'm not having parts fly away anymore, or at least they fall on my desk now rather than ping around the room until being sucked into a black hole. 

I wanted to share my trials and modest success with you.  On to the next junk movement for me.  Thanks for reading.  BTW, I call them junk movements because that's how they were described to me when I bought them off ebay.  To me they are really beautiful works of art and science.  The engineering and craftsmanship which went into these old watches is spectacular and it does in fact please me to get one ticking when it wasn't before, for who knows how long.

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chadman Member

chadman

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On 5/24/2021 at 1:01 PM, watchweasol said:

Welcome to the forum you have been busy.  Seeing as you are no stranger to the anatomy of the watch I have attched a couple of documents you may find useful as you venture deeper       cheers. 

TZIllustratedGlossary.pdf 4.2 MB · 2 downloads Witschi Training Course.pdf 4.65 MB · 2 downloads

"...I have attached (sic) a couple of documents you may find useful..."

May find useful!  Yes, for the duration of my hobby.  This training course is like a gift which keeps giving, so many thanks watchweasol!  I will spend much time learning and scratching my head on this material. 

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