Low amplitude. Again!

[VWatchie]

On 10/31/2021 at 6:27 PM, Nucejoe said:

In case you don't have spare pallet stones, fine sand paper spread on top of glass works to file this pallet stones to size. 

I have a 3×3 meter white nylon sheet which I spread on floor to work on. 

 

@Nucejoe

Joe, if you have the time, could you please explain this in more detail? I will have some time for this project tomorrow and I believe I might have to reduce the length of the pallet stones to get it right. Henry B. Fried explains how to shorten the length of pallet stones in his book "The Watch Repairer's Manual", but the process includes a lathe and a diamond charged lap, none of which I have. 

I guess your 3x3 meter white nylon sheet makes it easier to find the pallet if you drop it on the floor, but is not really part of the shortening process, right? How do you hold the pallet? Fried suggests drilling a hole in a piece of peg wood and shellac:ing the pallet into it. I fail to see how this can be done without making a total mess, and holding the pallet in a pin vice  (my own bad idea!?) will probably crack it as it is very brittle. I have "wet sandpaper", but would that really work?

Anyway, if you can provide a bit more detail I'd really appreciate it!

Edited November 7, 2021 by VWatchie

[VWatchie]

On 10/31/2021 at 3:09 PM, nickelsilver said:

often it's a mix of closing the bankings a moving the stones.

Everything is of course possible, but if the banking is fixed, wouldn't it be a very complex operation? I have no idea how that would or could be done, so I'm asking out of curiosity.

[Nucejoe]

56 minutes ago, VWatchie said:

Joe, if you have the time, could you please explain this in more detail? I will have some time for this project tomorrow and I believe I might have to reduce the length of the pallet stones to get it right. Henry B. Fried explains how to shorten the length of pallet stones in his book "The Watch Repairer's Manual", but the process includes a lathe and a diamond charged lap, none of which I have. 

I guess your 3x3 meter white nylon sheet makes it easier to find the pallet if you drop it on the floor, but is not really part of the shortening process, right? How do you hold the pallet? Fried suggests drilling a hole in a piece of peg wood and shellac:ing the pallet into it. I fail to see how this can be done without making a total mess, and holding the pallet in a pin vice  (my own bad idea!?) will probably crack it as it is very brittle. I have "wet sandpaper", but would that really work?

Anyway, if you can provide a bit more detail I'd really appreciate it!

Hi VWatchie,

If you have a damaged fork in the bin, it will come real handy.  

Disolve the shellac in acetone to remove the pallet stone.

Insert the pallet stone head first into the slot of the damaged fork, tail will be sticking out.  glue the stone to the damaged fork( epoxy five), let cure. Best not to get any glue on the sloped face of the pallet stone.

You now have the damaged fork to grab with your tweezers or even a long nose pliers, nevertheless try to  grab the stone not the fork. Gentle strokes on sand paper best be not prependicular to the plain of the frok. Thats how I have done this with success.

In case you haven't saved them damaged forks, I guess you ought to do with the next best thing at hand.

Good luck.

[Nucejoe]

In case the stone flies, a magnet helps retrive the fork.

[Nucejoe]

5 minutes ago, Nucejoe said:

In case the stone flies, a magnet helps retrive the fork.

Hopefully with stone attached.

 

[JohnR725]

On 10/31/2021 at 5:33 AM, VWatchie said:

Not sure the pallets can be moved in enough, but it looks like there is a bit of play (I don't have the equipment to shorten the pallets).

Personally to me it looks like there's enough room that you can push both pallet stones back without grinding of them Or doing any other bizarre heroic efforts. It's easy enough just to warm the fork up and push the stones back that's what I would try first. 

 

On 10/31/2021 at 7:09 AM, nickelsilver said:

Total lock is definitely too heavy. It could be reduced by 25% easy, and that would fix your amplitude. You could probably just move the stones in, but often it's a mix of closing the bankings a moving the stones.

As you don't have banking pins on this watch look very carefully to see if anybody has modified the machining of the plate. Often times enthusiastic watchmakers insist on modifying things that really don't need to be modified for reasons totally unknown even though they perceive they were doing it for some good reason at the time.

[VWatchie]

  So, I finally got the time to return to my low amplitude Unitas 6380.

On 10/31/2021 at 3:09 PM, nickelsilver said:

Total lock is definitely too heavy. It could be reduced by 25% easy

 

On 11/8/2021 at 2:50 AM, JohnR725 said:

Personally to me it looks like there's enough room that you can push both pallet stones back without grinding of them Or doing any other bizarre heroic efforts.

You were right about that John. There was plenty of room to push both pallet stones back. I didn't just warm them but re-shellac:ed them. The reason for doing that was twofold. Firstly, I wanted to try my newly bought shellac flakes (from CousinsUK).  Secondly, it was easier, or at least appeared to be easier, to adjust the lock depth before applying the shellac. The shellac flakes is the best shellac I've tried so far. It's very hard, but not as brittle as the shellac from my clear stick of shellac. 

To the question of how far I should push the pallet stones back, I tried to follow Henry B. Fried's advice in the book "The Watch Repairer's Manual" where he writes: "In a well-adjusted escapement, the lock should approximate 1/3 the thickness of the pallet jewel." This is a 15 teeth escape wheel 21600 BPH calibre and Fried's example was a 18000 BPH calibre. I believe I read somewhere that the lock depth should be shallower for a high-beat, 20 teeth escape wheel 28800 BPH movement, so I was somewhat ambivalent, but I believe/hope I made the correct decision?

On 10/30/2021 at 12:48 AM, mikepilk said:

If I get low amplitude, my first step is re-clean and oil the balance jewels. Although they may look spotless, many times re-cleaning + oiling has fixed the problem.

I thought about that a lot, and decided, as I was already at it, to re-clean and oil the cap jewels. I also re-cleaned the entire balance and polished the staff pivots with a bit of Dialux green rouge applied to an oil-drenched piece of peg wood. I should really have done this cleaning before adjusting the lock depth of the pallets in order to be able to tell what had the most effect, but hopefully there'll be plenty of new opportunities to test this in the future. Anyway, thanks for reminding me of how very critical this is. With parts being so very small it's easy to underestimate how very critical cleanliness is.

Cleaning the cap jewels I made me a new peg wood tool which I was pretty happy about and that I demonstrate in the following video:

Anyway, here's the end result of these two activities (cleaning the cap jewels/staff pivots and adjusting the pallets):

The pendant up position isn't all that impressive, but I've decided not to dig any deeper at this time but instead reassemble the rest of the watch and wear it for a while to see how it fares. After a bit of regulating I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be a pretty decent timekeeper, or at least that's what I'm hoping. Anyway, always being curious, any ideas of why the pendant up position loses about 20 degrees or so?

[mikepilk]

Well done, you got there in the end. That's another thing to check when I'm missing amplitude - too much lock.

I like the pegwood tool. I do that with tweezers and it often pings off along the bench.

[VWatchie]

1 hour ago, mikepilk said:

Well done, you got there in the end. That's another thing to check when I'm missing amplitude - too much lock.

I like the pegwood tool. I do that with tweezers and it often pings off along the bench.

Thanks mike!

The first time I saw this was in the "101 Watchmaking" course at learnwatchmaking.com. However, Christian Lass (the host of the site) uses a screwdriver shaped peg wood blade to drag the jewel on the paper. I tried that, but felt there would be a real risk of pinging the jewel so that's how I came up with the idea.

Edited November 26, 2021 by VWatchie

[Endeavor]

I love this high-tech jewel cleaning tool. Up till now I used to drag the cap jewels over tissue paper holding it between the tweezers tips for the side wards motion and holding it down with the tip of a peg wood. It works but this sophisticated tool seems to do the job a whole lot better and saver!

BTW; to further handle the cap jewel safely, I taper a small piece (much smaller than the one shown on an old picture of mine below) of Rodico and pick the jewel up on the domed side. You can now safely handle the jewel; pick it up, inspect it under the light, oil it and place it in the Chaton. After placing the jewel in the Chaton, you hold the jewel down with the tip of your tweezers and remove the Rodico.

Combine this with your cleaning tool it seems to me that the risk of pinging a cap jewel is a thing of the past .... well, lets hope so

Thanks for the cleaning tool tip !!

 

Edited August 8, 2022 by Endeavor

[Neverenoughwatches]

On 11/26/2021 at 6:33 PM, VWatchie said:

  So, I finally got the time to return to my low amplitude Unitas 6380.

 

You were right about that John. There was plenty of room to push both pallet stones back. I didn't just warm them but re-shellac:ed them. The reason for doing that was twofold. Firstly, I wanted to try my newly bought shellac flakes (from CousinsUK).  Secondly, it was easier, or at least appeared to be easier, to adjust the lock depth before applying the shellac. The shellac flakes is the best shellac I've tried so far. It's very hard, but not as brittle as the shellac from my clear stick of shellac. 

To the question of how far I should push the pallet stones back, I tried to follow Henry B. Fried's advice in the book "The Watch Repairer's Manual" where he writes: "In a well-adjusted escapement, the lock should approximate 1/3 the thickness of the pallet jewel." This is a 15 teeth escape wheel 21600 BPH calibre and Fried's example was a 18000 BPH calibre. I believe I read somewhere that the lock depth should be shallower for a high-beat, 20 teeth escape wheel 28800 BPH movement, so I was somewhat ambivalent, but I believe/hope I made the correct decision?

I thought about that a lot, and decided, as I was already at it, to re-clean and oil the cap jewels. I also re-cleaned the entire balance and polished the staff pivots with a bit of Dialux green rouge applied to an oil-drenched piece of peg wood. I should really have done this cleaning before adjusting the lock depth of the pallets in order to be able to tell what had the most effect, but hopefully there'll be plenty of new opportunities to test this in the future. Anyway, thanks for reminding me of how very critical this is. With parts being so very small it's easy to underestimate how very critical cleanliness is.

Cleaning the cap jewels I made me a new peg wood tool which I was pretty happy about and that I demonstrate in the following video:

Anyway, here's the end result of these two activities (cleaning the cap jewels/staff pivots and adjusting the pallets):

The pendant up position isn't all that impressive, but I've decided not to dig any deeper at this time but instead reassemble the rest of the watch and wear it for a while to see how it fares. After a bit of regulating I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be a pretty decent timekeeper, or at least that's what I'm hoping. Anyway, always being curious, any ideas of why the pendant up position loses about 20 degrees or so?

Coincidence i already have that tool. I made it to get a shock spring into its seating that had three cuts outs to go in at the same time. I now have another use for it, thanks watchie

[Boz]

On 10/30/2021 at 12:28 AM, Graziano said:

Please read the Watch cleaning section especially page 8 it's good practice to also peg fork of pallet taking care of guard pin and impulse jewel surface, I have done this combined with burnishing fork with ladies mainspring wired to pegwood,with great results. 20 to 40 degrees difference. This article on cleaning will recharge your approach to cleaning and amplitude. Obviously mechanical issues sorted first. 

Graziano 

626914013_December2012(1).pdf 17.75 MB · 24 downloads

Very interesting article. I'll revise my cleaning procedure to include pegging the pallet fork and roller jewel. Thanks!

[JohnR725]

3 hours ago, Endeavor said:

Rodico

Yes a rather interesting substance. The most interesting thing for me was when visiting bergeon In Switzerland they commented that they purchase it from Canada they purchased the entire supply of it. Conveniently they didn't tell us what it was originally made for?

Then just reminder of something I was reading a review In a BHI magazine on a witschi timing machine. The person was all excited with the ability to measure amplitude and discovered when cleaning balance pivots they had a loss of amplitude. So I'm always careful to keep it away from pivots. Actually find that there's a lot of shops it totally banned the substance altogether because it does leave a film behind or at least it can. On the other hand it's very useful for all kinds of things if you just mindful of it's not perfect.

[Neverenoughwatches]

7 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

Yes a rather interesting substance. The most interesting thing for me was when visiting bergeon In Switzerland they commented that they purchase it from Canada they purchased the entire supply of it. Conveniently they didn't tell us what it was originally made for?

Then just reminder of something I was reading a review In a BHI magazine on a witschi timing machine. The person was all excited with the ability to measure amplitude and discovered when cleaning balance pivots they had a loss of amplitude. So I'm always careful to keep it away from pivots. Actually find that there's a lot of shops it totally banned the substance altogether because it does leave a film behind or at least it can. On the other hand it's very useful for all kinds of things if you just mindful of it's not perfect.

Always use finger cots when using it. It absorbs oil from your bare fingers very quickly.

[Luc]

Regarding the cap jewel tool,I didn't tried the sugested design , but I recently bought a jewel picker, it is pretty good, at least safer than tweezers.

Jewel Picker

Edited September 9, 2022 by Luc

[dadistic]

I use the same jewel picker all the time.  It's really handy, and not too expensive. Got mine at Cousins.  I've found the red one (smallest) the most usefull.

[gbyleveldt]

4 hours ago, dadistic said:

I use the same jewel picker all the time.  It's really handy, and not too expensive. Got mine at Cousins.  I've found the red one (smallest) the most usefull.

I love the description on Cousin’s website. A “Jewel Picker Upper”