Oiling with Bergeon ergonomic oiler

[ifibrin]

I recently obtained the Bergeon ergonomic oiler (super fine, red), and it really makes oiling of the train wheels much easier. It also made me realise just how excessive oiling with even the super fine red normal Bergeon oiler is; just look at the size of the oil droplet on the ergonomic oiler versus the normal oiler.

With the red ergonomic oiler, two drops/applications of 9010 for the escape jewel and fourth wheel is sufficient, as seen by the nice oil ring on the underside of the jewel when you take apart the movement.

 

However, I’m wondering if two drops of 9010 is still too much for each jewel of the escape wheel and fourth wheel? Should it only be one drop/application only? This is for small to medium size wristwatch movements such as the 2824-2.

 

For the third wheel jewel, lubricating with HP1300 is less of a question, since the oil droplet of HP1300 is larger and one drop/application is definitely enough. I use two drops/applications for the (off-) Center wheel since it’s much larger pivots.
 

[Graziano]

Hi there ifibrin, Super Fine = Black/Red = 0.18mm, so long as you apply under Magnification and have a gander at what you have on the oiler before applying, sometimes you may need two drops. I use 10x with simple oiler red colour (I keep poking things and breaking my oilers) and just one drop on escape wheel. And one or two dependinding on what's on the oiler on fourth wheel.I apply oil in a vertical motion on the post. As you say depends on size of movement. But yes magnification and watch oil run into pivot and you can see that you have enough. Just a weeny amount in the jewel or post. Hope this helps. 

Graziano 

Edited November 10, 2021 by Graziano

[JohnR725]

7 hours ago, ifibrin said:

However, I’m wondering if two drops of 9010 is still too much for each jewel of the escape wheel and fourth wheel? Should it only be one drop/application only? This is for small to medium size wristwatch movements such as the 2824-2.

The problem with how much oil or even the type of oil is whose instructions you want to follow? The older rules which are super minimalistic or the newer rules which?

For instance some of this is been covered before. Go to the link below the bottom of the page nice image. So when you look at the image of what's acceptable today you'll see it totally conflicts with the rules of yesterday.

https://www.watchrepairtalk.com/topic/20630-pallet-fork-lubrication-pallets-and-pivots/page/8/

 

 

 

[mikepilk]

10 hours ago, ifibrin said:

With the red ergonomic oiler, two drops/applications of 9010 for the escape jewel and fourth wheel is sufficient, as seen by the nice oil ring on the underside of the jewel when you take apart the movement.
 

The drop size on the oiler depends on the angle/depth/speed you put the oiler in and out of the oil. 

I use a Bergeon Ergonomic red oiler and find it difficult to get consistent drop sizes. When oiling balance cap jewels I often have to dip 2 or 3 times to get sufficient oil on the jewel.

[Plato]

5 hours ago, mikepilk said:

The drop size on the oiler depends on the angle/depth/speed you put the oiler in and out of the oil. 

I use a Bergeon Ergonomic red oiler and find it difficult to get consistent drop sizes. When oiling balance cap jewels I often have to dip 2 or 3 times to get sufficient oil on the jewel.

I've got the red one for the escapement/pallets, the drop sizes are always the same because the tip will only hold a certain amount of oil due to its shape cut away from the rest of the oiler... if anything it holds too much oil? 

[ifibrin]

14 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

The problem with how much oil or even the type of oil is whose instructions you want to follow? The older rules which are super minimalistic or the newer rules 

I didn’t realise that the amount of oil recommended for jewels has actually changed over the years. Seems to make sense since my material house actually told me the older watchmakers prefer to use the non ergonomic Bergeon super fine oiler, which deposits a much larger amount of oil compared with the super fine ergonomic oiler.

[ifibrin]

11 hours ago, mikepilk said:

The drop size on the oiler depends on the angle/depth/speed you put the oiler in and out of the oil. 

I use a Bergeon Ergonomic red oiler and find it difficult to get consistent drop sizes. When oiling balance cap jewels I often have to dip 2 or 3 times to get sufficient oil on the jewel.

I use the Blue ergonomic oiler for cap jewels, and even then I require two applications to get enough oil for the end jewels. The red ergonomic oiler is too fine  for cap jewels.

I find that to get consistent amounts of oil on the ergonomic oiler, the oil must not spread past the flat of the spoon at the tip of the oiler. In order to achieve this, there is barely any oil in your oil cup, and is only a thin film of oil in the cup. Then, you poke the ergonomic oiler vertically into the thin layer of oil.

[JohnR725]

1 hour ago, ifibrin said:

I didn’t realise that the amount of oil recommended for jewels has actually changed over the years

Attend the Bay problems with horological literature. It can span a considerable length of time with some aspects not changing at all over that time. It's why you can pick up a book on watch repair 400 years ago and a lot of it still relevant. Then procedural things unfortunately aren't always covered in normal technical documentation and a lot of times watchmakers don't even know this other stuff exists. Sometimes you had a clue because they would refer you to another document that you don't have conveniently. So things like lubrication surface treatment sometimes required which would change the choice of lubrication's and other procedural stuff may not actually be known did anybody unless there were lucky enough to find a technical documentation.

Even though it's been covered somewhere else. The oldest I was looking at was a 1945 Army training manual.The improper still applies you're supposed to put the oil next to the pivots not on top of the play or on top of the pivots. Then things get interesting when you get to the proper quantity. The other documents or from Omega Rolex where the proper quantity of the past is now the minimalistic basically. The maximum from 45 is borderline still of being the maximum. It appears to be have to see the top of the pivots and you should fill up the entire oil sank that's too much. But what is now considered acceptable would've definitely be considered too much in the old days.

Then there's a problem of lubrication choices in the factories no one ever explains why they change their mind on those. There may be a trend towards heavier lubricants but that's more of a guess on my part. Some of what you're seeing is the watch companies are discovering that the early recommendations a super minimalistic doesn't last in between servicing. Where before they would blame the watchmaker for just doing a poor job now that there's less watchmakers and they're servicing their watches their finding out that the lubrication didn't hold up over time is by guess.

 

 

[canthus]

Quote - 'There may be a trend towards heavier lubricants but that's more of a guess on my part.'  JohnR725

Modern oils tend to be synthetic which have far less variation in viscosity relating to temperature changes.  Therefore it may be that a thicker (heavier) oil is specified as it will be defined by the required viscosity of the application at normal operating temps.  The viscosity will increase as temp decreases and vice versa for temp increases.  Mineral oils have a viscosity index (VI) around 85 whereas synthetic oil are 150 and above.  The VI measures the rate of change of viscosity with temp, the higher the number the less the change (ie better).

[JohnR725]

For anyone curious about viscosities and properties of moebius Lubrication I'm attaching a PDF.

MoebiusProductCatalogEN.pdf