Reattach Vostok 2414 hairspring stud?

[TimpanogosSlim]

Been working on an excessively oiled Vostok for a few days. 

Every part of it was sticky with a greenish yellow oil. 

I had the balance separated from the cock to get the last of the coils unstuck. It had been through my regular wash cycles and spent some time in one-dip and there were still sticky coils. I have demagnetized it several times as well just to be sure. Yeah I know how to use my demagnetizer, it's the terrible cheap blue one. 

So i put it alone in a jar of vm&p naphtha in my new heated ultrasonic for 20 minutes. 

Which did most of the job, but also shook the stud right off it. 

A few more dips in the one-dip after carefully manually separating sticky coils seems to have freed everything up. 

How to reattach? 

[TimpanogosSlim]

OK i found this thread: 

 

Similar situation i guess. 

So in the morning i will see whether there is still any adhesive in the stud and clean it if there is, and see what the condition of my marine epoxy is. 

Gluing it while the balance is assembled in the movement makes sense. 

[AndyHull]

I suspect that it may have been originally glued with shellac, which is a lot more easy to remove than epoxy, and which would also be more likely to have been dissolved in solvent in an ultrasonic cleaner than epoxy.

Shellac is also fairly commonly used in watch making to fix things like fork jewels in place.

However as Mark said in the thread you linked to, epoxy might be the easiest solution to the problem.

Edited January 7, 2022 by AndyHull

[Nucejoe]

Thsi is a chance to start and practice shellac ing, you can get by with epoxy or nail polish....    no superglue. 

 Instal the stud, balance and cock back on the mainplate, put little bit of glue in stud slot, thread the spring through the slot, leave it all in face up position until the glue cures, if in face down position glue may drip down on balance wheel, even worse, dripping on  hairspring is other positions. 

Good luck 

[TimpanogosSlim]

8 hours ago, AndyHull said:

I suspect that it may have been originally glued with shellac, which is a lot more easy to remove than epoxy, and which would also be more likely to have been dissolved in solvent in an ultrasonic cleaner than epoxy.

Shellac is also fairly commonly used in watch making to fix things like fork jewels in place.

However as Mark said in the thread you linked to, epoxy might be the easiest solution to the problem.

 

Well, this part (and other parts of the watch) were exposed to these solvents: D-Limonene, odorless mineral spirit (stoddard solvent), naphtha, and trichloroethylene. 

I don't think any of those attack shellac well. 

I don't think i dipped it in acetone. I may have dipped it in isopropyl alcohol. In either case it didn't spend extended time in those solvents. But the stud fell off in naphtha, in the heated ultrasonic. 

On the other hand, considering that this entire movement was sticky with congealed oil and that the barrel was installed up-side-down, click was wedged under the ratchet wheel, and the yoke was installed up-side-down, all bets are off as to the healthy condition of whatever was originally holding the hairspring in the stud. 

I have liquid shellac here but not solid. I also have some nail polish somewhere. Both of those seem a little thin for the job, and the nail polish has a short setting time. 

I have some marine epoxy that is non-quick-setting. It's a couple years old so i figure i should mix up a little bit and make sure it still cures properly. 

[jdm]

1 hour ago, TimpanogosSlim said:

I don't think any of those attack shellac well.
But the stud fell off in naphtha, in the heated ultrasonic. 

Etachron (and their likes) studs are not attached with shellac, instead a special cement is applied at controlled temperature. I do not recommend washing mov.t parts in heated US, as it does nothing which a regular soaking in the same solutions doesn't.

[TimpanogosSlim]

2 hours ago, jdm said:

 I do not recommend washing mov.t parts in heated US, as it does nothing which a regular soaking in the same solutions doesn't.

That cannot possibly be the case.

I'm going to assume that you aren't ignoring the cavitation effect of ultrasonic cleaning. The abrupt changes in pressure along surfaces absolutely draws off contaminants and debris. That you are merely referring to the heat. 

If your ultrasonic doesn't cavitate it doesn't work. The standard test is to drape some light-duty aluminum foil over a stick or something so that it dangles in the water but does not touch the bottom of the pan. If the ultrasonic action doesn't perforate the foil, it's broken. 

The application of heat, just as when washing dishes with soap and water, both softens greases and other contaminants and increases the energy that the cleaning solution has available to react with contaminants. 

[jdm]

13 minutes ago, TimpanogosSlim said:

That cannot possibly be the case.

Each one can believe and think as he wants. Personally, I saw no difference whatsoever in the mov.t I had cleaned in the U/S vs the ones that I didn't. Maybe they were clean enough to start with.

What makes the difference in my opinion is examining parts and plates under high magnification to see if any jewel needs to be pegged or there is any defect.

However it's true that ammonia based solution are more effective when heated in order to leave brass nice and shiny. But these are the vast minority for me, most are plated parts to which ammonia does little or nothing.

[TimpanogosSlim]

21 minutes ago, jdm said:

Each one can believe and think as he wants. Personally, I saw no difference whatsoever in the mov.t I had cleaned in the U/S vs the ones that I didn't. Maybe they were clean enough to start with.

What makes the difference in my opinion is examining parts and plates under high magnification to see if any jewel needs to be pegged or there is any defect.

However it's true that ammonia based solution are more effective when heated in order to leave brass nice and shiny. But these are the vast minority for me, most are plated parts to which ammonia does little or nothing.

Yes, having 150x magnification has improved my ability to know when parts aren't quite clean enough. 

Ammoniated solutions are better, but they can also damage the plating. A good friend of mine is a retired chemistry professor and he is of the opinion that brass shouldn't be cleaned with ammonia if you care about the dimensions or the surface - but he also has a background in some pretty extreme scientific instrumentation so his idea of dimensional precision might be an order of magnitude more extreme. 

But in context, he advised against ammonia for cleaning gas burner nozzles. 

This particular vostok was really really saturated. And some of the goop on it was emulsified with something. The top antishock setting for example was encrusted with an opaque substance throughout. 

I didn't get a picture of that, for some reason, but here's the escape wheel with some of the same stuff clinging on after 3 stages of ultrasonic. I was able to scrape it out of the teeth. 

I ultimately had to clean the top antishock chaton assembly in an ammoniated detergent solution because it was full of the stuff in the area between the narrow end of the chaton and the jewel and solvents had only succeeded in converting it from chunks to a uniform slurry. 

Edited January 7, 2022 by TimpanogosSlim

[Plato]

47 minutes ago, jdm said:

ammonia based solution are more effective when heated in order to leave brass nice and shiny

How hot for brass? Sometimes I get great results at 40C, sometimes not. I use ultrasonic all the time but the parts are in a plastic container, not directly in the tank.

[TimpanogosSlim]

Well my locktite marine epoxy passed the test so i went ahead and attempted this. 

It was a bit less straightforward than ideal but i think it will be ok. The marine epoxy might be ideal for this job because of its 2 hour setting time. 24 hours to fully cure is a small price to pay for an adhesive that isn't in a hurry but will be rock hard and mostly chemical resistant in the long run. 

I did get a tiny dab onto the balance wheel with the cheap terrible chinese red oiler i was using to transfer the epoxy but i will just gently remove that with acetone and a small swab tomorrow. 

 

[JohnR725]

On 1/6/2022 at 9:00 PM, AndyHull said:

I suspect that it may have been originally glued with shellac

I doubt that it was shellac that's typically used to hold jewels in place that may have to be moved around a couple of times until you find the ideal location. Usually the factories with hairsprings are using special glues. Today I'm pretty sure there just laser welding them. The problem becomes the quality of the glue and the various cleaning fluids that the glue has been subject to over time. 

 

On 1/7/2022 at 9:43 AM, TimpanogosSlim said:

he application of heat, just as when washing dishes with soap and water, both softens greases and other contaminants and increases the energy that the cleaning solution has available to react with contaminants.

On 1/7/2022 at 6:55 AM, jdm said:

I do not recommend washing mov.t parts in heated US

I think you're forgetting something here? Yes washing dishes at elevated temperatures works really nice. But were not washing dishes were washing a watch. Typically the fluids used have ammonia it's really nice it makes things bright and shiny. But there's a problem if you leave it either too long in the solution or you elevate the temperature to speed up the effect that wonderful ammonia will etch the plates. Usually if you can find a recommendation from the companies making commercial watch cleaning fluids they do not recommend elevating the temperature of the cleaning fluids.

 

[AndyHull]

19 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

Usually the factories with hairsprings are using special glues. Today I'm pretty sure there just laser welding them

True, but bear in mind that the technology in the Vostok 2414 would be whatever was available in the USSR in the 1960s or perhaps earlier. That is not to say that epoxy wasn't available, but by the same token the glue could be pretty much anything.

Quote

The Vostok company was founded in 1942 when First Moscow Watch Factory was evacuated to Chistopol, a town located on the Kama River in Tatarstan. Only defense military equipment was produced during the war years, but as soon as the war was over the company started making mechanical wrist watches for Soviet citizens. However, the Company did not begin using the Vostok brand name until the 1960s. Vostok brand was named after the Vostok space program, which gave the initial advancement of the USSR in the Space race...

 

[TimpanogosSlim]

8 hours ago, AndyHull said:

True, but bear in mind that the technology in the Vostok 2414 would be whatever was available in the USSR in the 1960s or perhaps earlier. That is not to say that epoxy wasn't available, but by the same token the glue could be pretty much anything.

 

 

I think this particular vostok was manufactured in the late 80's or early 90's. Leaning toward early to mid 90's because there is no SU stamp on the movement and while the dial is heavily faded it commemorated either 45 or 50 years since the end of WWII. 

But yeah since we are talking about russia, the glue could be pretty much anything. 

I note that the UMF 24 movements from the GDR just have the end of the hairspring glued to the folded-down ear of the stud arm, and it's just some strange greenish material that seems impervious to most solvents including acetone. 

The other Vostok 2414 on my workbench i think is from the late 80's because it advertises the ZAZ 1102 Tavria, a hatchback compact car manufactured from 87 to 97, and on that balance the hairspring is attached to the stud with a dab of white adhesive of some sort. 

 

At any rate, the first attempt at epoxying it in didn't take. I'll be cleaning up the stud and trying again soon. 

[TimpanogosSlim]

little too much epoxy this time but at least i know there is enough epoxy this time? 

[TimpanogosSlim]

Most of this week i was not in the right frame of mind for bench time so this had a good long time to cure. 

I've got the beat error near 0.0ms and it is running strong (230+ degrees after setting the correct angle). The gain/loss wanders by maybe +/- dozen seconds a day just watching it, so I am going to let it run a few days and see if the oil bedding in improves things or not 

The sliding pinion is worn making it annoying to wind. I have a spare from a 2409 that arrived recently and will have to install that. 

The barrel was a little distorted by the rube who installed spring and arbor up-side-down and soaked it in old diesel or whatever it was, so i will probably go back in and double check flatness of the top and bottom, and probably re-clean the bridges and wheels while I'm in there. 

But generally speaking, for a watch that was a basket case when it arrived, it's turning out alright. Even with the iffy timing, you could argue that it's running better than a large number of the komandirskies on wrists today. 

Edited January 29, 2022 by TimpanogosSlim