Device to reset/recalibrate quartz chronograph?

[Insomnijanek]

Hi there,

[DKNY NY-1292] Quartz Chronograph resetting/recalibration tool

I have a watch that I cherish and have owned for nearly 15 years. It is neither a fancy nor well made watch, but a modest design with a chronograph feature that I love and have frequently received compliments for based on its aesthetic. The watch is no longer available to purchase from anywhere (DKNY NY-1292 white dial)

Partially due to its age and manufacture quality, the chronograph minute hand does not reset to zero after a few months post service (has always happened since I acquired it) and instead resets to a minute or two after zero.

This is completely separate to the chronograph second hand (which yes I am aware of how to adjust the reset, by pulling out the crown and pressing in the stop/start pusher to change the second hand starting position)

I have seen at one watchmaker a device which you can place a quartz watch on and it automatically resets/recalibrates all the hands to zero position but have no idea where I could buy one

Due to the frequency of the need to have the chronograph reset, and my stubborn love for this watch, I feel it would be most cost effective and easiest for me to buy this device

Does anyone know what this tool is called and where to buy one that is relatively cheap?

I’m based in the U.K., but once I know what it is I’m looking for I should be able to get hold of one here

Many thanks in advance!

[KarlvonKoln]

Okay, being that I specialize in antiques, I may be the wrong one to answer this (so I hope others chime in too) but I just wanted to ask: do you think it would work to simply remove the hand in question and remount it in the correct reset position.  This would work on a mechanical, but you have a quartz.  That said, if my idea would not apply here, I'm sure one of the other veterans will explain why. 

[LittleWatchShop]

Please post a picture.

On the quartz chronographs I have worked on, there is a calibration procedure. Something like pull out stem to second or third position, then adjust the hands with the pushers, then return the stem to run position.

no external tool is needed.

Edited March 31, 2022 by LittleWatchShop

[LittleWatchShop]

Look here for example https://www.keepthetime.com/blog/how-to-set-an-invicta-chronograph-back-to-zero/

[jdm]

 

 

3 hours ago, Insomnijanek said:

Partially due to its age and manufacture quality, the chronograph minute hand does not reset to zero after a few months post service (has always happened since I acquired it) and instead resets to a minute or two after zero.

Most likely that's because the minute hand is a bit lose, so it tends to move forward over time. The best approach is to tollerate that small detail, and if available, reset the the minute hand when needed.

 

3 hours ago, Insomnijanek said:

I have seen at one watchmaker a device which you can place a quartz watch on and it automatically resets/recalibrates all the hands to zero position but have no idea where I could buy one

I don't know what you have seen, but no such device exist, and if it would exist it would be quite complicated and ver expensive, becuase it would need artificial vision to see where the hands are, and correspongly press  buttons or make electrical contact to reset them.

 

56 minutes ago, KarlvonKoln said:

 I just wanted to ask: do you think it would work to simply remove the hand in question and remount it in the correct reset position. This would work on a mechanical, but you have a quartz.

Indeed that is not how the hands of a quartz chronometer are reset. Since each hand is driven by a separate motor (there are exception, looked 'mecaquartz'), there is no need to mess with delicate items like pinion and tubes. Just advance the motor as per manual and let the IC deal with the rest.

[Insomnijanek]

6 minutes ago, jdm said:

I don't know what you have seen, but no such device exist, and if it would exist it would be quite complicated and ver expensive, becuase it would need artificial vision to see where the hands are, and correspongly press  buttons or make electrical contact to reset them.

I guarantee you it does exists because my previous watch repair shop used this device frequently on this very watch in front of my eyes.

From what I have looked up since posting, the device may have been a line tester and by using one the watch repair shop was able to reset the chronograph.

[Insomnijanek]

1 hour ago, LittleWatchShop said:

Please post a picture.

On the quartz chronographs I have worked on, there is a calibration procedure. Something like pull out stem to second or third position, then adjust the hands with the pushers, then return the stem to run position.

no external tool is needed.

unfortunately this watch only allows the crown to be pulled out to one position, with the stop/start pusher only adjusting the zero setting of the chronograph second hand and not the minute or hour hand on the chronograph 

[Insomnijanek]

1 hour ago, LittleWatchShop said:

Please post a picture.

On the quartz chronographs I have worked on, there is a calibration procedure. Something like pull out stem to second or third position, then adjust the hands with the pushers, then return the stem to run position.

no external tool is needed.

The picture should show how the minute hand on the chronograph (small blue hand at top) is not at the 12’ mark

[Insomnijanek]

56 minutes ago, LittleWatchShop said:

Look here for example https://www.keepthetime.com/blog/how-to-set-an-invicta-chronograph-back-to-zero/

Sadly this watch seems to have a very unusual (and not in a good way) chronograph feature, whereby none of these typical guides applies to the function

[Insomnijanek]

1 hour ago, KarlvonKoln said:

Okay, being that I specialize in antiques, I may be the wrong one to answer this (so I hope others chime in too) but I just wanted to ask: do you think it would work to simply remove the hand in question and remount it in the correct reset position.  This would work on a mechanical, but you have a quartz.  That said, if my idea would not apply here, I'm sure one of the other veterans will explain why. 

Whilst this may work, I felt it might be easier and cheaper to acquire the device I have seen in action before that worked on this watch. I have a suspicion it might be a line tester that inadvertently also resets the chronograph 

[jdm]

19 minutes ago, Insomnijanek said:

I guarantee you it does exists because my previous watch repair shop used this device frequently on this very watch in front of my eyes.

Again, I'm sorry but you are confused about what the shop did . We have contined discussions about quartz watch tools costing from 10 to 10,000 pounds and pretty much know what is available and what's not.

 

19 minutes ago, Insomnijanek said:

From what I have looked up since posting, the device may have been a line tester and by using one the watch repair shop was able to reset the chronograph.

Look at the devices that you have found online, and let us know if in their description it says anywhere that they can reset chrono hands.

 

16 minutes ago, Insomnijanek said:

The picture should show how the minute hand on the chronograph (small blue hand at top) is not at the 12’ mark

Please post a picture with the caseback removed to identify the movement. A fashion brand and model don't mean anything.

 

10 minutes ago, Insomnijanek said:

I felt it might be easier and cheaper to acquire the device I have seen in action before that worked on this watch. I have a suspicion it might be a line tester that inadvertently also resets the chronograph 

There is no such thing as 'inadvertently' in watch repair. I am also afraid that you don't know how much branded quartz tester do cost, so have a look

www.cousinsuk.com/product/witschi-quartzmaster?code=T61137

And they don't reset hands, why? Because they can't.

[Insomnijanek]

I agree that my knowledge is incredibly limited and probably the device I witnessed was not a line tester if that cannot do that, but there was a device my previous watch repair shop placed my watch onto that made the hands spin round and in doing so the chronograph function was recalibrated so that pressing in the reset pusher set the minute hand back to zero or 12’ as intended.

I will try to ask next time I have my watch serviced to get a picture of the movement with the back taken off as I agree brand name and model, particularly on a discontinued watch offers little information but at this time it is all I can sadly offer.

 

do you have any idea @jdm what the device is that I have seen? I can assure you that it is real and that it performed as I have described and also recalibrated the chronograph function on my watch whenever the minute hand would fail to reset to 12’

[LittleWatchShop]

OK, time for a gedankenexperiment.

We have a simple quartz watch which consists of a chip (integrated circuit), a coil, a rotor, and some wheels that translate the rotation of the rotor to a reading on the dial.  And...a battery of course.

For a chronograph, we have at least two coils and two rotors.

What if the designer of the quartz movement wanted to be able to tell the position of the hands.  This is technically possible.  Sensors would be embedded in the watch dial or the drive train that would provide feedback to the IC about the position of the hands.  Oh my...technically feasible, but at great expense!!

Lets take this a step further.  Now I want to be able to read the position of the hands using an external device.  This too is technically feasible.  The IC on the watch that is sensing the hand position could send that information to an external device via RF link.  Then the external device could command the watch to put the hands to a specific position.

Your watch has none of this.

Now, I can perceive of a line release device that allowed you to send one pulse at a time.  Then you could pulse the watch and watch the hands move one step at a time until they are in the right position.  This is essentially what the internal calibrators do in the example I posted above.  I have an old Witschi line release and sensor tool.  I can drive the watch continuously or in bursts.  I can also control the frequency of the bursts as well as the amplitude.  I just now went into my little watch shop and experimented with a quartz watch.  By fiddling with amplitude and speed, I can get the watch to make small steps.  It is not consistent and quite fiddly.  Best case...this is what your watch repairman might have done.

Edited March 31, 2022 by LittleWatchShop

[Insomnijanek]

@LittleWatchShop thank you. Perhaps he had some very specific and bespoke configuration to enable this watch to have its chronograph reset.

By the sounds of things it is neither a convenient nor cheap investment and I may well have an easier time buying a well made automatic chronograph to avoid such future dilemnas.

 

if I am able to track down the old watch repair shop and find out I will inform you all here for those that are curious.

 

thank you again to all who hve provided their thoughtful and experienced insight to a simple man who merely wants his watch to not play up every couple of months

[jdm]

1 hour ago, Insomnijanek said:

I will try to ask next time I have my watch serviced

To get the battery replaced. 'Serviced' means something else in watchmaking.

 

1 hour ago, Insomnijanek said:

to get a picture of the movement with the back taken off

You can do that yourself with economical tools. That will enable you to change batteries yourself, something that many watch owners like to do.

 

1 hour ago, Insomnijanek said:

do you have any idea @jdm what the device is that I have seen?

I have answered that already to the best of my knowledge and few decades of experience. On the other hand if you will be then able to teach us what it is, please post again and I for one will be glad to learn.

 

47 minutes ago, LittleWatchShop said:

For a chronograph, we have at least two coils and two rotors.

As mentioned above, normally quartz chronometers have a rotor per hand. That's because it's cheaper and more reliable to make them like that. Pictured ETA 251, now the trend is to cover all coils, so it's a bit harder to tell right away how many there are.

 

 

47 minutes ago, LittleWatchShop said:

Now, I can perceive of a line release device that allowed you to send one pulse at a time.  Then you could pulse the watch and watch the hands move one step at a time until they are in the right position. 

Right. Problem is, on a pulse all rotors will move, or step at the same time, once you are done sending 'precise' pulses the hands position relative to each other will be unpredictable.

 

40 minutes ago, Insomnijanek said:

By the sounds of things it is neither a convenient nor cheap investment and I may well have an easier time buying a well made automatic chronograph to avoid such future dilemnas.

Mechanical chronos are lovely objects for enthusiasts and collectors alike but to people coming from quartz I think is right to highlight about not just the initial cost, but their lesser precision, robustness, and ownership cost. 

[LittleWatchShop]

18 minutes ago, jdm said:

Right. Problem is, on a pulse all rotors will move, or step at the same time, once you are done sending 'precise' pulses the hands position relative to each other will be unpredictable.

Agree.  BTW, the cheaper chronos I have seen just have two coils.  The seconds and minutes elapse time are mechanically linked.  Granted, I have far less experience than you and have, thus, seen far fewer devices.  For the two-coil case, one could just calibrate the elapse time and ignor the impact on the other hands.

[jdm]

4 hours ago, LittleWatchShop said:

BTW, the cheaper chronos I have seen just have two coils.  The seconds and minutes elapse time are mechanically linked.

Chrono reset is an interesting matter. If you mechanically and permanently link the hands/gears, the result is that on a chrono with hour recording if you reset at hour 11, the seconds hand would have to would have to make 11 * 60 = 660 revolutions, and do that quickly. Clearly that is impossible, so on a quartz either decouple linkage on reset just like a mechanical, or use multiple motors. 

[LittleWatchShop]

14 minutes ago, jdm said:

Chrono reset is an interesting matter. If you mechanically and permanently link the hands/gears, the result is that on a chrono without hour recording (a device just slightly more usable than a chronostop) if you reset at minute 1, the seconds hand would have to would have to make 59 * 60, 3540 revolutions, and do that quickly. Clearly that is impossible, so on a quartz either decouple linkage on reset just like a mechanical, or use multiple motors. 

Help me understand the Hattori VR32. 

Edited March 31, 2022 by LittleWatchShop

[jdm]

4 hours ago, LittleWatchShop said:

Help me understand the Hattori VR32. 

From the document:

The movements of the stopwatch minute hand and stopwatch second hand are interlocked. To set the stopwatch minute hand to the "0" position, continue to move the stopwatch second hand until the stopwatch minute hand reaches the "0" position.

Since when doing the above, or just the normal reset, the seconds hand makes a full turn in like 1 second or less, the time taken is not too much to reset from a maximum of 30 minutes. If there were an hour counter that approach would be undoable.

Note i corrected some wrong stuff I wrote above. 

[KarlvonKoln]

I still think that if a skilled technician with steady hands is good at removing and installing watch hands, it would be the simplest way to solve the problem.   Or as JDM mentioned, just advance the hand manually with perhaps a piece of pegwood.  Doing it by line release would be a complicated game of hit and miss I think. 

[jdm]

5 hours ago, KarlvonKoln said:

I still think that if a skilled technician with steady hands is good at removing and installing watch hands, it would be the simplest way to solve the problem.

That it never is never done on quartz chronos unless an hand falls in between two indexes. Instead, as explained above, the independent motors can move each hand independently to zero, following the procedure in the manual.

 

5 hours ago, KarlvonKoln said:

Or as JDM mentioned, just advance the hand manually with perhaps a piece of pegwood.  

I never suggested to do that, never tried myself, and would not recommend it.

[Razz]

On my chrono you pull out the setting crown then push the chrono reset button to forward the minute hand. The start stop pusher works for the seconds hand and the reset button works for the minute hand. Easy peasy...