Quick Question: Squeezing Down Second Sweep Hole?

[MUTE]

Dear all,

 

I am putting together a gift watch and have an undifferentiated Asian movement (I believe ETA clone) that looks to take a size 18 second sweep. I have a set of what I think are 120/90/20 or 120/90/22 hands from a practice movement that I want to strip and paint for the watch. The hour and minute hands fit nicely, however the second sweep is clearly too big.

 

I took my tweezers and squeezed the hole at three angles and made a very crude hexagon out of the second sweep hole. It now appears to fit and at least turns with the movement.

 

Has anyone tried this? It seems like it is destined to fail at some point. Do any of the following seem reasonable?

 

- Turn it upside down and shake vigorously, if it doesn't fall off let it be

- Put the sweep on the movement without other hands and squeeze hard with very fine nosed tweezers

- Put an incredibly small amount of some weak adhesive (rubber cement?) into the lumen of the sweep, install and wipe excess

 

This is definitely not Daniels level work, but the watch is a manual winder intended for a Father-of-the-groom who just wants a nice looking watch to be worn infrequently.

 

Thanks for any insight you may have,

 

Mute

[anilv]

Hi Mute,

 

While the fix you came up with may work for a while.. the problem is thehand only 'grips' the seconds pinion at a few points, as opposed to a correctly sized hand with fits all the way round and for the length of the tube.

 

If not securely fixed, the hand may not stay level and will interfere with the other hands/dial.

 

If its your own watch, hell, wear it and fix it as you go. But if you're giving it as a present then I think you should get a replacement hand.

 

just my $0.02.

 

Anilv

[Geo]

It has been mentioned before in the forum. You are better to use a lathe collet or a pin vice to reduce the diameter. Just remember that a wee squeeze can go a long way.