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New fro Kansas City (about 2 minutes from Jules Borel !)


Vinito

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Hi folks. I'm new to both this forum and myself personally working on watches, but in a way not new to the watchmaking trade. What I mean is, I'm pretty old but my brother, now deceased, was a master watchmaker so I was exposed to the field since the '70s. I had a kind of "stick it to The Man" resentment of living by the clock so I stupidly never took advantage of talking much shop with my brother while I had the chance. This is especially stupid since it's not like I just don't have the temperament or personality for it - I am a machinist and toolmaker by trade! In my defense, my brother always lived pretty far away in all but about 2 years of my life, but still... we always got along great so there simply wasn't any good reason why we didn't spend a bunch of time talking shop both directions other than the standard problem of all of us being so dang busy to have time to step ouside ourselves.

I am not exactly a stranger to working on small scale stuff and my brother did hand some tools down to me over the years, i.e. tweezers, loupes, etc. Even an old Boley lathe & some collets.

Anyway, I'm kinda getting into it a little bit lately, so hoping to glean some info of you veterans and maybe having a little something to offer now and then.

Vinito

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    • That's the right technique Mal 👍 If you are ok with a loupe ( which I'm not ) then pick up the dial in your left hand and make a tripod holder out of 3 fingers and then exactly how Mal and me described with your right hand, press and flick out the stem at the same time. You need three fingers to do this, i use my ring ring finger , sounds like mal uses his little finger, just whatever you feel comfortable with. The key point and dangerous side to this is the tweezers or driver slipping off the release screw. Stablise your left arm by resting your elbow on your bench, so that you can hold the movement horizontally flat, use a x5 loupe to view  and good light so you can see well and have a good tight fitting screwdriver to push the release down. Or as suggested a pusher mounted solid upside-down somewhere then all you need to do is push your movement up to it. I'll rig something up in a bit to show you what i mean.
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