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c1970 Smiths (EB8800)


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Hi Guys,

               Just a quick shout out for advice/suggestions, I am very much a newby to watch making and currently completing Marks Level 3 training course, this said, I confidently acquired a vintage Smiths mechanical wind watch, I performed a full strip down, clean and lubrication re-build, new crystal mainspring case polish etc. all sounds good up to now, however, I now find that the watch is erratic on the timegrapher, one minute 20-30 s/d and 1.5 beat error, as soon as you change the crown orientation if goes crazy 100-300 s/d, 9ms beat error, this said, I checked all installed components as free and located correctly and not over lubricated, all seemed OK, but decided to strip it down again to double check (all was good), without the pallet and balance in the watch felt very smooth on turning the crown so the only question is the balance and hairspring at fault? Is it possible for the balance/hairspring to cause these issues? One thing I did notice is that the hair spring seemed a little slower that all my other I initially put this down to it coming up on the timegrapher as a 1800 bph (all my other watches are 21000 or above), also the watch has a tendency to stop but starts again with a little tilt side to side.

Any thoughts guys? Thanks GDub.

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    18000 bph is correct.

 

20 hours ago, GDub said:

Is it possible for the balance/hairspring to cause these issues? 

 Sticky  hairspring due to contamination or magnetisation, sometimes intermittently which is hard to spot with naked eye, making  a vid of oscilator running helps to spot hairspring issues.

 

 

 

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