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Yttrium

By Yttrium
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Yttrium New Member

Yttrium

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Hello Everyone,

 

I am new here. I hope to learn and pick up some knowledge about watch repair from the experts here.

 

Firstly, I would like to say that I really enjoy watching Mark video and I learn quite a lot. Thank you, Mark, for the video. 

 

I taken a interest in watch repair a few years ago and did a few overhaul with my own watches. I must say it's really encouraging when you see your 10 years old watches "beating" accurately again after it's being overhauled but sometimes things don't really go well. Patience is the key here.

 

Talking about problem...I have a few questions about my 3 weeks old watch when it is put on the Timegrapher.

 

When Dial Up, the display is all over the place but Dial down seems ok (almost straight line). Please see the attached files. I remember the first day when I have it, I put it on the timegrapher and the dial up reading does not seems that bad but not as good as dial down. Having said that, the watch loses about 3s/d when not worn for one day placed dial up, after resetting, it runs about +/- 1s/d when worn everyday.

 

Can anyone share some light here? I opened it up and did some minor adjustment to the beat error and rate but to no avail. Could the hairspring be out of true/round or problem with the balance pivot? I am curious and need to ascertain what's wrong before opening it up again.

 

Best Regards

Daniel

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Hamish Member

Hamish

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Hi Daniel, whenever I see a positional issue like this, as a starting point, I evaluate if all is well with the balance. How old is the oil? You say it is three weeks old...was it already second hand? If you have the means, may i suggest you remove the balance, inspect the pivots and jewels and re-oil and see if that works. As the problem seems to occur dial up, then perhaps only look at the end on the cock/bridge for starters.

Also welcome aboard.

Regards

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Yttrium New Member

Yttrium

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Hi Daniel, whenever I see a positional issue like this, as a starting point, I evaluate if all is well with the balance. How old is the oil? You say it is three weeks old...was it already second hand? If you have the means, may i suggest you remove the balance, inspect the pivots and jewels and re-oil and see if that works. As the problem seems to occur dial up, then perhaps only look at the end on the cock/bridge for starters.

Also welcome aboard.

Regards

 

Hi Hamish,

 

The watch is brand new. I will inspect/clean the balance pivot/jewel and re-oil and see how it goes.

 

Thanks!

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Geo Distinguished Member

Geo

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Welcome to the forum Yttrium.

Following on from Will and Hamish, I would suggest you oil the pallets and the escape wheel, but not the pallet fork pinions, and see how the graph looks. I'm suggesting this because you have two distinct lines of snow on your Timegrapher. Instead of getting a dampened tick, you may be getting an undamped ting or microscopic bounce between the pallet and escape wheel. Please read up on this process before going ahead, because you need very little lubrication on these components. Too much oil and it will be detrimental to the running of the watch.

If oiling doesn't work, you may well have a distorted hairspring that needs attention, although I wouldn't have expected to se two distinct lines of snow, but more of a general blizzard! i would not recommend that you interfere with the hairspring, it takes a lot of skill and experience to assess and work on hairsprings.

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Yttrium New Member

Yttrium

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Following the advice from Will/Hamish/Geo......Thank you!

 

I inspected the balance pivot with a 10X loupe, seems OK (at least as far as my eye can tell). I checked the oil on the balance cap jewel....hmm....the oil is centered around the jewel but it seems to cover more than 3/4 of the jewel....too much oil? So I remove the balance jewel and cap jewel and cleaned with lighter fluid, use the smallest oiler that I have and applied Moebius 9010, just a small dot on the center of the cap jewel. I hate to do this because it is so difficult to put back the cap jewel without "disturbing" the oil....it take me 3 times to do it properly because once I dropped the cap jewel I have to clean it and oil it again!!! After installing the shock absorber, I examined the oil spread again, this time it only covered about 1/2 the cap jewel. So off it goes on the Timegrapher. The result looks better than previous but still not perfect. I removed the balance and check the hairspring flatness, with the balance wheel on top (Dial up position), I noticed that the hairspring is slightly slanting downwards. I am not sure if it is the cause of this imperfection. I might try adjusting the stub height first before "touching" the hairspring (every time I "touch" the hairspring, I almost always mess it up).

 

That's all for today...

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Geo Distinguished Member

Geo

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Did you oil the pallets?

I'm also going to say that although the graph is not perfect, in real terms your watch is keeping pretty good time. I personally would leave it just now and wear it for a while, it may just settle down. If the watch was not keeping time at all well, then delve deeper, but it would be a shame to risk making things an awful lot worse by tinkering with the hairspring.

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Yttrium New Member

Yttrium

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Wait....hold on....after running the watch for about one hour......the graph improves....I think it takes some times for the oil to break-in or am I missing something here?

 

What's going on? At first I though my Timegrapher might not be working properly....

 

Is it really due to too much oil on the cap jewel? How can a experience watch company (I won't state the brand here) not know how much to oil? Weird. But hopefully I don't have to touch the hairspring. I will wear the watch for a few days and observe again.

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Yttrium New Member

Yttrium

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Did you oil the pallets?

I'm also going to say that although the graph is not perfect, in real terms your watch is keeping pretty good time. I personally would leave it just now and wear it for a while, it may just settle down. If the watch was not keeping time at all well, then delve deeper, but it would be a shame to risk making things an awful lot worse by tinkering with the hairspring.

Hi Geo,

 

No, I did not oil the pallet. I start with the balance first.

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Yttrium New Member

Yttrium

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The amplitude also reduced from 317 degree previously to 270 degree which I think 270 is normal for this brand, from my limited experience with several watches of the same brand. Oh well, we will see how it goes when it's on the wrist.

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