Thinking outside the box - Thrifty made/modified/repurposed watch tools and equipment
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This poor watch now has a new escape wheel jewel. I got a jewel assortment and found one that fitted snugly in the setting, and whose hole was a neat fit on the escape wheel pivot, glued it to the flattened end of a 1mm drill bit and turned it on some brass with diamond lapping paste to give it a taper on one side. I used a sewing needle to gently close the setting over the jewel. It doesn't look too bad in the pic, but actually about the bottom third of the setting has nothing left holding the jewel down and I'm not sure whether it will hold. I'll have to see when I reassemble it. Before I reassemble, I thought I'd better have a look at the balance and check its poise. I put it on a pair of tweezers and found it did indeed want to always stop with the same point uppermost, swinging to and fro around that point. While I was thinking about timing washers and that I don't have the right tool to remove a timing screw, I noticed that one of the pivots didn't look straight. A closer look was called for: The right hand (upper) pivot is definitely bent. So, should I try to straighten it? It is likely to break, I suspect. Am I going to be able to buy a replacement balance staff for a watch more than 100 years old with no movement number? Seems unlikely. I have no lathe so I'm not in a position to make one myself. What are my options? -
Here’s is an update on the watch. I haven’t worked on the watch since, but I seems like the watch is now running perfect if he don’t wind it fully up. If he just wind it almost fully up, it doesn’t seem to stop.. and it stops after some time if he wind it fully up. -
Thanks a lot. And back to my question on taking the case to bare brass, I guess nobody does it because it will tarnish quickly and look like carp? Are there any UK suppliers of custom dial decals who'd accept a vector file for a dial? I'm coming around to the following plan, I hope it's reasonable: 1) Keep learning about movement parts & function. 2) Get the basic tools, hand-cleaning supplies, cheapest sensible lubrication (m8000 + moly?); 3) Get old pocket watch or ST36 (£18 delivered to my door - this might be hard to beat even with ebay prices). Strip & reassemble a dozen times. Breaking it in the process won't be the end of the world. 4) Get servicing the ingersoll & benrus without breaking them; Alternatively, Buy Seiko NH35 movement, service, assemble a custom watch in a cheapo chinese case. 6) Try not to buy too many broken old watches on ebay, but start thinking about what calibre I want to work with and focus on that. 7) Assuming I'm still at it, try plating a case. -
As you're finding out with electromechanical or analog quartz watches the number one problem would be lubrication goes bad with time and the watches need to be cleaned and then preferably lubricated with a light lubricant specifically designed for quartz watches as they do not like heavy oils. Then it really be nice if you had better test equipment which you don't have but if you really insist on soldering you could just temporarily solder a quartz crystal across the large crystal. Typically if they go bad which? Well we haven't actually established that it's gone bad yet and because you don't have any test equipment it makes it hard to do that but if you want to guests based on your link that it is the quartz crystal typically they would break although these are pretty heavy quartz crystal so breaking isn't maybe what happens but if you think your quartz crystals broken typically it would be open see you could solder another quartz crystal just right on top of it initially to see if that solves your problem in that if it solves your problem just take the old one out and put the new one in. Otherwise it something else which brings up the problem of working on electrical devices you need test equipment. -
By RichardHarris123 · Posted
Not these, they're brass.
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