troubleshooting a waltham 6/0D

[Olrik]

Hi everyone,

I don't know where to start.. I've been working on my first movement for something like 15 hours, and each time i fix something, i mess up something else.

So it's a waltham 6/0 D from a waltham A17. I cleaned everything, reassembled the watch. I had a 4.6 beat error so i worked on the collet to improve it. I was getting close after some hours of work close but ended up messing the hairspring after taking the balance wheel in a out a bunch of times. 

I finally fixed the hairsping back to normal (quite proud of that). Put the watch on the timegrapher, had an excellent reading. I put the dial back, the hands, and now had huge drop both in amplitude and s/day... Took it appart once more, some back and forth on the timegrapher and thats when the newt mishap happened. the spring loaded part on the timegrapher slept from my finger and hit the crown hard, witch broke the balance staff.

Luckily i had a spare balance wheel without the hairspring. It came from a same movement. I set my previous hairspring on this new balance wheel, and now i have those reading on the timegrapher.

It seems that the bph has jumped from 18000 to somewhere between 18000 et 19800. In auto mode, the timegrapher rester every 5 sec trying to switch between 18000 et 19800. 

Has you could expect, i'm a bit lost (once again). What have i messed up this time?

Thanks!

 

[Nucejoe]

  Balance and new hairspring don't match so the oscilator beats more than it should,  you ought to add weight to balance rim to slow the rate down, you will need washers for the adjustment.

Welcome to the WRT forum.

[RichardHarris123]

Hello and welcome. 

[JohnR725]

I see this is your first posting with us. Normally somewhere in the group they like you to do an introduction like what your background history. Because for first watch you seem to have a heck of a lot of knowledge that you probably wouldn't have if this actually really is your first watch?

Then if this truly is your first watch it's a poor choice for first watch. Ideally when learning watch repair you'd start off with a running watch to get a feel of what a watch is and how everything works rather than starting with a watch to repair we don't really have the proper knowledge of what a watch really is at least from a repair point of view

5 hours ago, Olrik said:

spare balance wheel without the hairspring. It came from a same movement. I set my previous hairspring on this new balance wheel, and now i have those reading on the timegrapher.

It seems that the bph has jumped from 18000 to somewhere between 18000 et 19800. In auto mode, the timegrapher rester every 5 sec trying to switch between 18000 et 19800. 

the problem is and Nucejoe up above pointed this out typically with flat coil hairsprings they hairspring is vibrated to every single balance wheel so in other words you will never see the hairspring separate from balance complete if it's flat. In the case of an over coil hairspring which I believe you have they are available separately sometimes but there is a problem

the problem is the hairspring the balance wheel have to be matched together over coil hairsprings are typically made separate to get a exact shape then the balance wheel is matched the hairspring this means that you have timing screws lots of them C can match your balance wheel to your hairspring. So what you're seeing is you haven't match the balance wheel to your hairspring.

oh and then for the timing machine we need to establish a timing procedure. Ideally your servicing a watch especially the first time it's best not to rush to put everything together into verify it works. So for timing you wind the watch up and let it run from 15 minutes to about an hour whatever's convenient you do not time when it's fully wound up tight don't get misleading information now you time the watch her look at the watch in several positions like dial-up and dial down and they basically should be almost identical. Then you move on to at least one crown position if it's a wristwatch it could be crown down to the minimum three positions and then it's also nice to look at the watch 24 hours later to see how it's doing. A lot of times when the watches wound up tight everything looks really nice but 24 hours later it might not even be running at all

so it looks like where we currently are you are grossly off for timekeeping because you have the mismatched balance wheel hairspring combination. This is one of the rare times were a witschi timing machine will beat out the Chinese machine on the other hand the machine that cost 10 times the cost or more probably isn't worth purchasing for this one example but a witschi machine can go to frequency mode it will tell you exactly how many beats per hour your off. So basically off to put the hands on and see how much timing problem you have and I will either have to take weight off the balance wheel or add weight to the balance wheel to match it to hairspring.

 

 

 

[Olrik]

1 hour ago, JohnR725 said:

 

 

Thanks for the long response!

First i did in fact introduce myself but the message in still in "pending approval" status.

This is basically the first watch i do a full service on, i previously just had a spare movement on witch i trained a bit to get the feel of how things work together. I also did quite a lot of researches before starting this project, to be sure not to mess up anything. Seems i did finally mess everything though :'D

I did'nt know the balance and hairspring where so tightly adjusted together. I guess my best chance in to remove the staff from de donor wheel and reinstall it in the previous wheel. If i recall correctly what i heard, a stacking tool is needed to secure the staff to the wheel, or am i wrong?

[Nucejoe]

13 hours ago, Olrik said:

I did'nt know the balance and hairspring where so tightly adjusted together. 

Google brings you some good read on the subject.

A few keyword to type in sesrch engines;  Vibrating hairspring, luthy tools and watchrepairtalk.

As our good moderator old hippy says; 

                  " Looking forward to your continued interest "

[JohnR725]

22 hours ago, Olrik said:

This is basically the first watch i do a full service on, i previously just had a spare movement on witch i trained a bit to get the feel of how things work together. I also did quite a lot of researches before starting this project, to be sure not to mess up anything. Seems i did finally mess everything though :'D

I tend to think of watch repair is similar to learning to become a doctor. You study and practice lots and lots of practice. Everybody on this group is still practicing. this also means if you are learning to be a doctor you don't get them alive patient as fast as they do in watch repair. Because if they did they wouldn't be able to afford the malpractice insurance because the chance of succeeding the first time is limited. 

19 hours ago, Olrik said:

guess my best chance in to remove the staff from de donor wheel and reinstall it in the previous wheel. If i recall correctly what i heard, a stacking tool is needed to secure the staff to the wheel, or am i wrong?

there are basically two types of balance staffs friction which yours is not that type can be removed and inserted relatively easily. Then there's the standard type like yours it's riveted in place. Moving it somewhere else is extremely unlikely. Fortunately balance staffs are usually really cheap so replacing it shouldn't be an issue. So you're going to need some tools and the balance staff. For that I have two links below someone else working on a watch just like yours need a balance staff and another link to how to change the staff. Oh and on that link starts off really good on the balance staff and then it gets into the usual bickering over is this really the right procedure or not. but still a lot of good information a lot of nice pictures.

 

22 hours ago, Olrik said:

I did'nt know the balance and hairspring where so tightly adjusted together

don't worry this is a classic question that comes up I need a new hairspring?

22 hours ago, Olrik said:

Thanks for the long response!

would you have liked a shorter answer? Sometimes people like short responses things get lost in long responses. Like for instance quoting myself down below

23 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

In the case of an over coil hairspring which I believe you have they are available separately sometimes but there is a problem

the problem is the hairspring the balance wheel have to be matched together over coil hairsprings are typically made separate to get a exact shape then the balance wheel is matched the hairspring this means that you have timing screws lots of them C can match your balance wheel to your hairspring. So what you're seeing is you haven't match the balance wheel to your hairspring.

looking at the parts list for the 6/0B which is not exactly the same as yours but possibly close enough they hairspring is available separately. As I said the hairspring is made to an exact shape their premade. This means the balance wheels need to be matched we can attempt to match the balance wheel. but to do this we need to see how fast or slow it's going it's currently outside of the range the timing machine so that's useless. this means set the watch to time let it run for a few hours or maybe 24 hours and see how fast or slow you are that will give us a direction that were going and what we need to do.

https://www.watchrepairtalk.com/topic/18660-watham-60-vs-60-d/

https://mb.nawcc.org/threads/picture-tour-of-replacing-a-staff-on-a-waltham-6-0s-wristwatch-enjoy.178521/

 

 

[Olrik]

A long answer is always appreciated, the more info the better.

Thanks for different links, very interesting stuff.

It may have been wiser to start with a more well working movement, but I'm learning so many different things with this movement. Lots of mistakes, but lot of learning on the other hand

[JohnR725]

1 hour ago, Olrik said:

A long answer is always appreciated,

sometimes I can't tell when people answer this way because it could be taken as something different as people get annoyed with my long-winded answers and dictation software which I use which sometimes gives goofy answers

so not go reread everything timing issues let's see what we can do about matching the balance wheel to your hairspring. As you have other balance wheels we may build it takes screws off of them. But for right now leave the screws where they are they have to be in matched pairs in other words one on one side one on the other. If you look carefully at your balance wheels you may find that they're not exactly the same. Plus the things that you can't see the balance wheels themselves may actually be slightly different which is why they hairspring is her vibrated every single balance wheel except when a pre-makeover coil hairspring. So once we figure out how fast or slow you are we may bill is start mixing and matching is screws and bring the thing into time

the meantime another link. Training manual for the U.S. Army actually very good and still relevant. They do have a Waltham wristwatch not exactly yours but still has good information

https://archive.org/details/TM9-1575

and from the same website above Waltham information. They do have a couple of parts books I think one is 1911 in the others 1909 there before your watch but you look at the book and see what once was available. You should build a find the hairspring see that they were separate somewhere they probably listed timing screws all the nice stuff that aren't available anymore. What they don't have is Waltham had I think the last one was 1940 something it's not on the website. But even then it doesn't list the military parts. Who knows maybe it  will show up someday in the website she is have to go looking and sometimes the search terms can be challenging on this website

https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A"Waltham+Watch+Company"

 

 

[Olrik]

Thank for the links!

Should i try to mimic the donor balance wheel by determining how far from fully tight the screws are and replicating it on the grafted wheel? 

Or just eyeball it and adjust from here?

[Nucejoe]

Your are going to need poising calipers and this tool 

https://www.watchfix.com/2011/06/28/poising-a-balance-and-positional-error/

 

 

[JohnR725]

1 hour ago, Olrik said:

Should i try to mimic the donor balance wheel by determining how far from fully tight the screws are and replicating it on the grafted wheel? 

Or just eyeball it and adjust from here?

I need a better picture the balance wheel than the one you have up above just a picture the balance wheel you take the picture from the bottom. It looks like maybe you have mean time screws? Those of the screws that are not tightened down tight there supposed to be adjustable. They allow you to make a fine adjustments just leave them alone for now often times I find people screw them down tight and they have a limited life of how much screwing around you can do with them. In other words of their design that they can be out and not fall out where's the other screws all have to be adjusted down tight but not so tight that you break the head off because those are brass screws typically

 

[rehajm]

I was working on this movement today- had to replace the escape wheel, spent some time with the staking set on the barrel and center wheel holes, and fiddled with the overcoil…

If you feel in over your head on the repairs, make notes and set it aside until you’re confident in your skills to make the repair. That’s what I did here…

Edited May 28, 2023 by rehajm

[Olrik]

Thanks for the many advices!

Damn those values are impressing Rehajm!

Here is the picture of the wheel