Making a click spring

[mikepilk]

My brain was in neutral as I removed the ratchet wheel from a Seiko 5606 - forgetting that the click spring is also the click ,
which explains why it has joined the Swiss Space Program.  Usual search with torch, magnet, Dyson found nothing. 

I looked in my box of click springs, but non are close, so I thought I'd try and make one from a guitar string - upper E is about the right thickness.

Playing around with some guitar string - they are soft enough to bend easily without annealing. I then tried hardening - heating red and dunking in water, they become very brittle.

So the question is how to temper something so thin?  I blue hands in a tub of brass filings, but I guess I don't need to go to blue? Maybe straw at 200-220°C but will I see the colour on such a fine wire? 

Anyone had any success with making springs this way?

They look like this (the tip is bent up perpendicular to the rest of the spring)

Edited June 21, 2023 by mikepilk