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Stem Drawings

Waggy

By Waggy
in Parts Manufacture & Lathe Work

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Waggy Distinguished Member

Waggy

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Posted (edited)

Good day,

I have several watches with broken or missing stems, do any of the users here know if there is somewhere (other than a pot luck google search) where I could find drawings of stems? If the watch comes with a broken stem I can reverse engineer the stem and make one (when I get good enough that is), but if it is completely missing does anyone know where I can get a drawing. Failing this, does anyone know the best method to go about making a stem from scratch without an example or drawing to start from?

Maybe people could share their drawings with the group as they make them to build up a little repository - even rough hand sketches etc?

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Neverenoughwatches Distinguished Member

Neverenoughwatches

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, Waggy said:

Good day,

I have several watches with broken or missing stems, do any of the users here know if there is somewhere (other than a pot luck google search) where I could find drawings of stems? If the watch comes with a broken stem I can reverse engineer the stem and make one (when I get good enough that is), but if it is completely missing does anyone know where I can get a drawing. Failing this, does anyone know the best method to go about making a stem from scratch without an example or drawing to start from?

Maybe people could share their drawings with the group as they make them to build up a little repository - even rough hand sketches etc?

Yes mate as Nev has shown  balancestaff and stem.com  you could also search out old ronda and dcn catalogues ito buy in case the site closes down which it did temporarily a little while back. Also here but stem.com is very useful if you have a stem you want to identify, up to two dimensions can be chosen to bring up lists to narrow your search. 

https://vintagewatchparts.net/ronda-balance-staff-catalogue/

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JohnR725 Distinguished Member

JohnR725

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10 hours ago, oldhippy said:

In my days you used to be able to by watch stem blanks, have you looked on the suppliers sites to see if you can still get them.

Yes in those earlier days of you might have to make something things were available like that all sorts of interesting things. But as we move into the generation of you can just order it online all of that is slowly disappeared. For instance even the Swiss in their watchmaking books earlier versions will explain how to make a stem the later versions won't even cover that. Which is interesting if you look at the videos of their schools they spend a lot of time learning how to make stuff but they don't put it in the books anymore. Oh and thinking about the book in multiple generations apparently this question is come up in the past and I've attached a PDF of the chapter that's no longer available in later versions on how to make a stem.

Then in the earlier days there were material books with all kinds of useful information such as bestfit and others. Often times they would list stems staffs other things by size. For one thing is even if you can't find your exact stem you can at least get one and modify it. At isn't there is something really close.

Here's an example of the dimensions that the bestfit book Has

image.thumb.png.10860d388628318cee65a530857b6f40.png

 

But if you're dealing with anything vintage identifying it is really the least of your problems because even if you identify a vintage watch no guarantee that anyone ever stocked parts for that watch. There always seems to be an assumption that if I can identify it parts are available but that isn't necessarily true. Plus if the watch has worn out a little bit then the original staff size wouldn't be right anyway. Which is why a lot of companies made oversize stems to compensate for that.

 

 

 

 

 

image.png

making a stem.pdf

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