Trying to gauge the quality of my services because i'm being offered my first paid gigs. How's this reading look for a 7s26 movement?

[Neverenoughwatches]

10 minutes ago, Birbdad said:

Well i have serviced 2 movements. I can tell you one thing, If he'd come to me with some vintage swiss family heirloom thing i wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. I know the 7s26 and the nh36 and the 7006 inside and out. I dont' even have a service sheet up when i work on these movements now. I'm dipping my toe in and seeing how it goes. A lot of watchmakers just will not work on seikos and that's why this guys come to me. he's given the thing to two watchmakers who threw it in a drawer for a year and did nothing to it which is a weirdly common thing i hear from people desperately looking for a watchmaker. 

This aint' gonna be my job but i do enjoy it, seem to be pretty good at it now and it can break up the monotony of my art job which i enjoy but i like doing other things too.

One reason a watchrepairer might have ignored the work, the cost to service compared to a new replacement . An example i have , I've been asked to make furniture a few times,  i used to do a little of it when i was younger, but still get asked now and then. My answer is always " no sorry, i cannot justify the cost to you for me to make it, buy something off the shelf already pre-made ". Unless someone had a real love of the watch to be repaired most will turn a price down. 

11 minutes ago, tomh207 said:

It is funny the situation with watchmakers out there. I get it if the service costs more than the watch is worth and they tell the customer straight up. I don’t get that they then still turn the customer away even when they have said they are happy to pay. My best friend from Army days in in the same boat you describe Col, seiko 5 with 4912 movement, no one will touch it including seiko. He is muttering about sending it to me to look at for him though the postage from Australia to Scotland and back probably covers the value of the watch.

i hope it works out, if it does look like it’s going ok look at getting some sort of liability insurance though. Probably not going to be an issue doing a couple of watches a year but by the sounds of it you could get busy very quickly, especially when the word gets around.

 

Tom

Old Hippy quoted around £150 which i thought was very cheap liability cover. There must be a payout limit on that and an excess as well.

[Razz]

7 hours ago, Birbdad said:

Thanks for the advice everybody. 
That said, I made this thread mainly because I wanted to see whether that was a good service and result for this movement and I think only one person has even commented on it haha. It's more become a thread about what i should charge and warranty.

Am i correct in thinking for a 7s26 movement a delta of 8 with amplitude in the 285 range at full wind (The timing i posted was probably close to half wind.) is pretty damn good for this movement? I have no clue what the mechanical limit of accuracy for the 7s26 is. I know the're basically totally unregulated from the factory and I can get them a lot more accurate than factory settings with a proper oiling and adjustment, the latter alone makes me think I'm worthy of being paid for this work. If there's room for improvement I would like to know if it's even possible to get the delta lower than six or something on a 7s26 without altering or polishing the movement what would a perfectly done service on this low precision movement look like?

I would say you need a little more data for your numbers to compare. Full wind wait 5 minutes, take you timegrapher readings, that movement is a 53degree lift angle I beleive. Then calculate your deltas on the rate and amplitude. Check to DD and DU and then your verticals. Then do the same after 24 hours. Then wear it for a week and do it again. But for your initial readings those look pretty decent for sure as for a service to be considered successful I think.

7 hours ago, Birbdad said:

Thanks for the advice everybody. 
That said, I made this thread mainly because I wanted to see whether that was a good service and result for this movement and I think only one person has even commented on it haha. It's more become a thread about what i should charge and warranty.

Am i correct in thinking for a 7s26 movement a delta of 8 with amplitude in the 285 range at full wind (The timing i posted was probably close to half wind.) is pretty damn good for this movement? I have no clue what the mechanical limit of accuracy for the 7s26 is. I know the're basically totally unregulated from the factory and I can get them a lot more accurate than factory settings with a proper oiling and adjustment, the latter alone makes me think I'm worthy of being paid for this work. If there's room for improvement I would like to know if it's even possible to get the delta lower than six or something on a 7s26 without altering or polishing the movement what would a perfectly done service on this low precision movement look like?

I would say you need a little more data for your numbers to compare. Full wind wait 5 minutes, take you timegrapher readings, that movement is a 53degree lift angle I beleive. Then calculate your deltas on the rate and amplitude. Check to DD and DU and then your verticals. Then do the same after 24 hours. Then wear it for a week and do it again. But for your initial readings those look pretty decent for sure as for a service to be considered successful I think.

7 hours ago, Birbdad said:

Thanks for the advice everybody. 
That said, I made this thread mainly because I wanted to see whether that was a good service and result for this movement and I think only one person has even commented on it haha. It's more become a thread about what i should charge and warranty.

Am i correct in thinking for a 7s26 movement a delta of 8 with amplitude in the 285 range at full wind (The timing i posted was probably close to half wind.) is pretty damn good for this movement? I have no clue what the mechanical limit of accuracy for the 7s26 is. I know the're basically totally unregulated from the factory and I can get them a lot more accurate than factory settings with a proper oiling and adjustment, the latter alone makes me think I'm worthy of being paid for this work. If there's room for improvement I would like to know if it's even possible to get the delta lower than six or something on a 7s26 without altering or polishing the movement what would a perfectly done service on this low precision movement look like?

I would say you need a little more data for your numbers to compare. Full wind wait 5 minutes, take you timegrapher readings, that movement is a 53degree lift angle I beleive. Then calculate your deltas on the rate and amplitude. Check to DD and DU and then your verticals. Then do the same after 24 hours. Then wear it for a week and do it again. But for your initial readings those look pretty decent for sure as for a service to be considered successful I think.

[JohnR725]

7 hours ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

A closer simulation to wristworn could still be achieved with a simple on off electronic timer for the rest periods. Its not perfect just a little closer.

I believe some of the auto winding boxes that people by. Those extremely expensive boxes that have such a cheap circuits inside of them. They look pretty on the outside but are very expensive but they're designed to keep your watch wound up but not wound up continuously because of course continuously winding a watch is not considered good either even though that's was done in the shops so realistically you should probably have a number of conditions running at full winder and then as you said put a timer on turn it off for 10 hours to simulate off the wrist for sleeping or when somebody got home maybe they take their watch off until next day after all the watch should build a run a certain quantity of time after it's been wound up

but one of the problems with automatic watches today are is how active are you? Yes I know where all active but are we active enough to have an automatic watch. If you sit at a desk job do you move your arm enough for instance to occasionally get comebacks because people are unhappy the watches are running you put on the timing machine it has practically no amplitude because those people need to manually wind there watch in the morning when I get up to make sure it has enough power to run and the automatic is just there to supplement.

 

 

 

[Neverenoughwatches]

14 minutes ago, JohnR725 said:

I believe some of the auto winding boxes that people by. Those extremely expensive boxes that have such a cheap circuits inside of them. They look pretty on the outside but are very expensive but they're designed to keep your watch wound up but not wound up continuously because of course continuously winding a watch is not considered good either even though that's was done in the shops so realistically you should probably have a number of conditions running at full winder and then as you said put a timer on turn it off for 10 hours to simulate off the wrist for sleeping or when somebody got home maybe they take their watch off until next day after all the watch should build a run a certain quantity of time after it's been wound up

but one of the problems with automatic watches today are is how active are you? Yes I know where all active but are we active enough to have an automatic watch. If you sit at a desk job do you move your arm enough for instance to occasionally get comebacks because people are unhappy the watches are running you put on the timing machine it has practically no amplitude because those people need to manually wind there watch in the morning when I get up to make sure it has enough power to run and the automatic is just there to supplement.

 

 

 

Not so much of a problem with trialling manual wound watches. Here the winder is just simulating keeping time in hand different positions. Maybe some sort of motor programmer that can stop , start and reverse. The repairer can then wind up the watch each morning for a week, better than risking wearing someone's watch.

[Birbdad]

11 hours ago, Razz said:

I would say you need a little more data for your numbers to compare. Full wind wait 5 minutes, take you timegrapher readings, that movement is a 53degree lift angle I beleive. Then calculate your deltas on the rate and amplitude. Check to DD and DU and then your verticals. Then do the same after 24 hours. Then wear it for a week and do it again. But for your initial readings those look pretty decent for sure as for a service to be considered successful I think.

 

So that is at about half wind, maybe a little more after it had been running for a few days on the wrist. I'd done earlier timings i didn't post but they were more or less the same including one at an hour from full wind which had amplitude in the low 80's.

Having the week of wrist time thing won't be a luxury if i take my first paid job. If this is merely decent, what would the delta of a stellar service on this movement be? I have no idea what the mechanical limit of this low precision movement is and it's info i haven't really been able to find from anywhere. Obviously if my services could improve i would like to improve them.

[JohnR725]

20 hours ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

I became disillusioned with the timegraphing machine a good while back, chasing amplitude on said watch which i think was unnecessary in this case. It also feeds my ocd which is not healthy for me.

20 hours ago, tomh207 said:

The way I see the timegrapher is it’s an imperfect tool,

did you know that one of my favorite amusements with the discussion group is the obsession with amplitude. the timing machine is a beautiful device but it's like any other tool it's only a wonderful tool if you grasp what its purpose is. But this group feels the purpose of the timing machine is to please it and worship it if it can get amplitude over 300° anything less and you should step in front of a moving train or something. This group has such a bizarre obsession with amplitude.

then I go to work and I have an obsessed boss he's obsessed with timekeeping. Who cares of the watches 100 years old it should bill to keep perfect time. I spend a heck of a lot of time getting watches to keep really good time. We even offer a service for a fee I'm the skip over what that is of regulating a watch a chronometer time specifications okay he probably doesn't use the word chronometer unless it's really close to zero. Except of course that's not actually what the chronometer certifications about.

 

20 hours ago, tomh207 said:

Another funny thing, none (as far as I can find out) of the observatory’s or COSC use timegrapher for any of the certification process.

did you know that chronometer certification existed before timing machines did so will be hard to have a specifications specify a timing machine when it didn't exist yet? So what is chronometer certification what does it really mean? It means the watch keeps time in a variety of conditions like temperatures. Then ideally although I don't think that's in the specification it should keep a consistent rate of time. Especially in the case of a Marine chronometer where you're navigating so in other words if it's two seconds fast that's fine as long as every single day it's two seconds fast so the end of several months at sea you know exactly how many days from when you started you know exactly how fast you're going. That's actually more important than actually keeping time you just need to know exactly what time it is to figure out where you are.

to understand the chronometer certification you need to look up the specifications of  ISO-3159. the document itself is somewhat amusing in that one of the copies that I have is licensed to accompany so I can't or will not release it here and then on page 2 is a reference to copyright. It looks like they really aggressively enforce their copyrights so let's do this another way like let's do a search and find this instead. Those of you want to look at the chronometer certification standard.

https://cdn.standards.iteh.ai/samples/54804/5a102f6759ed4df194254936a12171da/ISO-3159-2009.pdf

the timing machine is a wonderful diagnostic tool not something that you should worship like a God. It shouldn't determine whether you live or die or your OCD kicks in if that's a problem for you perhaps you should seek out psychiatric help and watch repair is not your hobby. Or even your profession as you waste a lot of time trying to please a timing machine.

[Birbdad]

I do find the dismissiveness of timegraphers kinda weird. 

I want good amplitude because it can be a pretty good measuring mark of the quality of my service. If i have a watch i can routinely get over 270 on, and then i service one and it's only 220, then i know i screwed up, possibly forgot to oil a pivot, this will cause unnecessary wear on the watch over time. Without the timegrapher i wouldn't have noticed i forgot it.

I also want my watches to be as accurate as possible. I can get results on where my delta is and how well it's keeping in seconds and not days with a timegrapher.

Then there's also the diagnostic usefulness of it. With one vintage seiko i worked on it was keeping ok time but i could clearly see something was off on the timegrapher as my beats were sorta randomly out of sync. Took it apart again to find a carpet fiber wrapped around the escape wheel. that was almost impossible to see. I'd have just settled for it but the timegrapher let me know it was there and the delta went down by like 50% once i removed the thing.

 

Really though, these are time pieces, i want them as accurate as possible. I really don't know how people do that and know what to adjust and what to change the rate to without one and not spend days at it.

[Neverenoughwatches]

11 minutes ago, Birbdad said:

If i have a watch i can routinely get over 270 on, and then i service one and it's only 220, then i know i screwed up, possibly forgot to oil a pivot, this will cause unnecessary wear on the watch over time. Without the timegrapher i wouldn't have noticed i forgot it.

Theres a lot more to a low amplitude than a poor service can cause.  The timegrapher is not dismissed as such ( with me anyway ) . Just used in a different way compared to when i first got it.  I just dont rely on it completely and wont become an amplitude slave to it.

[Birbdad]

14 minutes ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

Theres a lot more to a low amplitude than a poor service can cause.  The timegrapher is not dismissed as such ( with me anyway ) . Just used in a different way compared to when i first got it.  I just dont rely on it completely and wont become an amplitude slave to it.

Yeah i get that but i wouldn't know there even IS low amplitude about the thing. So far i've only worked on movements i'm very familiar with that can get an amplitude with a good service i can pretty much predict. 

Like when it's time to put my bellmatic on the thing, it seems in good condition, if the amplitude isn't in the 270 range i'll do a lot of troubleshooting. If i run out of ideas on what can improve it i'll live with it.

I definitely just don't work on near as many vintage and questionable history watches as you do.

Edited January 23 by Birbdad

[Neverenoughwatches]

3 minutes ago, Birbdad said:

Yeah i get that but i wouldn't know there even IS low amplitude about the thing. So far i've only worked on movements i'm very familiar with that can get an amplitude with a good service i can pretty much predict. 

Like when it's time to put my bellmatic on the thing, it seems in good condition, if the amplitude isn't in the 270 range i'll do a lot of troubleshooting. If i run out of ideas on what can improve it i'll live with it.

I definitely just don't work on near as many vintage and questionable history watches as you do.

We evolve in different ways and thats down to the types of watches that we tinker with. I got frustrated sometimes with low amplitudes and decided its not such a huge problem.  A perfect example is the raketa i mentioned earlier. It only reaches around 230° after one hour of run at full wind, at 24 hours 180° dd and du the verticals a little less, this could be because of dull balance pivots. Yet it keeps good time averaging around 8-10  seconds fast per day when worn, a touch on the regulator might even improve that. It also fully unwinds itself which suggest that the friction is low, i didnt see a reason to chase amplitude when it happily plods on at it own steady pace. In my eyes its not running itself into the ground with a high amplitude, the torque through the train will not be to an excess and the balance swings are relatively short ( yes isochronism can suffer when they become too short ) so the pivot travel and wear is lower all of that adds up to less potential wear just about everywhere. Higher amplitude pushing through must equate to higher torque loads on everything. 

[tomh207]

19 hours ago, Birbdad said:

I do find the dismissiveness of timegraphers kinda weird. 

I want good amplitude because it can be a pretty good measuring mark of the quality of my service. If i have a watch i can routinely get over 270 on, and then i service one and it's only 220, then i know i screwed up, possibly forgot to oil a pivot, this will cause unnecessary wear on the watch over time. Without the timegrapher i wouldn't have noticed i forgot it.

I also want my watches to be as accurate as possible. I can get results on where my delta is and how well it's keeping in seconds and not days with a timegrapher.

Then there's also the diagnostic usefulness of it. With one vintage seiko i worked on it was keeping ok time but i could clearly see something was off on the timegrapher as my beats were sorta randomly out of sync. Took it apart again to find a carpet fiber wrapped around the escape wheel. that was almost impossible to see. I'd have just settled for it but the timegrapher let me know it was there and the delta went down by like 50% once i removed the thing.

 

Really though, these are time pieces, i want them as accurate as possible. I really don't know how people do that and know what to adjust and what to change the rate to without one and not spend days at it.

If I came across as dismissing the timegrapher I apologise that was not my intention. I meant that it is a tool that is not the ultimate arbiter of timekeeping and that other checks such as you do yourself tuning the watch over a week whilst wearing it or simulating the same should be used too. Also not all watches were designed and manufactured to have 300 degrees of amplitude at T+1 and 250 degrees T+25. As @Neverenoughwatches says some of the old soviet watches you’ll struggle to get high amplitude but they are still good timekeepers. Seiko movements are a lot better but suffer from the same thing, the amplitude is generally lower on average for these movements compared to a Grand Seiko or higher end Swiss movements. This is manufactured tolerances in play. 
 

at the end of the day we all have to assess what we think is acceptable to us for a particular movement and work to that accordingly and minimise unreasonable expectations. A bit like cars really, I don’t expect my old fiat uno rust bucket to perform as well as my 2016 jaguar but still would expect that the Porsche 911 carrera I had from 1989 to still outperform the jaguar.

 

Tom

[Birbdad]

8 minutes ago, tomh207 said:

If I came across as dismissing the timegrapher I apologise that was not my intention. I meant that it is a tool that is not the ultimate arbiter of timekeeping and that other checks such as you do yourself tuning the watch over a week whilst wearing it or simulating the same should be used too. Also not all watches were designed and manufactured to have 300 degrees of amplitude at T+1 and 250 degrees T+25. As @Neverenoughwatches says some of the old soviet watches you’ll struggle to get high amplitude but they are still good timekeepers. Seiko movements are a lot better but suffer from the same thing, the amplitude is generally lower on average for these movements compared to a Grand Seiko or higher end Swiss movements. This is manufactured tolerances in play. 
 

at the end of the day we all have to assess what we think is acceptable to us for a particular movement and work to that accordingly and minimise unreasonable expectations. A bit like cars really, I don’t expect my old fiat uno rust bucket to perform as well as my 2016 jaguar but still would expect that the Porsche 911 carrera I had from 1989 to still outperform the jaguar.

 

Tom

So this is sorta my question as to the quality of my service. I keep hearing seikos are "low amplitude". In fact when i first finished this service i was disappointed to see 220 amplitude and i got about a dozen responses elsewhere of basically "Typical seiko amplitude, they suck, they run at low amplitude. I figured since i took a 2 months break in the middle of lubricating this watch the thing probably just had to run and get the lubrication in the right places. Sure enough i woke up the next morning to an amplitude of almost 280.

I've now serviced technically 10 of these movements and one that's even older and my amplitude runs from 275 to 290...meanwhile i got a bunch of professional watchmakers (elsewhere, not here) telling me they struggle to squeeze 240 out of these movements. 

They tell me they're not accurate but the last service i did on this one before it dropped and broke over a year and a half it never deviated more than one second a day with it's average deviation being about a half a second over the half dozen times I would do a week or two of timings.

It's obviously too early to tell as i'm only on day 2 of my final on the wrist timing and day one it lost 1 second, day two it lost 2 seconds so i'm probably gonna get similar results.  These results make me think i'm doing some very solid services probably. I get REALLY good results, better than anybody i know who ever works on these in both accuracy and amplitude.

After a week's up i'll post my daily deviation timings. I will be really interested to see how this one comes out after my hairspring job.

Edited January 24 by Birbdad

[Neverenoughwatches]

8 minutes ago, Birbdad said:

So this is sorta my question as to the quality of my service. I keep hearing seikos are "low amplitude". In fact when i first finished this service i was disappointed to see 220 amplitude and i got about a dozen responses elsewhere of basically "Typical seiko amplitude, they suck, they run at low amplitude. I figured since i took a 2 months break in the middle of lubricating this watch the thing probably just had to run and get the lubrication in the right places. Sure enough i woke up the next morning to an amplitude of almost 280.

I've now serviced technically 10 of these movements and one that's even older and my amplitude runs from 275 to 290...meanwhile i got a bunch of professional watchmakers (elsewhere, not here) telling me they struggle to squeeze 240 out of these movements. 

They tell me they're not accurate but the last service i did on this one before it dropped and broke over a year and a half it never deviated more than one second a day with it's average deviation being about a half a second over the half dozen times I would do a week or two of timings.

It's obviously too early to tell as i'm only on day 2 of my final on the wrist timing and day one it lost 1 second, day two it lost 2 seconds so i'm probably gonna get similar results.  These results make me think i'm doing some very solid services probably. I get REALLY good results, better than anybody i know who ever works on these in both accuracy and amplitude.

After a week's up i'll post my daily deviation timings. I will be really interested to see how this one comes out after my hairspring job.

I've heard the same before about the typical low amplitude on seiko watches. I can't comment personally as i dont have experience repairing with them. But the new ones (2 year old ) i have tick nicely in the high 290s

[Birbdad]

7 minutes ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

I've heard the same before about the typical low amplitude on seiko watches. I can't comment personally as i dont have experience repairing with them. But the new ones (2 year old ) i have tick nicely in the high 290s

Are these from the factory or ones you've personally serviced? I've only tested one from the factory and it was at about the 270 mark. A very efficient healthy movement. I really don't know where this low amplitude stuff comes from but I really just don't think it's true.

[Neverenoughwatches]

6 minutes ago, Birbdad said:

Are these from the factory or ones you've personally serviced? I've only tested one from the factory and it was at about the 270 mark. A very efficient healthy movement. I really don't know where this low amplitude stuff comes from but I really just don't think it's true.

Just from the factory, i haven't had the back off a seiko as yet.

[tomh207]

10 minutes ago, Birbdad said:

Are these from the factory or ones you've personally serviced? I've only tested one from the factory and it was at about the 270 mark. A very efficient healthy movement. I really don't know where this low amplitude stuff comes from but I really just don't think it's true.

I think the low amplitude comments about seiko movements are from the people that have unrealistic amplitude expectations. I love the seiko movements, not been servicing them yet but from the factory I have generally seen from 240-270 amplitude and running them for a few days I have seen this climb a bit. I find that I can get them regulated to less than a handful of seconds a day at worst. As @JohnR725 points out over and over, don’t become a slave to the timegrapher and don’t worship amplitude, not all watches are made the same and look at the overall timekeeping of the movement, simulating a week of normal use or actually using the watch is much more useful as long as the timegrapher doesn’t show any egregious problems.

 

Tom

[Birbdad]

18 minutes ago, tomh207 said:

I think the low amplitude comments about seiko movements are from the people that have unrealistic amplitude expectations. I love the seiko movements, not been servicing them yet but from the factory I have generally seen from 240-270 amplitude and running them for a few days I have seen this climb a bit. I find that I can get them regulated to less than a handful of seconds a day at worst. As @JohnR725 points out over and over, don’t become a slave to the timegrapher and don’t worship amplitude, not all watches are made the same and look at the overall timekeeping of the movement, simulating a week of normal use or actually using the watch is much more useful as long as the timegrapher doesn’t show any egregious problems.

 

Tom

Oh believe me i'm not. But if i have a movement in front of me in great condition that i know can easily get 270+, i'm gonna make sure i get there. Anything above that is just a bonus. If i don't get to 270, and there's nothing mechanically wrong with it, I know my service needs a second look because I probably forgot a pivot or something.

[JohnR725]

8 minutes ago, Birbdad said:

I really don't know where this low amplitude stuff comes from but I really just don't think it's true.

one of the problems with Seiko is the lack of specifications. Like for instance where do they specify the amplitude at all? There is a specifications somewhere but I'm not sure I should even share it again with the group crawled after run to the nearest pub and drink a heck of a lot because well you just got to survive not without several stiff drinks.

as far as Seiko goes this is the only place I've ever heard of where the reference in amplitude. Somebody else found it and pointed out to me he was very excited about this as it's proof that Seiko does not expect you to have 300° of amplitude.

 

oh and then there's the other little problem something that Seiko does which is known to cause a decrease in amplitude. Other than people suggesting rumors that an answer exists as to why they do this I've never seen the answer. So what can we do to lose amplitude when servicing a watch?

so here's a lubrication guide for Seiko and pallet fork pivots what oil are the using of error? then why do we typically not lubricate those pivots?

then I've attached a PDF the closest will come the Seiko basically the OEM division of Seiko. then on PDF page 2 of this document technical specifications. How to interpret technical specifications? so you notice that they do not specify an amplitude and they give us static accuracy of - 20 ~ + 40 seconds per day. on the surface this appears to be very very bad very bad except what exactly does it mean? It's a range and your watch should keep time within that range. but what exactly does that number really mean?

now are going to have another problem we need to compare Seiko to something else but I don't have a good something else to compare to and whatever else I have doesn't have the specifications are looking for so let's compare to Omega. Make as nice technical specifications for all of the watches except there are some that they don't have actual specifications so they have generic specifications which still don't exactly compare to Seiko but close enough.

as I said this isn't a great comparison but as you can see they're only looking at the watch and three positions. At least as far as their timing specifications go they would obviously evaluate the watch in all six positions. stabilization time in between you rotating air microphone around and they have a suggested measuring time. Although in their later documents they shorten the stabilization time to 20 seconds and increase the measuring time to 40 seconds. But everything else is the same. Then we get something that Seiko doesn't have a target range? Then all the usual stuff except amplitudes at 24 hours and I don't see the maximum amplitude or your terminated listed?

what is interesting is if you have a discussion with somebody who used to work in a Swatch group service center. hen asked about what they did for timing they would have the spec sheet like this  but they don't exactly follow the spec sheet. depending upon which watch their servicing I believe they have some sort of a quantity of their supposed to produce. There even supposed to have come back watches failing from quality control because if they don't it indicates their spending too much time on the watch. So how long does it take for you to regulate a watch anyway? Obviously too much time for Swatch group as they just have to get it within the range. That does not mean they're aiming at the target rate or zero they just have to get it within the range of the specification. Which is the problem with the Seiko specification that is a range is nothing that says Seiko won't try to regulate the zero but conceivably they may or may not. You can regulate at the zero they're just making watches in quantity and they regulate to the range of the watch should keep time within that specific range.

 

14 minutes ago, Birbdad said:

Oh believe me i'm not. But if i have a movement in front of me in great condition that i know can easily get 270+, i'm gonna make sure i get there. Anything above that is just a bonus. If i don't get to 270, and there's nothing mechanically wrong with it, I know my service needs a second look because I probably forgot a pivot or something.

 

as you brought up lack of lubrication on the pivot before do you recall how much amplitude you lost by not lubricating a pivot?

NH35_TG.pdf

[Birbdad]

38 minutes ago, JohnR725 said:

one of the problems with Seiko is the lack of specifications. Like for instance where do they specify the amplitude at all? There is a specifications somewhere but I'm not sure I should even share it again with the group crawled after run to the nearest pub and drink a heck of a lot because well you just got to survive not without several stiff drinks.

as far as Seiko goes this is the only place I've ever heard of where the reference in amplitude. Somebody else found it and pointed out to me he was very excited about this as it's proof that Seiko does not expect you to have 300° of amplitude.

 

oh and then there's the other little problem something that Seiko does which is known to cause a decrease in amplitude. Other than people suggesting rumors that an answer exists as to why they do this I've never seen the answer. So what can we do to lose amplitude when servicing a watch?

so here's a lubrication guide for Seiko and pallet fork pivots what oil are the using of error? then why do we typically not lubricate those pivots?

then I've attached a PDF the closest will come the Seiko basically the OEM division of Seiko. then on PDF page 2 of this document technical specifications. How to interpret technical specifications? so you notice that they do not specify an amplitude and they give us static accuracy of - 20 ~ + 40 seconds per day. on the surface this appears to be very very bad very bad except what exactly does it mean? It's a range and your watch should keep time within that range. but what exactly does that number really mean?

now are going to have another problem we need to compare Seiko to something else but I don't have a good something else to compare to and whatever else I have doesn't have the specifications are looking for so let's compare to Omega. Make as nice technical specifications for all of the watches except there are some that they don't have actual specifications so they have generic specifications which still don't exactly compare to Seiko but close enough.

as I said this isn't a great comparison but as you can see they're only looking at the watch and three positions. At least as far as their timing specifications go they would obviously evaluate the watch in all six positions. stabilization time in between you rotating air microphone around and they have a suggested measuring time. Although in their later documents they shorten the stabilization time to 20 seconds and increase the measuring time to 40 seconds. But everything else is the same. Then we get something that Seiko doesn't have a target range? Then all the usual stuff except amplitudes at 24 hours and I don't see the maximum amplitude or your terminated listed?

what is interesting is if you have a discussion with somebody who used to work in a Swatch group service center. hen asked about what they did for timing they would have the spec sheet like this  but they don't exactly follow the spec sheet. depending upon which watch their servicing I believe they have some sort of a quantity of their supposed to produce. There even supposed to have come back watches failing from quality control because if they don't it indicates their spending too much time on the watch. So how long does it take for you to regulate a watch anyway? Obviously too much time for Swatch group as they just have to get it within the range. That does not mean they're aiming at the target rate or zero they just have to get it within the range of the specification. Which is the problem with the Seiko specification that is a range is nothing that says Seiko won't try to regulate the zero but conceivably they may or may not. You can regulate at the zero they're just making watches in quantity and they regulate to the range of the watch should keep time within that specific range.

 

 

as you brought up lack of lubrication on the pivot before do you recall how much amplitude you lost by not lubricating a pivot?

NH35_TG.pdf 2.34 MB · 0 downloads

Yeah it's SO WEIRD how they always even on modern service sheets recommend you lubricate the pallet fork. I don't do it of course but they also seem to put 1900 on pivots where nobody will say to use anything but hp1300 on.  They also recommend 1900 on the pallet stones which seems...weird. 

As for which pivot, this was awhile ago, i think it was center wheel? I know it wasn't one with a shock jewel. I was just getting a major amplitude loss in one of the dial positions and somebody said i definitely forgot something, saw the dry jewel, oiled it, immediately fixed it. This was on one of my first services.

It's also wild they are fine with amplitude that low on a 4006. A guy recommended a vid to me as a guide for the one i'm working on now and he gets 270. 

I've never heard 300 as any sort of baseline for amplitude, it's always "Get 270 or higher, if it's not 270, you got more work to do." i dont' think that's universally true but that's what i hear enough that i just go for that.

Edited January 24 by Birbdad

[JohnR725]

1 hour ago, Birbdad said:

Yeah it's SO WEIRD how they always even on modern service sheets recommend you lubricate the pallet fork

they don't actually always specify the oil the pallet fork pivots I can't remember which caliber was put on one version I think I had three versions of the tech sheet where one version was yes another version was no and the third was yes again. For instance here's another Seiko and what oil for the pallet fork pivots

1 hour ago, Birbdad said:

As for which pivot, this was awhile ago, i think it was center wheel? I know it wasn't one with a shock jewel. I was just getting a major amplitude loss in one of the dial positions and somebody said i definitely forgot something, saw the dry jewel, oiled it, immediately fixed it. This was on one of my first services.

you want to have some fun try an experiment.  I'll help you to speed up your experiment I did it with a 6497 Swiss not the clone clean the watch lubricated the keyless and everything else was dry. Then I put it on the timing machine and slowly went through lubricating the watch. But all speed this up for you you can lubricate the keyless the mainspring just don't lubricate the entire gear train. Or the balance or the escapement see what happens. Now conceivably for my experiment if you're using a seven jewel watch versus the 17 it may have a spectacular difference But with jewels it was rather interesting.Then I went through oiling the gear train basically one wheel at a time all the way to the balance pivots and then finally the escapement. No I'm not going to tell you what the outcome is you can try an experiment see what happens. Then I went and clean the thing and started over and started with the balance wheel but it wasn't as fun going in that direction it's more fun to go the other way.

 

[Neverenoughwatches]

22 minutes ago, JohnR725 said:

they don't actually always specify the oil the pallet fork pivots I can't remember which caliber was put on one version I think I had three versions of the tech sheet where one version was yes another version was no and the third was yes again. For instance here's another Seiko and what oil for the pallet fork pivots

you want to have some fun try an experiment.  I'll help you to speed up your experiment I did it with a 6497 Swiss not the clone clean the watch lubricated the keyless and everything else was dry. Then I put it on the timing machine and slowly went through lubricating the watch. But all speed this up for you you can lubricate the keyless the mainspring just don't lubricate the entire gear train. Or the balance or the escapement see what happens. Now conceivably for my experiment if you're using a seven jewel watch versus the 17 it may have a spectacular difference But with jewels it was rather interesting.Then I went through oiling the gear train basically one wheel at a time all the way to the balance pivots and then finally the escapement. No I'm not going to tell you what the outcome is you can try an experiment see what happens. Then I went and clean the thing and started over and started with the balance wheel but it wasn't as fun going in that direction it's more fun to go the other way.

 

I tried something like this but not quite as detailed. I often would timegraph the movement before oiling it . I wont spoil the surprise.

[nickelsilver]

42 minutes ago, JohnR725 said:

they don't actually always specify the oil the pallet fork pivots I can't remember which caliber was put on one version I think I had three versions of the tech sheet where one version was yes another version was no and the third was yes again. For instance here's another Seiko and what oil for the pallet fork pivots

 

 

Did you mean to attach a different image? Looks to me like they are indicating the pallet stones, not the hole jewels there.

[JohnR725]

7 hours ago, nickelsilver said:

Did you mean to attach a different image? Looks to me like they are indicating the pallet stones, not the hole jewels there.

if I remember right were discussing poor amplitude on Seiko watches or reasons why perhaps they do have poor amplitude. so I was commenting on Seiko's strange practice of sometimes lubricating pallet fork pivots. I can never remember which watch it was but one of the watches I had several versions of the tech sheet where sometimes they did sometimes they didn't and they don't as typical watch companies never explained why they do anything.

Then because I like these particular colorful sheets here's one and pallet no oil on the pivots like what we were taught in school.

okay what about this one is that oil I see suggested on the pallet fork pivots

so it looks much nicer if they're both together and those were just the first you sheets I saw I go through the rest of their stuff sometimes they do sometimes they don't. But we were taught it reduces the amplitude and Seiko is at least some of them ever reputation of low amplitude.

Where I work my boss likes to charge a fee to regulate watches chronometers specifications. Al Qaeda is not quite what he says but he likes to regulate them to keep really good time. So yes he regulate Seiko's and often times what he does with those is just put some 9415 on the escapement or rinses off the pallet fork for instance. Doesn't take the whole watch apart but little bit of proper oil here there and a little better regulation and the Seiko is keeping much better time of amplitude looks much better.

Yes I know it's a Band-Aid fix but it's what we do. But it also brings up another catch with watches of from time to time they need to be cleaned how old are the Seiko is that are keeping poor amplitude? Yes I know you purchase it new from your local jewelry store but how long has it been sitting in the display case. It's one of the amusing things with a watch they don't have an expiring date is no notice in the box says this watch was packaged on this year and will need to be refreshed five years from now.

 

[Birbdad]

16 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

they don't actually always specify the oil the pallet fork pivots I can't remember which caliber was put on one version I think I had three versions of the tech sheet where one version was yes another version was no and the third was yes again. For instance here's another Seiko and what oil for the pallet fork pivots

you want to have some fun try an experiment.  I'll help you to speed up your experiment I did it with a 6497 Swiss not the clone clean the watch lubricated the keyless and everything else was dry. Then I put it on the timing machine and slowly went through lubricating the watch. But all speed this up for you you can lubricate the keyless the mainspring just don't lubricate the entire gear train. Or the balance or the escapement see what happens. Now conceivably for my experiment if you're using a seven jewel watch versus the 17 it may have a spectacular difference But with jewels it was rather interesting.Then I went through oiling the gear train basically one wheel at a time all the way to the balance pivots and then finally the escapement. No I'm not going to tell you what the outcome is you can try an experiment see what happens. Then I went and clean the thing and started over and started with the balance wheel but it wasn't as fun going in that direction it's more fun to go the other way.

 

Why don't you just tell me
One of the things i have very little of is time. My goal in working on a watch is to get it pretty and on my wrist asap and running as good as possible so i generally do just that. I am curious what you found though. Just having that one unlubricated pivot dropped my amplitude by about 40 degrees in that dial position. 

 

One thing that blew my mind in increasing amplitude was finally being able to do a PROPER and precise and perfect pallet stone oiling. My first service came out ok, it got about 270 at full wind and i finished it a bit before i got my microscope and i knew my pallet lubrication was sloppy because I was trying to do with cheap plastic loupes. I decided to do a little experiment as i knew i could have improved that and i cleaned the pallet fork and escape wheel and did a proper perfect lubrication under my scope. That alone pushed the amplitude up 25 degrees.

[Waggy]

I can see both sides of the argument (sort of) in the debate about lubricating the pallet fork pivot jewels, if we need to do it for the other wheels in the power train to increase amplitude and reduce pivot wear, then why not for the pallet fork also as it is moving the fastest out of all the wheels. On the other hand, I believe the reason for not oiling it is to reduce the likelihood of the oil finding its way to the balance spring - please correct me if I am wrong. If this is the reason, then how do we explain oiling the cap jewels on the balance, they are closer to the balance spring so more likelihood of the oil finding its way to the balance spring from there, and there are 2 of them so twice the risk?

I would be genuinely interested in the real reason with some logical reasoning, hopefully it's not just a 'we just do it that way because we always did it that way'

Edited January 25 by Waggy