Affordable Mainspring winders

[Terrinecold]

Hello,

most service video I see disassemble the barrel and lubricate the mainspring. At this point I do not have a mainspring winder. 
The movements I am working with are st36 (clone of 6497-2 or OP-XI) do you know if one of the winders in the affordable chinese sets would work for one. 
I also have an NH35A that I plan to practice on when I am happy with what I can do in the larger and simpler ST 36. Same question applies.This is the one I was looking at but if there are other recommendations I will gladly follow them
https://a.aliexpress.com/_msMF3xc

[Curare]

Hi, They are calibre specific, BUT you can use them on other calibres if the arbour and barrel size are similar and the hand is the correct way, Eg: left or right hand wound.

I have a similar set. The one labeled "8200" I use on most Seiko's but not all, I have done Seiko 7005 7009 7019 7S26 with success.

Being cheaper you can modify them to suit, eg drilling out the centre hole so a larger winding arbour will fit in a different barrel etc.

They are not as easy to use as you see on the Youtube videos, some will escape during the process, I still hand wind manual movements but I use mine for automatic movement.

See attached file which will shed some light on what winders have which arbours L/H or R/H and barrel sizes.

Your Welcome

CJ

 

HJ-Mainspring-Winders.pdf

[Terrinecold]

Thanks for your reply so the set may be useful for the seiko movement but for the st36 it seems that none will have a arbour the right size. 
I’ll look up how to hand wind them

[Mercurial]

Cuare’s reply covers the Chinese winder set and their capabilities very well. 

An alternative to getting calibre specific sets like these is to slowly build a set of quality Swiss winders. 

They are sold individually, so you could buy a Bergeon handle and the 2 correct diameter and wind direction winders you need now initially, and buy the other sizes as you need them over time. 
 

If you come across a movement you lack a winder for and feel you won’t likely use that size winder often, then just buy a replacement mainspring, because they come already wound and ready to be pressed into the barrel  

You can usually sidestep the need for having both left and right winders in each size by reversing the wind of the spring as follows - wind the spring into a slightly undersized winder, push it out into the correct size winder to suit your mainspring barrel (thereby reversing its direction), and finally press it out into the mainspring barrel. 

Best Regards,

Mark

[Waggy]

56 minutes ago, Terrinecold said:

Thanks for your reply so the set may be useful for the seiko movement but for the st36 it seems that none will have a arbour the right size.

I agree with what the others are saying - I got a set of these when I was starting out and have never managed to use them, and I do a lot of Seikos. The other catch is that a lot of them have a brass arbor, which means that the hook for the spring is too soft and will wear out after a few uses, making them doubly useless.

My advice would be to save your money and put it towards a Bergeon generic set - pains me to say it, but it's the only real option, unless you get a used set of generic winders on something like eBay, but this can be a minefield, especially if you aren't 100% sure what you are looking at. I would recommend a half set, if you can afford it, or if you are building up a few at a time, then size 5, 6, 7 will cover a lot of the mens watches. As a side note, if you are doing Swiss and Japanese watches you will need right and left handed versions as the Swiss springs tend to have a right hand wind, and the Japanese tend to have a left handed wind (there are exceptions of course in each case).

If in doubt, post a picture on here before you order and people will guide you.

[Bonefixer]

From my own experience I’d say avoid these £100 sets. I got one, with steel arbors, and have had very little success. I’ve since bought a 5,6 and 7 Bergeon and have done much better. You won’t need the full 34 piece Bergeon set, and even with that there will still be some anomalies that won’t work (eg a small barrel that needs a larger winding arbor)

My tips therefore are:

Avoid Chinese sets

Get a few Bergeon if you want to have a go

Hand wind

Replace - Cousins mainspring search function is excellent. 

[HectorLooi]

I got one of the Chinese mainspring winder sets a couple of years ago. Initially, I was also of the opinion that they were useless.

But recently I worked on a couple of movements that had winders specific for that caliber and they worked perfectly. 

So the China winders are so caliber specific that they don't work as a universal winder. 

My go to winders now are the vintage K&D winders and the K&D adjustable winders. But I had to modify the arbors by cutting off the arbor hook and drilling a hole through the arbor and driving in a steel pin. Now the arbors can wind in both directions. 

I  had to adjust the lengths of the pins in the adjustable set as they were ridiculously long.

But once in awhile, I'll come across some strange mainspring that just won't fit any winder. So learning how to wind a mainspring by hand is an absolutely essential skill.

[gpraceman]

On 5/27/2024 at 10:14 AM, HectorLooi said:

I got one of the Chinese mainspring winder sets a couple of years ago. Initially, I was also of the opinion that they were useless.

But recently I worked on a couple of movements that had winders specific for that caliber and they worked perfectly. 

So the China winders are so caliber specific that they don't work as a universal winder.

You can convert them to be more universal.  I drilled out the arbor hole in some of the winders to accept larger arbors, using the generic Bergeon sizes as a guide.  I did add the Bergeon #6 and #8 arbors (you can buy these separate from the winders) to give me 3.0 mm and 3.5 mm arbors respectively, as the largest in the Chinese set was 2.7 mm. That gives me more flexibility in which arbors I can use with which winders.

Mainspring-Winder-Size-Charts.pdf

[Neverenoughwatches]

On 5/27/2024 at 5:14 PM, HectorLooi said:

I got one of the Chinese mainspring winder sets a couple of years ago. Initially, I was also of the opinion that they were useless.

But recently I worked on a couple of movements that had winders specific for that caliber and they worked perfectly. 

So the China winders are so caliber specific that they don't work as a universal winder. 

My go to winders now are the vintage K&D winders and the K&D adjustable winders. But I had to modify the arbors by cutting off the arbor hook and drilling a hole through the arbor and driving in a steel pin. Now the arbors can wind in both directions. 

I  had to adjust the lengths of the pins in the adjustable set as they were ridiculously long.

But once in awhile, I'll come across some strange mainspring that just won't fit any winder. So learning how to wind a mainspring by hand is an absolutely essential skill.

I also have the adjustable winders, good to use once you develop a technique of stopping the tongue of a mainspring from slipping around to each slot. The set i have consists of 3 but there is a deadspot of barrel size possible jumping from the medium to the large adjuster with mine,  going from 9mm to 10mm.

[levic900rr]

I know this is a hot take, but I've had decent success hand winding springs back into barrels. I go really slowly, and I wear new (tight) finger cots. I haven't gotten a piece of cot stuck yet. Assuming if I do, I can just start over and try again. 

[SwissSeiko]

1 hour ago, levic900rr said:

I know this is a hot take, but I've had decent success hand winding springs back into barrels. I go really slowly, and I wear new (tight) finger cots. I haven't gotten a piece of cot stuck yet. Assuming if I do, I can just start over and try again. 

it is a hot take, but I repair 3-6 watches a week professionally, and I still hand wind springs back in. I have a generic Chinese winder, but I still prefer to hand wind. Maybe if I got the generic Bergeon one Id use it more. Just so expensive and the time it takes to set up the Chinese ones is longer than I want to mess with.

[Neverenoughwatches]

1 hour ago, levic900rr said:

I know this is a hot take, but I've had decent success hand winding springs back into barrels. I go really slowly, and I wear new (tight) finger cots. I haven't gotten a piece of cot stuck yet. Assuming if I do, I can just start over and try again. 

Thats not really the issue, a piece of trapped finger cot you can see and remove. Hand winding can distort the spring in way that you can't exactly see when it is in the barrel. A spring can be become coned, it can become coned even just from removing it, but hand winding it back in will only add to it. Look at the next one you take out and honestly ask yourself if it looks raised at the center coils. Look inside a barrel, can you see wear ? Not saying i dont do it but there are better ways that cause less stress to the spring.

I think we try to find ways of justifying why we hand wind when really we know we just shouldn't do it

[ScrewDropper]

On 5/27/2024 at 9:50 AM, Bonefixer said:

From my own experience I’d say avoid these £100 sets. I got one, with steel arbors, and have had very little success. I’ve since bought a 5,6 and 7 Bergeon and have done much better. You won’t need the full 34 piece Bergeon set, and even with that there will still be some anomalies that won’t work (eg a small barrel that needs a larger winding arbor)

My tips therefore are:

Avoid Chinese sets

Get a few Bergeon if you want to have a go

Hand wind

Replace - Cousins mainspring search function is excellent. 

I agree with a lot of this post. First of all, particularly with older movements, replacing the spring is a good idea, for a number of reasons, depending on the age of the movement and the material the original spring is made from. You can also buy a lot of new springs for the price of a Bergeon set of winders.  I also agree with the point about buying a small selection of Bergeon winders. 5,6 and 7 RH are going to be the ones you use the most, so you could start with that. IMO the Chinese metal arbor winders are actually pretty good and, I find, they do get some use. You can also reuse the handle from the Chinese set on the Bergen winders which goes a way to paying for the Chinese set. I have both (including a size 0-6 generic Bergeon + an additional size 7 L and R) and a Chinese set, that I started with. 

One thing to note is that the Bergeon set is not a panacea. I expect a lot of people have been frustrated buying the full set only to find, after spending over £600, that the first barrel they come across doesn't fit any of the arbors or the arbor that fits has a barrel too small for the spring (I've been there!). Remember, it is generic, and isn't going to be a perfect fit, there's often a tradeoff. An option is to find the the arbor that fits and then find the next winder barrel up. They usually work ok, without too much slop.

[caseback]

I have one of those chinese sets and have drilled out some of the holders and that worked.... ok-ish. Then I found this set and have never used the chinese set again. One of the nice advantages of this set is that, once you have wound the spring in the holder, you can remove the handle from the arbor. Then you have more room and a much better view on the spring so you don't have to mess about with tweezers hoping the spring will stay in while retracting the handle with attached arbor..

And they're much cheaper than the Bergeon winders as well. 

 

 

[RichardHarris123]

What set is it ?

[caseback]

3 minutes ago, RichardHarris123 said:

What set is it ?

The label says "Friederich", suggesting perhaps a German or Swiss manufacturer but I have seen other brands as well.

This set handles both left and right wounded springs, but I've seen sets that only wind one way as well. If you need the spring wound in the other direction, you need to transfer the wound-in spring to a seperate ring/holder before pushing it in the barrel.