Can I sub T end for unavailable DB? (Vostok 2809)

[HectorLooi]

Sorry to hear of your predicament but welcome to the world of mainspring winders.

I now have 6 sets of mainspring winders of different brands and several individual ones bought for specific calibres.

If I remember correctly, for Russian mainsprings I use a Watchcraft mainspring winder. 

But most of the Watchcraft mainspring winders you get on eBay won't work straight out of the box. Most of them will have worn or broken arbor hooks. You'll need to drill out the old hook and replace it. You'll also need to reduce the height of the barrel and centre the location of the barrel hook to work with modern mainsprings which are narrower.

It's a lot of work but they'll work great after that. Watchcraft with a bit of witchcraft. 

[caseback]

2 hours ago, NigelTufnel said:

What do I do? Is there another brand/line of winder I should use?  Do I just try manually winding the mainspring and go for it?

I found that these work on pretty much anything apart from pocketwatches which are to big. It is easy to make a custom arbor if you need one, for a very small ladies watch for instance. They come up for sale regurarly and are usually way cheaper then the Bergeon winders.

A plus is that, after winding the spring in, you can remove the handle, leaving the "winding-in arbor" in place. That makes it much easier to get that out. No poking with tweezers like with the Bergeon type of winders. 

[rjenkinsgb]

I have one of the cheap chinese sets, and have had the arbour-too-small <> barrel-too-large problem a few times.

I just drill the barrel out to take the required arbour. They still work fine with the original smaller arbours, a bit of a sloppy fit makes no difference.

I also hand wind non-automatic springs if making a winder fit is impractical or just too much hassle.

 

 

[NigelTufnel]

7 hours ago, rjenkinsgb said:

I have one of the cheap chinese sets, and have had the arbour-too-small <> barrel-too-large problem a few times.

I just drill the barrel out to take the required arbour. They still work fine with the original smaller arbours, a bit of a sloppy fit makes no difference.

I also hand wind non-automatic springs if making a winder fit is impractical or just too much hassle.

 

 

This idea definitely occurred to me, wasn't sure how hard the barrel was.

[mikepilk]

8 hours ago, rjenkinsgb said:

I just drill the barrel out to take the required arbour. They still work fine with the original smaller arbours, a bit of a sloppy fit makes no difference.

I only have a small set of winders and sometimes need to use a smaller arbor in the next larger winder barrel. I insert some brass tubing in the winder to remove the play. 

[NigelTufnel]

6 hours ago, mikepilk said:

I only have a small set of winders and sometimes need to use a smaller arbor in the next larger winder barrel. I insert some brass tubing in the winder to remove the play. 

I feel like watching Julia Childs.  So many of her recipes required you to have cooked stuff the week before so you can use it in this week's episode.  Brass tubes... of course I have brass tubes lying around....  

[rjenkinsgb]

42 minutes ago, NigelTufnel said:

Brass tubes... of course I have brass tubes lying around....

You mean you don't? I thought everyone had it as a normal stock material! Am I not normal? 

 

 

[NigelTufnel]

There's a scene in MIB about little Tiffany about to start stuff.  That's men with brass tubes in a drawer.

In case anyone is curious, I managed to break my winding barrel.  I thought others would like to see just how it's constructed. 

The moving parts are apparently made in two pieces.  It seems I managed to separate the table from the plunger.  The tube that's left in the table is only 0.5mm wide.  Hopefully a little filing and Locktite is all it needs. 

 

[HectorLooi]

21 hours ago, NigelTufnel said:

I've spent some money on some Bergeon winders only to find myself in a bit of a pickle.

You mean that broken winder is an original Bergeon? 

[NigelTufnel]

18 minutes ago, HectorLooi said:

You mean that broken winder is an original Bergeon? 

Well, it was 30 minutes ago.... got it from Otto Frei.  I'll probably sell it on Ebay as an "enhanced" version...

@HectorLooi In case you are joining late, I used a drill to attempt to increase the size of the arbor this barrel could use, so this winder did not just fall apart on it's own.

[HectorLooi]

Ok, I get it now.

I've always wondered why Bergeon didn't standardize the tip of their winding arbors so that even biggest arbor can fit into the smallest barrel.

[Neverenoughwatches]

2 hours ago, rjenkinsgb said:

You mean you don't? I thought everyone had it as a normal stock material! Am I not normal? 

 

 

Open for debate Rob......are any of us ?  

[NigelTufnel]

Welp, the Locktite lived up to it's name and now i can't move the table/plunger.  << sigh >>

I'm just going to end up manhandling the main spring though I tried to do it all correctly.

[GPrideaux]

You do know about 3D printed mainsprings, right? If not, see the thread here about RS-winder or go directly to https://github.com/vishnu350/rs-mainspring-winder. This has been transformative for me. I can't justify the cost of a set of Swiss winders and my set of cheap Chinese ones seem to be always exactly the wrong size for the watch I'm working on. I've been printing them in resin but others are using PLA so whatever you have access to ... see the thread for the lengthy discussion. I haven't used them for T-end springs, though, and I don't know what issues there might be.

Edited October 13, 2024 by GPrideaux
Added postscript. Fixed typo. Urgh.