Complete Repair report for a PUW 1361. With pictures and video.

[berlintime]

Hello dear watchbangers! First of all, happy delayed new year!

Here I am with another post to a watch that I tried to service well! ( To the best of my abilities!).Of course before you read the whole report, you can also watch it live as a video:

This time I received another German watch whose owner told me that he had sent it in to service at a pretty prestigious watchmaker a few years ago. Unfortunately, he said that the watch was acting up soon after the service but just kind of forgot about it and just asked me If I could have a go at it! So I said yes and got to work! Now the watch did work, but was very inaccurate.
Now the outer appearance seemed pretty neat! The watch has a gold ( or something gold looking) plated case with what I presume being a stainless steel caseback. Next to the qualities the watch provided such as being “ water proof, shock proof, stainless steel and shock proof” the case back also had an engraving of a company: Zeppelin Caterpillar Metallwerke GmbH. I assume that this watch was to commemorate an employment or an important event/ milestone of the company or employee.

So I opened up the case back to check out what was inside! The movement powering the watch was a PUW 1361 movement which in my opinion had quite the nice design, especially the pretty large train wheel bridge which covered around half of the movement. It would be interesting to know if they did this out of a clear technical stand point or if they also tried to construct close to the very typical ¾ plate found in older German watches. Also interesting to mention is the engraving on the inside of the case back which included some previous watchmaker marks as well as the company name and the hint to remove the movement through the front ( Stupid me tried to do it from behind before checking the engraving before realizing that there were no holding screws or rings. )

So I popped off the bezel and lifted off the hands. Then I turned the watch to let the movement with the dial pop out, unscrewed the dial and put the sensible parts away. The dial itself looks fantastic in my opinion! It has a great sunburst silver finish with a date window at 3, set indices at 6, 9 and 12 and the rest are milled. As it was in great condition, I was not going to touch it, maybe just clean it with a Q-tip or blow dust off it.

Now turning my attention to the movement, I started by taking of the clunky rotor of the movement by unscrewing and removing the small locking slide under the rotor. This held the rotor against the post.

For protection I already removed the balance wheel and the pallet fork and its bridge here already

Next I removed the two reduction wheels, the direction wheel, some sort of friction spring and the transmission wheel down to the barrel.

Embedded in the underside of the automatic bridge, there is a small spring which I also fiddled out, I assume this stopped the reduction wheels from turning free somehow.

With all the moving parts removed from the automatic works, I noticed the nasty amount of oil which was on the main bridge. I literally cannot fathom how, why and what kind of oil would even end up there haha.

Now, next up I removed the post of the rotor, You can also see the blurry milling marks on the metal components on the movement parts, which I personally also dig. It gives it a pretty technical vibe.

Next I took off my favorite little jewel caps again! Yay! This time the jewel caps acted as a bearing for the escapement and third wheel pivots.

With that done I unscrewed all the screws for the main bridge and took them, and the bridge off to reveal the inner-workings of the watch movement. This revealed the further nasty contamination of the mysterious oil was had already been spotted on the main bridge.

Underneath the main bridge there was the inbuilt ratchet- click system for the mainspring barrel. The click and its spring where fixed but I did remove the pictured wheel and screw.

Here is the movement without the barrel, the third wheel, the second wheel, the escapement wheel and the transmission wheel and spring for the barrel.

Lastly I removed the minute bridge which is still depicted. The minute wheel however was still stuck in place as the canon pinion was pressed onto it from the front side.

I flipped the movement over to deal with the front side!

Here I first removed the hours wheel the little friction spring.

Then I took out the date lever, its spring and the cover plate as well as the date ring.

Next I removed the setting wheel bridge, the setting wheel, transmission wheel, the cannon pinion, the setting lever bridge, the yoke, yoke spring, both clutches, and the jewel cap from the plate side. Here the minute wheel also falls free being released from the clutches of the canon pinion above xD

Lastly I removed the date wheel and the spring hidden beneath it!

Of course before the cleaning, I took out the shock jewels from the KiF Settings.

I also opened the mainspring barrel, that thing was so nasty… it definitely needed a cleaning! Interesting to see the combined barrel lid and some sort of ratchet wheel.

A cool picture of the visible milled main plate with the manufacturers movement stamped into the metal. PUW Caliber 1361.

A picture of cleaning the watch parts outside on the balcony. The fumes where filling up the flat each time so I decided to clean them outside this time! I did a 1:2 Elma Wf Pro and Suprol cleaning cycle.

Now after everything was sparky again I reassembled the watch back to completion and lubricated along the way. I just reversed the disassembly steps! Should I also maybe add assembly and lubrication pictures in the future for reference?

Lubrication list:
Moebius 9010: Cap Jewels for escapement and third wheel , seconds hand wheel, rotor post for rotor.
Moebius 8213: Mainspring barrel inner walls as breaking grease ( maybe using something stronger like Kluber would also yield better results)
Moebius HP1300: slower turning wheels like minute wheel, third wheel and the rotating posts for setting/transmission wheel and date lever/ date ring surface for example.

Molykote DX : High friction points like the gearless system, the transmission wheel from automatic works to mainspring barrel, cannon pinion/ minute wheel friction .
Moebius 9415: Pallet fork jewels ( maybe using 9010 would have yielded better amplitude results as 9415 is actually made for 28.8k beat watches. )

A comment regarding the reassembly: When I first finished the basic train wheel and gave the barrel a spring to see if the train wheel turns freely, I was shocked to see that the third and escapement wheel where moving in a sort of “jittery” behavior! I desperately searched for the cause, disassembling and reassembling the basic movement a few times to see if I managed to build it incorrectly or to see if I had snapped off a pinion or two. Only after an hour or so did I realize that I had not screwed the cap jewels back on, eliminating the excess end shake! There is a pretty cool clip in my video where I have both “versions” next to each other, comparing the smooth vs. jittery flow of the train wheel assembly!
 

After reassembly and lubrication I slapped the movement onto the timegrapher and got it regulated pretty nicely on the dial up side! There are some slight noises on the reading and the amplitude could be higher but I am satisfied! Once I am a bit more experienced and safe with my regulation, I will try and regulate to 6 positions as best as I can and also explain/document my thoughts and procedures!

So after the regulation I made sure that the case was all cleaned up by chucking it into the ultrasonic bath after some manual cleaning and after polishing the old crystal up with some polywatch! Then I attached the dial to the movement, re-cased it and pressed the acrylic crystal back on. It snapped into place perfectly!

This is a final picture after I attached a Nato strap to it to test it actively on my wrist!

In conclusion, this was a nice watch to work on! I loved the milling marks and the cool little details such as the cap jewels and the screwed on rotor post ( maybe there is also a hand wound variation?). I was especially disgusted at the amount and placement of strange oil in the watch from a previous watchmaker/ technician which I find pretty shocking in my opinion because according to the owner, it is quite the high level watchmaker he sent it to. Now if you have any comments, criticism or thoughts do just put them down in the comment and don’t hesitate to reach out!

See you next time people and I hope you have a great start into our new year!