I haven’t seen glue here before…

[ColinC]

I took this watch as part exchange for a Seiko 5 I restored and sold

Looks like someone lost an incabloc spring and thought “I know what, I’ll use glue here!”

Surprisingly is nearly runs!

Edited Friday at 04:43 PM by ColinC
typo

[RichardHarris123]

Not surprising really, the shock protection has gone but the cap jewel, which the pivot runs against is in place.  Ugly attempt at repair though. 

[ColinC]

I swapped the incabloc setting with one I had from a donor that was missing the jewel.

And here is the next interesting thing - never seen a mainspring SO broken!

This probably means I am not finishing this watch this weekend!

[RichardHarris123]

I've never seen a mainspring like that either. 

[ColinC]

Ooo look what I found in my bag of mainsprings…

[Nucejoe]

 I have seen more glued ones like this than I can't stand the sight of. 

 Good clean isn't easy on this and let's hope no glue has run down to the hole jewel chaton. 

 

Edited Friday at 08:24 PM by Nucejoe

[ColinC]

25 minutes ago, Nucejoe said:

Good clean isn't easy on this and let's hope no glue has run down to the hole jewel chaton

There was glue in the chaton - I took apart the whole balance and soaked  everything except the balance wheel in acetone before washing it properly in IPA

[JohnR725]

1 hour ago, ColinC said:

This probably means I am not finishing this watch this weekend!

A little bit of superglue and you'll be good to go Although maybe if you had a laser welder you can weld the spring back together.

Typically I've only seen it on blued steel Springs and on one occasion a modern spring? The modern watch was a Rolex watch that came and that was literally filled with rust including the barrel was filled with rust in the spring was in a whole bunch of little pieces. I have to wonder if that was an aftermarket mainspring .

Then I'm attaching a PDF the Elgin watch company as you can see instigated a study in the 30s find out why mainsprings were breaking. I do though wonder if perhaps there may be a flaw in their study? One other things I wonder about is the metallurgy of the early steel Springs versus the later generation of blued steel Springs whether the metallurgy as part of the problem but in a case they did a study and have attaching a PDF.

Because of the study any time I do anything with the blued steel spring when I actually cannot get something that's not blued. Once the spring is cleaned I'm very careful to not to touch the spring with my fingers because I don't want to have a problem with the chemicals on your fingers causing rust and I very carefully get lubrication back on the spring as fast as possible just to avoid these unpleasant situations.

Then yes it is interesting one minute you of functional spring and the next minute you have lots of little pieces of spring. For my own personal Elgin pocket watch I put a steel spring and in this happened I'm also guessing that when one layer breaks it sends a cascading shockwave through the spring and that's why it breaks all the way across because after all there is a lot of energy in the spring when it breaks.

Oh and my theory on the metallurgy is based on things have improved and for the most part I don't think I've seen a shattered spring in quite some time.

 

Elgin_Mainsprings.PDF

[Nucejoe]

1 hour ago, ColinC said:

There was glue in the chaton - I took apart the whole balance and soaked  everything except the balance wheel in acetone before washing it properly in IPA

 What type of glue you figure it was. I wonder if acetone dissolves super glue. 

[rehajm]

I put what I thought was a still springy replacement steel spring in one of those big Hamilton pocket watches and after a week when it came back to me the spring looked just like that… The new steel alloy spring works great if the owner is feeling strong enough to wind it that morning. Like a clock spring it is…

[VWatchie]

9 hours ago, Nucejoe said:

I wonder if acetone dissolves super glue.

It does!

[ColinC]

9 hours ago, Nucejoe said:

 What type of glue you figure it was. I wonder if acetone dissolves super glue. 

It wasn’t superglue - it was springy and didn’t set solid like superglue does. But I find acetone gets rid of everything!

 

The broken spring was blued steel.

 

I have the watch running with good amplitude - I just need to get the beat error fixed and then I will post some pics

[Neverenoughwatches]

12 hours ago, ColinC said:

I swapped the incabloc setting with one I had from a donor that was missing the jewel.

And here is the next interesting thing - never seen a mainspring SO broken!

This probably means I am not finishing this watch this weekend!

Seen this quite a few times, micro fractures in the steel, humidity,  corrosion fatigue ? The shock from a single break likely causes a chain reaction throughout all the fractures.

[mbwatch]

4 hours ago, ColinC said:

it was springy and didn’t set solid like superglue does

Like Gorilla Glue maybe.

4 hours ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

corrosion fatigue

It's reasonable that corrosion bled through adjacent coils if it wasn't wound/unwound in a while, causing a weak spot radially throughout the whole spring.

[ColinC]

More setbacks and successes... 

After letting the watch run in (but before I fixed the BE) a chunk of the radium lume fell off one of the hands and pulverized leaving radioactive dust all over the dial   

So before I could continue further I decided I would remove the radium lume.  I have removed radium lume from hands before where it was already starting to flake away but this time I had to work out what I was going to do with debris on the dial.  I decided that getting everything under water and removing all the lume was probably the best way to go.

So here is what I did...

I put an essence jar I use for cleaning parts and filled it with water and put it into a big ziplock bag along with the tools I would need - a sharpened piece of pegwood and  a 0.80mm screwdriver  -  I put on a pair of nitrile gloves and a covid style mask and then opened the back of the watch.

Now with the back off the watch I could do the rest inside the bag.  I removed the watch from the case and removed the hands from the dial (through the bag) and then undid the dial screws and removed the dial from the movement.  I then put the hands and the dial and the watch case into the water and removed the movement from the bag.  Carefully and slowly with one hand in the bag and one hand trying to poke and hold stuff through the bag I gently rubbed away the lume from the dial and hands with the pegwood.

I then took the parts out of the water and removed the jar from the bag (leaving the parts still in the bag) - with the majority of the dangerous stuff now in the water I disposed of this (down the toilet) and gave the jar a good rinse in running water before refilling it and returning it to the bag where I gave all the parts another rinse in the new water.  I then took the parts and put the geiger counter over the top of them and looked at them carefully under UV light to see if there were any flakes still hanging on.

I dried everything with some kitchen towel. Once I was finished will all that I remved the parts from then removed the gloves and put them in the bag with the paper towels and the pegwood and thew the bag in the household waste.

Finally I gave the dial, hands and case another rinse in the sink under running water.  I didn't bother following up with a rinse in distilled water water because the water here is pretty clear of limescale etc and I find it doesn't mark!

So here are the results of my weekends work!

Timegrapher dial down (dial up is almost the same)


The fixed shock setting


New crystal - and lume removed from dial and hands