Cracked your watch crystal?

[PeterGe]

Hi everybody,

Recently I got an Uboat watch (eta 2824.2) in which stopped running.The owner had no idea what could be the cause.
A quick investigation showed that one of the automatic bridge screw came loose & got stuck in the wheel train.

But that was not the only issue. When disassembling the watch I came across more issues:
Broken dial feet, broken pivot in reversing wheel, damaged teeth on ratchet wheel & last but not least

glass

And then I really mean lots of it. Under each bridge I removed there was glass particles to be found.

After informing customer about it, he told me that the watch had fallen quit hard and the crystal got shattered.
He asked a local watch shop to repair it & they just put in a new crystal.

So what can we learn from this?

If your crystal gets really shattered, have a overhaul done because the change of having glass in you movement is quite high.

And to make this thread a bit less boring I have attached just 1 example of glass I found in the movement :-)

 

Edited June 3, 2016 by PeterGe

[oldhippy]

That's good advice. I would suggest having a quick look to see if there had been any damage caused. Many old watches with out a shock resistant and falling on a hard surface you would find a broken balance staff.  

[PeterGe]

Other then the damaged parts mentioned i don't see any damage.

The watch is running again with good amplitude & good timekeeping.
Now I'm waiting for the new parts to arrive to finish the job.