Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Posted

I have a large number of unused old watch hands, some branded "PIONEER Qualite Superieure" on the original paper mounts held in wax paper. Unfortunately they have rusted to an extent. Once treated with rust remover they come up quite well and I'm going to have a go at reblueing them as required. I'm puzzled by the sizing. The pack in front of me now is marked Roskopf 13 x 10 1/2' ' ' (ten and a half ???). What does this represent? I'm going to buy a Bergeon 30464 and it's easy to measure length but it would be useful to know how to read off these sizes.

Which raises another question. Have most watches always used metric measurements or are some using imperial?

Thanks for your help on this embarrassingly basic question.

Roy

Posted

Indeed. This has occurred to me but seems pretty perverse since I don't imagine that pinion sizes are locked to movement sizes irrespective of manufacturer. The more useful batch of hands I have from the same source are branded "Broachless" and come in matched pairs with metric sizes. I'm experimenting with dissolving the rust and re-blueing them as required although a small percentage are still usable as they are. I saw a small batch of vintage PW hands go for £195 on ebay recently...

Roy

Posted

I think these hands were for a specific, I.E. Roskopf, pocket watch, but I'm not sure why the card would say both 13 & 10 1/2 lignes. I did see an auction for hands where the card was marked " railway hands for 13''' Roskopf watches"

 

  • Like 1
Posted (edited)

Thanks. The previous owner must have specialised as I have at least 20 cards of these hands. Fortunately they came with a large bunch of sized "Broachless" pairs some of which are minimally rusted. I'm experimenting with rust treatment, first using Hammerite rust removing gel and then ultrasonic bath. Fortunately I only need to do this as needed. Even two applications seems to leave a little rust in specks and I haven't figured out a method of polishing it away prior to applying blueing yet.

Roy

Edited by skridlov
Posted

Thanks. Rather well shot - the DOF problem in macro photography is tricky, even with stills - and using a snorkel lens in the bath is definitely OTT.

The hands I'm fiddling withe are lume-less blued ss and rusty to varying degrees so I'm staring from a lower threshold than in this video. A couple of things occurred to me. What sort of drill is he using? My Dremel has a much higher rpm even at its lowest setting which makes using it on such tiny items very difficult - if not impossible. Also, I wonder why a stage has been left out in the demonstration? He goes from applying an excess of lume to the finished job without showing how the excess is removed?

Roy

Posted

The drill in the video is probably a Foredom flex shaft setup, or something similar. I've used my Dremel to do similar work, just have to be very, very careful. Some lume will shrink a bit when it dries, perhaps that is what happened here. 

Oh, and I thought he stuck the whole camera (Nikon AW-100 waterproof?) in the ultrasonic cleaner.  Yes, OTT, but a lot of the perplexr videos are really good. Very imaginative camera work and lighting.

Posted

On a slightly off-topic matter, how much variation is there in size of fitting among sub-seconds hands? I can't measure the pinions with my micrometer as the shoulders on the device stand proud of the jaws by >1mm and my WIT measuring gauge only goes down to 40. I seem to recall having seen some sort of caliper attachment for micrometers to enable this sort of measurement. And does anyone know what the range of ssh sizes is? I'm mostly dealing with very old watches - many WW1/20s examples.

Posted

Don't know about the variation in sub-seconds hands, but if you search for Disk Micrometer, you might find a useful measuring instrument. They are usually used for measuring gear teeth, but I think would be fine for measuring pinions.

Esslinger also has a nice page on making measurements for watch hands -

How To Measure Watch Hands

They use a digital caliper, which can be inexpensive, or very expensive, depending on what quality you are looking for.

Cheers!

Posted

Hi again. I actually have a Chinese (where else?) digital vernier caliper but assumed it was pretty imprecise at these extremely small ranges. I'll have to check it against some known pinion sizes. I always try to avoid simple solutions... I know the Esslinger site although I haven't looked at this section yet.

Roy

Posted (edited)

Once you get below .01mm a Go No-Go is better than direct measurement with calipers.  Mostly because the calipers can crush or damage the part. Horotec and Bergeon have these available for everything you can think of for watches. 

 

Edited by Sleeper
spelling
  • Recently Browsing

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Topics

  • Posts

    • You shared this test with me a few months back on a Hamilton project and so I had checked this watch to find the pins were still equally spaced. Their screw slots were undamaged and very tight hard to move so maybe no one has messed with them before. I can't work on it much today but I did measure the fork slot again and it seems like 0.44 is the right size. I measure the jewel that had been installed at just 0.42. would an undersized too narrow impulse jewel impact the impulse drastically? I ask because I have had it at a state where flipping the fork manually with a tool would unlock some of the time, but the balance was never capable of unlocking.
    • This was what I was afraid of. The movement is not one of the generic black square modules. Remove the movement from the clock and try prying it open very carefully, without breaking the plastic tabs. The plastic might be brittle from age. Clean the wheels and check the battery contacts for corrosion. Check the PCB for bad solder joints. Take plenty of photos along the way.
    • One of the problems with trying to Photograph Phils things are that his enjoyment was building these things so they tended to E falls on what will see if I can find some earlier pictures or any pictures I wasn't even sure because I was looking for that specific picture for somebody else and even it got the last version and that would have been the last version. You will note that he put the indexing on something that he could unscrew it or whatever and it can slide back out of the way so the rest of the lathe can be used as a lathe. With the lathe cut are actually coming down from the top I was there once where he demonstrated how to cut a pivot with the setup it was really beautiful. Older set up if I remember it's not a worm gear assembly in the thing in between the stepping motor and the holding block I believe this particular one was like a 100 to 1 gear ratio. Earlier version with watchmaker's lathe. Even looks like he is the watchmakers bed and then switch to something he made. Then I do have other pictures and things of the rotary stage in use. In the raw so if you tube videos here is an example of one were somebody's mounting a three jaw chuck. At one time there were available on eBay they were not cheap but if you're patient like I was I found one cheap on eBay. After you watch the video it look at his other videos he is a whole bunch of other examples of the same rotary stage. That I do know there are other pictures examples and possibly videos you just have to track them down. One of the minor issues of finding this particular tech sheet for the unit is I believe it was a custom manufacturer and the company change their name but I remember the new name here's a link to the company https://www.ondrivesus.com/rino-mechanical-components                
    • Escapement adjusting always interesting and depending upon the reference always confusing. Okay maybe it's not always confusing but it does lead to confusion. I have a PDF below it's actually a whole bunch of separate stuff including a hand out that came from a lecture that's on you tube. Then from that we get this image Consequences of doing things especially if you do things out of order or you do things for the wrong reason. Oh and even if the watches working I made the mistake one so showing my boss how tweaking the banking pins on a full plate on the timing machine made the amplitude get better and now he thinks that's what they're for and I don't think a fully grasped exactly what horn clearance means. Consequence of doing things. Notice what it says about opening and closing the banking pins and total lock? So yes I've had that on a full plate where it won't unlock at all and that's the banking pins or a combination of things basically. So banking pins unfortunately get moved. One of the ways to tell if it's been moved is the look straight down at the end of the fork with the balance wheel removed. Power on the fork push at the one side look at it push it to the other side also look at it and compare anything with the center reference the balance jewel and see if both sides of the same. No guarantee after the same there in the right place but at least are the same typically when people play with things one side will be way off from the other because they had no idea what they were doing at all because of course it's a full plate and you really have to paying attention and even then there's still hard to do. Then the other thing that comes up like it shows below is people often adjust the banking pins to do all those other things as opposed to horn clearance which is all that it's therefore and maybe bonus Guard pin clearance although you're supposed to deal with the guard pin is a separate thing like single roller gets bent in Or out or sometimes physically gets moved in and out. Some full plates older escapement's typically pallet forks held together with screws and you can actually unscrew and move the entire assembly in Or out more complications to deal with.     Escapement handout wostep nscc.pdf
    • If he was much younger and some sort of sports player it wouldn't be a problem. They would be in there and doing surgery and he'd be back on the field in no time. Unfortunately when you get older little things are bad and big things can be really bad so not good at all.
×
×
  • Create New...