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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"

 

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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
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