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I just realized how hard it is to take a decent photo of these black beauties, well never the less I have to try.
This is supposed to be an 40's Silvana produced in Switzerland for the German market. Under the hood is an roaming AS1130.
The 1130 was the absolute first movement I repaired so it has a special place in my brain locker.

Silvana.jpg

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Nice. Getting good pictures is tricky.

Lots of light seems to be the order of the day, to try and maintain sharpness and depth of field. That and a good close up capability on the camera.

I'm using an old Ricoh CX3, which has a pretty good macro ability,  but I also have a small collection of Canon "point and shoot" cameras, which can be picked up on ebay for not much, especially if they are broken, and which can be tricked out with a piece of software called CHDK to allow them to do lots of stuff the manufacturer never dreamed of.


If you can repair a watch, you can repair a point and shoot camera (just watch out for the flash capacitor).

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6 hours ago, AndyHull said:

Nice. Getting good pictures is tricky.

Lots of light seems to be the order of the day, to try and maintain sharpness and depth of field. That and a good close up capability on the camera.

I'm using an old Ricoh CX3, which has a pretty good macro ability,  but I also have a small collection of Canon "point and shoot" cameras, which can be picked up on ebay for not much, especially if they are broken, and which can be tricked out with a piece of software called CHDK to allow them to do lots of stuff the manufacturer never dreamed of.


If you can repair a watch, you can repair a point and shoot camera (just watch out for the flash capacitor).

Well I'm sure I could become an excellent fotographer but..
I'm too lazy and influenced by my daughters.. it will just be zap zap with the mobile.

Like they are doing the obligatory duckface selfie I expect the watches to do something similar but they don't.

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Today's watch of the day is the humble Roxedo EB 8800 pin lever I picked up a while back. Its had a new pallet fork, and balance assembly (extracted from a low mileage donor).

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Thi picture does no justice what so ever to the dial.

I've also included a couple of images, including the "before" pic and one of the broken pallet fork and original balance.

Roxedo-EB8800.thumb.jpg.f64d64ea0e9329a6744b5b79e4e17c6a.jpg

This is what I received form ebay, sold as not working.

That original balance actually works fine, as I fitted it to another donor just to test. That donor has a broken mainspring holddown screw snapped off in the main bridge, so it too may end up getting parts of the first donor to make another working EB 8800.

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One  of the broken pin can be seen quit clearly folder over in the center of this picture. It also appears that the jewel is missing, but in fact there is one there. I think it is a clear (glass? ) jewel.

I like the uncluttered look of this watch, and the sunburst champagne dial. It goes reasonably well for its age, and considering it is a simple pin lever with only one jewel .

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This gives a slightly better impression of the dial.

It shows around +20 to +40 sec per day in time-grapher, which I could probably shift to -10 to +10 sec per day with a little care, but I'm going to wear it for a couple of days to see what it actually does on my wrist. 

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I was torn between a plain black band or this brown, with either a silver or gold clasp,  but I think the brown with silver buckle looks best.

Edited by AndyHull
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Laco Sport, an early enigma for me until I looked up the clues on the watch.
D.R.G.M on the caseback stands for Deutsches Reich Gebrauchsmuster, a German Patent marking used between 1891-1945, so that is how I know its produced at the latest in 1945.
Despite of it's Art deco look it has a Laco Cal.550 (Durowe) powerhouse and that was not produced until the start of 1940 according to Mr Ranfft.
So the watch was produced sometime between 1940-1945.
The next enigma that taunt me is why I never can find a suitable sub second to it, I realize I have two complete movements as spare but none with a sub second on it.
Maybe if you have one lying around I might have something interesting to swap with......

Laco_1.jpg

Laco_2.jpg

Laco_3.jpg

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3 hours ago, AndyHull said:

What size is the second hand pin? What length do you think the second hand should be?

 

Just by eyeballing with my super sharp built in computer vision i would guess the length of the hand should be about 2 mm and the diameter of the tube is 0.18 mm..

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I guess if you search deep within your mind and soul and someone sends you a link you might realize you ordered the part years ago and from that specific shop...
Behold Laco Sport with sub second hand.. It's not always a good thing hording parts, especially when you forget where the should go.

Laco_4.jpg

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Today I have been.. drilling very small holes, very carefully. Specifically I drilled one very small hole, by hand, in the case of this watch to remove the stub of a broken strap pin that was bonded into the case with the super strength that only many years of corrosion can achieve.

It still needs a crystal, but here it is in all its 17 jeweled Germanic glory.

I had to wear it of course to celebrate its return to fully functional.

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I've also included the pre-cleaning shot, complete with an interesting collection of finest handgelenk käse.

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.. and finally the "three amigos" .. the mystery Sicura (still awaiting its second hand, which is in the spare parts queue, does that sound strangely familiar to anyone), yesterday's Roxedo, and the F Hinds

RIMG0683.JPG

Edited by AndyHull
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The F Hinds seems to have enjoyed the attention that has been paid to it. Its going pretty good considering its age, and the fact that it was serviced by an amateur. I'll resist giving in to the OCD and giving it just one more clean to see if I can get rid of that little meander. Around -30 face down to -7 sec face up per day is good enough for me. I could give it a slight nudge to make it gain instead of loose.. but I'll wear it for another day at least to let it settle down, before I even think about that. 

917817356_TimeGrapherat2018-11-2722-36-19.thumb.png.e5c8215cba26c3d78f60328e48576b7e.png

 

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Andy you are inspiring so, fresh out of the timing machine onto the arm.. 
Can't say Acacia is a very common watch and that I have any extensive knowledge of the brand .. but I like the style... Black and spotty.
The watch is powered by an AS 984.

Aciacia_1.jpg

Edited by HSL
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".. the mystery Sicura (still awaiting its second hand, which is in the spare parts queue, does that sound strangely familiar to anyone),"

hmm no rings no bells but just like a flash in the pan..
A mystery Sicura.. with all dial hands so It can't be me.

Sicura.jpg

Sicura_2.jpg

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Ah, but your mystery Sicura, actually says "Sicura" on it, mine is obviously a Sicura, and in fact is almost identical to the "Marine Star", but the dial only says "Voyageur", in apparently the same font as the marine star, so obviously printed at the factory.

It had the remnants of hands that looked identical to those on a marine star when I picked it up, and it is missing a bezel, but I have no idea what style that was. It also has a Ronda automatic in it, with English language date wheel, same as the marine star, and a Sicura logon on the screw on case back.. hence mystery Sicura. I have never been able to track down any info about it.

Edited by AndyHull
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Today's watch of the day is a slightly clattery (well worn auto-winder), but otherwise fully functional (now that I have given it a good going over) Timex Automatic.

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It is getting its first wrist time in a while, following last nights servicing. I have a couple of others, one in almost mint condition, but neither are willing to play ball yet. More head scratching and cleaning is no doubt in order. If either proves to be a basket case, I may transfer the auto-winder to this one to cut down the clatter.

This particular Timex has no rapid date advance, and I have to confess I grabbed the winder with my small battery drill and wound it on with that on the slowest speed setting to avoid my thumb ending up in tatters.

In the background is a Q&Q manual wind pin lever. This is still on the "healing bench", I think it is going to need a close up examination of the bearing holes, as something is snagging it every so often. Normally it runs just fine, then every so often, for no logical reason I can see, it stops. It is only a simple pin lever, so perhaps that is "normal" :DRIMG0694.thumb.JPG.fdde992ba42d5103419f5e94b227d179.JPG

.. and here is the Q&Q

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Edited by AndyHull
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"Zentralverband der Deutschen Uhrmacher" I can see how that inspire to name a brand ZenTra. 
Here is my watch from the German watchmakers.
It comes with an center sweep instead of a sub second, to accomplish this the powerhouse has been modified on the drive bridge and is therefore called Guba 1050SC.

ZenTra.jpg

ZenTra_2.jpg

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Today we have the slim but somewhat faded glory of the Santima 17 jewel Shockproof "Full Lever".

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This had a stuck balance, which I initially assumed was probably gummed up works. It turned out there was a tiny piece of some unidentifiable flat paper like material   caught between the balance fork and the balance itself.

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This muck was so small that I almost missed it while inspecting the thing. It is a pretty small movement, and an even smaller foreign body, so it could easily have been missed.

 

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Once the offending item was carefully extracted, off it went, and it has been going great ever since. I may strip and clean it anyway at some future date, but it actually looks immaculate, save for the fact that it is wearing my testing band, and also that a lot of the "gold plating" has worn away on the lugs and round the crystal. This is a very slim and lightweight watch, but its size on the wrist is similar to the F Hinds I showed previously. It is also very quiet, and reasonably accurate, +30 to +10 sec/day with an error of >0.6ms

"But what of the Saxon with the Chinese 17 jewel movement?"  I hear you cry.. well it only managed to run for about four hours, so I'm going to take another look at it soon.

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Nice Omega  JBerry , ...  I too have seen the Turler logo on a few fine vintage watches . Kinda like Tiffany I imagine .

 

While I will quickly admit that I am addicted to Hamilton watches new and old , I recently had the opportunity to service a vintage Gruen with a 480SS movement and was impressed with the interesting design it presented . Multiple winding barrels , levers , clicks , and srpings . Also very nice finishes to the movement parts . So I have been on a Gruen phase these days . 

They are nice .....  Here's one I recently acquired as a good deal because it was sold as a non-runner .

The first pic is the sellers .

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Just got to love that Gruen, thanks for sharing ricardopalamino.

Today it´s one modified watch on my arm. Since the dial was gone beyond repair due to a cracked crystal I had to replace it with a NOS one.
Decided to go with a twotone color scheme , silver and gold. 
The powerhouse is a classic Landeron 48 from the 40's..
 

Landeron_1.jpg

Landeron_2.jpg

Landeron_3.jpg

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picked this up the other day, its got a lovely thick leather strap and the lume is brown, looks great at night.A/X ARMANI EXCHANGE AX1516 CHRONOGRAPH 24 HOURS DUAL TIME DATE QUARTZ MEN WATCH. its 48mm a bit big but its growing on me.my eyes are going so i need a big dial these days.

image.jpeg.2a1bb42728161fce52c36962b5bf326d.jpeg

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Just another manic Monday.
Today I present you a Swedish/Swiss Atlantic. "Världsmästarur"  World master Watch.
From the late 50's with a clean golden appearance and powered by a three adjustments 21 jewels AS 1604.
Your next word to learn in this short Swedish language course is "Kvalitetsur" Quality watch. Cockey like few.

Atlantic_1.jpg

Atlantic_2.jpg

Atlantic_3.jpg

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    • No, the Peseux 7040 is doing very well as far as the rate (and amplitude) is concerned. The maximum delta measured was 20 seconds between fully wound, crown down (+8 s/d) and fully wound minus 24 hours, crown up (-12 s/d). Compare that to the ETA 2763 having a delta of over 80 seconds. What I was trying to convey was that I observed that the much higher amplitude of the Peseux movement during a 12-minute measuring period could momentarily fluctuate by 30° just like the much lower amplitude on the ETA 2763. I haven't studied the History graph on @praezis PCTM software for any other than these two movements but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that these fluctuations in amplitude during a 12-minute measuring period are the rule rather than the exception for all typical non-high-end-chronometer movements.
    • I'm presently using a cheap supermarket ultrasonic cleaner, with L&R #111 cleaner and #3 rinse solutions. I cut a bit off the bottom of an appropriate size plastic sports drink bottle, which is a perfect fit around the mesh basket I use (~65mm diameter). That allows me to use mostly water in the machine tub and cleaner or rinse only in the small plastic container. I keep the solutions that are still fit for use in small glass jam jars. I use the cleaner then two rinses, then the mesh basket balances on my bathroom radiator (once it stops dripping) to dry the parts with moderate warmth. Prior to that I tried just lighter fluid (eg. generic zippo fluid) and just soaking / swirling parts in the glass jars, but the movements did not run at all well afterwards, they were still acting gummed up. The proper solutions make a world of difference & the watches now work as they should!    
    • Have to agree with you. Will not do another. Did not enjoy the time spent. However, it was worth it to know that I understood how to disassemble, look for defects, repair and then assemble. Timegrapher? No facility to alter anything other than the stud. Everything is metal to metal.
    • Couple of things H. There surely seems to be a reoccurring fluctuation pattern  of somewhere around every 5 minutes. More noticable with your crown left trace having a large peak gradually reducing to 2 small peaks and troughs then back up to another large peak. Nev posted a download link to a book by Harold Kelly not so long back that i started to read while i was away. There was a good section on wheel and pinion ratios, rotation periods of wheels of different beat frequencies that's worth a read. Then something that bugs me comparing the amplitude and timing rate changes with your dial up trace which i chose to avoid wheel imbalances . The amplitude fluctuates by an extreme of 30 ° and the rate fluctuates by an extreme of 21 seconds as per your reading. In normal circumstances a movement dropping its power over the course of the mainspring unwinding, a hairspring acting isochronical will maintain its rate almost to the end of the power reserve. Similarly power wound into a movement increasing its amplitude from 265° to 295° a hairspring again acting isochronical will again maintain its rate aside from a brief few moments until it settles into it's rate. From that it seems to me that because the amplitude difference isn't big enough to affect a rate change then the amplitude fluctuation cause is not coming from anywhere but from the balance. So its whatever is causing the rate to change increase and decrease within the balance is also slowing and speeding up the hairspring swings. I'm not quite sure if I've just gone around in circles with that, it made sense to me when i started  😅 We did have a discussion a while back when i asked if rate could come from that point as well as from the regulator pins. This area can be electro stiffened in high grade hs i remember was the answer. I remember that over Ross's issue with balance endshake.
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Or is it? What is the purpose of the images up above in other words what exactly would use this test for? The real purpose this test is show the effect of amplitude on timekeeping. Or specifically you're looking for mechanical issues that are causing fluctuations in amplitude which unfortunately shows up  with timekeeping. or basically everything affects timekeeping but amplitude is affected by the mechanical characteristics of the watch from the mainspring to the balance wheel and unfortunately as it's a mechanical watch your always going to have power fluctuations. so how do we rule out unacceptable fluctuations versus the natural characteristic of the watch? Usually if you can find a repeating pattern you can narrow it down to the offending components for instance I'm attaching a PDF. on the second page of the PDF it talks about 21st-century equipment versus paper tape timing machines. Then they give an example of timing problems solely caused by a faulty component. although off you have a user's manual for a paper tape machine it does explain that you can find faulty components by looking at the variations on your paper tape seeing how often they repeat and do the same thing without the fancy software. Even though it was claimed that you couldn't do that in other words you couldn't find a pattern? One of the problems that comes up with modern LCD-based timing machines versus software is limited screen size. In other words it makes it very hard to look for patterns you'll see variations in numbers but it's hard to tell what's going on which is why the display above is really nice to see if there is a problem. for instance here's a paper printout from a witschi timing machine it does look distorted because I changed the speed at which the image would move across the screen. 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Once we eliminate the mechanical issues beyond it's a mechanical watch then you can work on timing issues. for timing issues I recommend going back to the normal display that were used to and make sure you have your averaging times set correctly. In other words while the graphical display is basically real time years of the numbers are averaged over time. Anywhere from 20 to 40 seconds depending upon whose specs you're looking at. So basically they will average out the problems were seeing on this time plot.   one of my amusements with students that go to the same school is that you have different instructors. So this gives you different experiences like what exactly is tight anyway as I don't remember any thing like this? Then did you know that Rolex at least in Geneva as I visited their service center replace all the screws in the watch every time they service the watch. then why did they do that because they use power screwdrivers and tighten those things down as tight as you can get them which has a problem. How many times can you tighten screw down really tight before the hints break off. So they replace the screws every single time. So personally I don't think they have to be so tight that you're in danger snapping head off that's too tight in my opinion. but the screws definitely shouldn't be falling out either which I've occasionally see and where people just don't tighten their screws tight enough.   Horologica Times -- May 2004 From the Workshop witschi time plot.pdf
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