Watch of Today

[Aroxx]

2 hours ago, rehajm said:

Nice Elgin…

Thanks! I found it in my mother-in-law's pile of "junk" watches last week! Crazy.

[Waggy]

On 5/10/2023 at 11:10 AM, Waggy said:

I decided to suspend work on the Seiko and distract myself with another watch, this time an Orient. Any tips and things to watch out for greatly appreciated.

Here is the finished item

 

[Neverenoughwatches]

Grandpa's old watch is having some wrist time today with his original bracelet, Inside a Raketa 2609 HA.  Repaired twice, two replacement escape wheels ( dont ask ) one replacement pallet lever, one stem and one rather reduced size crystal . Came to me not working for 50 years in poor shape with a rusted in solid stem .

[Waggy]

Another 404 watch bought in a lot of 20 (see below) so a cost of £2.85 each, Its a SIRO Cal. 296. 

This one fought me all the way, I needed to make a shim to lift the train of wheels bridge to allow the second wheel to rotate freely. The watch had no jewels in the main plate and bridges, so this is the only way I knew how to do it, ie on a jewelled watch I could re-position jewels, but this one just had holes in the main plate (anyone know a better way for next time??)

Also the watch came with the wrong winder which I only realised after hours of trying to make the setting lever work, then another 2 hours searching through my collection of spare stems before I found one that would work.

Finally I had to remove the damaged loom from the hands and re-lume them - I was left with a spot/clump of lume on the hour hand, but decided to leave it as it looked quirky and I kind of liked it ... and I was too lazy to do it again 

New crystal and strap (changed to a black one) and polished the case with Flitz (amazing stuff!).

So here are the before and after shots:

Before front:

Before back:

Movement:

And here is the finished watch:

Not bad for £2.85!

[rehajm]

24 minutes ago, Waggy said:

Another 404 watch bought in a lot of 20 (see below) so a cost of £2.85 each, Its a SIRO Cal. 296. 

This one fought me all the way, I needed to make a shim to lift the train of wheels bridge to allow the second wheel to rotate freely. The watch had no jewels in the main plate and bridges, so this is the only way I knew how to do it, ie on a jewelled watch I could re-position jewels, but this one just had holes in the main plate (anyone know a better way for next time??)

Also the watch came with the wrong winder which I only realised after hours of trying to make the setting lever work, then another 2 hours searching through my collection of spare stems before I found one that would work.

Finally I had to remove the damaged loom from the hands and re-lume them - I was left with a spot/clump of lume on the hour hand, but decided to leave it as it looked quirky and I kind of liked it ... and I was too lazy to do it again 

New crystal and strap (changed to a black one) and polished the case with Flitz (amazing stuff!).

So here are the before and after shots:

Before front:

Before back:

Movement:

And here is the finished watch:

Not bad for £2.85!

What did you do to the dial?

[Waggy]

Just water on a cotton bud, and a lot of time!

[Neverenoughwatches]

30 minutes ago, Waggy said:

Another 404 watch bought in a lot of 20 (see below) so a cost of £2.85 each, Its a SIRO Cal. 296. 

This one fought me all the way, I needed to make a shim to lift the train of wheels bridge to allow the second wheel to rotate freely. The watch had no jewels in the main plate and bridges, so this is the only way I knew how to do it, ie on a jewelled watch I could re-position jewels, but this one just had holes in the main plate (anyone know a better way for next time??)

Also the watch came with the wrong winder which I only realised after hours of trying to make the setting lever work, then another 2 hours searching through my collection of spare stems before I found one that would work.

Finally I had to remove the damaged loom from the hands and re-lume them - I was left with a spot/clump of lume on the hour hand, but decided to leave it as it looked quirky and I kind of liked it ... and I was too lazy to do it again 

New crystal and strap (changed to a black one) and polished the case with Flitz (amazing stuff!).

So here are the before and after shots:

Before front:

Before back:

Movement:

And here is the finished watch:

Not bad for £2.85!

A nice little Oris 296 . Does the tg screen look like a digital snowglobe ?

[Waggy]

Got it looking looking fairly respectable especially for an older pin pallet type:

Edited May 13, 2023 by Waggy
typo

[Neverenoughwatches]

6 minutes ago, Waggy said:

Got it looking looking fairly respectable especially for an older pin pallet type:

You not prepared to tackle that beat error ? lol  

[Waggy]

9 minutes ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

You not prepared to tackle that beat error ? lol  

Nope  - I quit whilst I was ahead, there was no adjustable arm for the beat error, so decided to leave well enough alone.

[rehajm]

6 minutes ago, Waggy said:

Nope  - I quit whilst I was ahead, there was no adjustable arm for the beat error, so decided to leave well enough alone.

You’d be building a wedge to poke the stud out/in or wrenching collet through the spring. Very easy to Bork it up…

…and I’d lend you some of Dr. Tillwich’s blue magic pin pallet amp improver…unless you already used some ….

[Neverenoughwatches]

18 minutes ago, Waggy said:

Nope  - I quit whilst I was ahead, there was no adjustable arm for the beat error, so decided to leave well enough alone.

Get a garden spade wedged in that collet and twist. Whats the worst that can happen ?

[rehajm]

4 hours ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

Get a garden spade wedged in that collet and twist. Whats the worst that can happen ?

...allow me to introduce you to my A-17 waiting patiently in a parts tray for the backup balance to be studded and fiddled. It was fine with rounds one and two what brought the beat from > 9.9 to 0.6 but was was none to happy with my greed for a third...

Edited May 13, 2023 by rehajm

[Neverenoughwatches]

1 hour ago, rehajm said:

...allow me to introduce you to my A-17 waiting patiently in a parts tray for the backup balance to be studded and fiddled. It was fine with rounds one and two what brought the beat from > 9.9 to 0.6 but was was none to happy with my greed for a third...

 Your thirst for perfection is admirable.

[AndyHull]

3 hours ago, rehajm said:

It was fine with rounds one and two what brought the beat from > 9.9 to 0.6 but was was none to happy with my greed for a third...

Ahh.. the quest for beat error perfection.

Quite a few of the balances in my scrap box have fallen foul of that particular urge. Timexes with their "dont-you-dare-i'm-made-of-fog" hair springs in particular.

Edited May 13, 2023 by AndyHull

[JohnR725]

9 hours ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

You not prepared to tackle that beat error

I don't think I worry about the beat error until you get the lines to clean up a little bit.

notice how the lower line is a line and the upper is what exactly? then as far as amplitude goes we don't have a lift angle and even if we did I not sure that a pin pallet falls the normal rules for timing machine so probably the most you're going to get is the rate and the beat but you only get the beat if the lines would at least be both of them parallel. You might try putting some lubrication on the other pin whichever one you didn't lubricate put it on the other one see if it cleans things up a little bit. Often times on a lever escapement if one of the lines looks a little rough it can be an lubrication issue otherwise of this is the best it is celebrate it's running and it looks like it's keeping time.

[Neverenoughwatches]

11 minutes ago, JohnR725 said:

as far as amplitude goes we don't have a lift angle and even if we did I not sure that a pin pallet falls the normal rules for timing machine.

With no lift angle for a pallet pin movement i guess the amplitude reading we have here can be ignored completely. 

9 hours ago, Waggy said:

Nope  - I quit whilst I was ahead, there was no adjustable arm for the beat error, so decided to leave well enough alone.

As an experiment to maybe learn something  from can you give us another 2 readings with the lift angle at opposite ends of the timegrapher's ranges please.

[Waggy]

Will do 

[JohnR725]

43 minutes ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

With no lift angle for a pallet pin movement i guess the amplitude reading we have here can be ignored completely.

is not so much the lift angle that can be measured by just the classic method of 180° and possibly adjust the machine to now say 180° but it's the waveform. I don't know on our oscilloscope what the waveform looks like and whether the timing machine will understand and display the correct numbers. So I wouldn't worry about the amplitude. The beat should be right and the graphical display is interesting is it is but being a pin lever anything that looks like well anything that looks like it goes down the screen and running straight is probably fine. This is where we need a nice running a pin lever watch to try experiments with to see how they look on the timing machine maybe it look great ideas don't know

[GuyMontag]

1970 Bulova Clipper 'BD'. Love that red dial.

[Waggy]

Good day, I have a new OMNTA watch to add to my collection, this watch was one of 16 purchased for £32.00 from eBay, which works out at an average cost of £2.00, so also qualifies for the 404 club

The watch was a non-runner and it looks like this resulted from a broken pinion on the second wheel, also, I had to use my staking set to reduce the arbour hole on the barrel bridge as there was way too much play. Finally, the bridal was broken on the mainspring - so after replacing the wheel and mainspring (fortunately there was another watch with the same movement in the lot of 16 which I used as a donor - lucky!!) and the bridge repair here are the before and after pictures:

Watch front view (before:)

Here is a picture of the movement - I just noticed that you can see the orange smudge of corrosion in the top hole to the right of the ratchet wheel and just under where the click screw is, this is where the wheel pinion was broken and had to be replaced, it looked like corrosion on the pinion, but there was little other evidence of corrosion in the watch:

And here is the dial out of the case, this needed a little work, and was better in the final restoration but still not 100% and I didn't want to push my luck and make it worse:

And here is the finished watch:

Edited May 19, 2023 by Waggy
Additional observation

[GuyMontag]

OMNTA, that's a new one to me but I like the looks of it! Was it hard fitting the train bridge without any access to the wheels to tease them into position? And speaking of the train bridge, where is the sweep second pinion? Is it hiding beneath the ratchet wheel?

Edited May 19, 2023 by GuyMontag

[Waggy]

10 minutes ago, GuyMontag said:

Was it hard fitting the train bridge without any access to the wheels

Thanks for your kind comments, fitting the bridge was difficult as everything has to line up together and all at the same time, this is where my microscope was invaluable, although there were a few swear words  and more than one coffee break involved .

 

10 minutes ago, GuyMontag said:

where is the sweep second pinion?

This was a strange one, as it was fixed to the main plate and couldn't be removed, please see picture:

Dial side showing wheel:

Other side

I tried using the ultrasonic to see if this would encourage the wheel to come out but in the end I decided maybe it was a strange design and not supposed to be removed and better to leave it alone as it was moving freely and no obvious signs of damage or corrosion

Edited May 19, 2023 by Waggy

[SpringMangler]

That looks identical to a Baumgartner movement I've just finished, think it was the BFG 866. Painful part was that the hairspring was pinned with no stud screw and it needed some tweaking. Fair old contribution to the swear jar followed.

[rehajm]

21 hours ago, Waggy said:

(fortunately there was another watch with the same movement in the lot of 16 which I used as a donor - lucky!

What’s it like to be God’s favourite?

21 hours ago, Waggy said:

Thanks for your kind comments, fitting the bridge was difficult as everything has to line up together and all at the same time, this is where my microscope was invaluable, although there were a few swear words  and more than one coffee break involved .

 

This was a strange one, as it was fixed to the main plate and couldn't be removed, please see picture:

Dial side showing wheel:

Other side

I tried using the ultrasonic to see if this would encourage the wheel to come out but in the end I decided maybe it was a strange design and not supposed to be removed and better to leave it alone as it was moving freely and no obvious signs of damage or corrosion

Smith’s Empire w/sweep seconds has that setup, too. If that wheel is pulled off you can clean and lubricate and there’s a lovely tutorial here on replacing it with the staking set. Lining up the train is a bit of a trick or if there’s to much play between the wheel and the fixed post. Good to hear you didn’t have those issues…