Waltham Vanguard

[parris001]

So, I have this very clean old Waltham Vanguard. I've had it for about 5 years now. Last night I had it out admiring it and today, its not running. It felt like a broken mainspring to me. I had recently bought a cheap watch repair tool kit (I want to start doing my own maintenance) so I took the watch apart. 

 

The only difficulty I had was the mainspring housing itself. It wasn't like any others I'd seen and I couldn't figure out how to get it apart. I was correct, the spring inside was broken. But for the life of me I couldn't get the housing open. Long story short, I ended up breaking the housing. So where initially I just needed a new spring.........now I need a spring and a housing. 

 

Where do I go to find parts like these?

[PJA]

I would start with a search for a "Vintage Waltham Watch" and "Vintage Waltham Watch for Parts" on eBay.

[mikepilk]

17 hours ago, parris001 said:

So, I have this very clean old Waltham Vanguard. I've had it for about 5 years now. Last night I had it out admiring it and today, its not running. It felt like a broken mainspring to me. I had recently bought a cheap watch repair tool kit (I want to start doing my own maintenance) so I took the watch apart. 

 

The only difficulty I had was the mainspring housing itself. It wasn't like any others I'd seen and I couldn't figure out how to get it apart. I was correct, the spring inside was broken. But for the life of me I couldn't get the housing open. Long story short, I ended up breaking the housing. So where initially I just needed a new spring.........now I need a spring and a housing. 

 

Where do I go to find parts like these?

Do you know what the model number (year) is?  Is it size 16 or 18? Some of the better quality Walthams (like yours) have barrel arbers which screw apart - the first one I did had me fooled. 

If you put the serial number in here https://pocketwatchdatabase.com/  it should tell you the model number.

I've bought many Waltham parts from the USA. Have a look on the NAWCC site for parts sources :

https://mb.nawcc.org/threads/watch-parts-and-service-sources.76555/