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Nahhh you didn't do the wrong thing. You started out on the ST36 and that's great, and you would have fallen down this rabbit hole eventually anyway. Maybe another 12 size Elgin to restore from more dire condition before attempting the harder repairs on this one, but you have a result of some kind here. Oiling should not have a negative effect on your free oscillations, so I would look into a change to the end shake, however tiny, caused by moving your shim. If the shake is just a little bit too much, amplitude can drop in a major way which would show up early in degraded free oscillations. Sometimes it is only a matter of tightening the balance cock screw a little more or shifting the shim a tiny bit, or replacing it if it got compressed too much. All the stuff you have since learned, you can take back to your grandfather's Hamilton and do a true restoration. But practice on 3 or 4 other unimportant pocket watches first. -
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@mbwatch @JohnR725 I checked the hairspring to see if it’s between the regulator pins, and indeed it is, so that’s not the culprit, unfortunately. Thanks for the suggestion; I had forgotten to double-check that when I re-installed the balance. In terms of what’s not working @JohnR725, I should have been clearer. For the oscillation test, in the dial-down position, the time dropped from over a minute to something more like 20-30 seconds. It’s markedly worse than it was before I lubricated the balance jewels. Which opens up a number of different questions: Did I mess something up in oiling the jewels? Too little oil? Reinstalled incorrectly? The jewels are in good condition, btw. I looked closely at the cap jewels and the hole jewels. They’re all original and fine. No scratches, dings or cracks. Has something changed with my shim given the repeated removals of the balance? I checked the end shake as best I can, and it seems ok. In terms of starting out with a practice movement @JohnR725, I did that. In fact, I worked on a Seagull ST-36, which unless I’m mistaken, is a Unitas 6497 clone. I stripped and re-assembled that movement three times, familiarizing myself with all of the parts, taking notes, photos, etc. I then oiled on my last assembly, but didn’t attempt to regulate. Performance was slightly worse on the timegrapher after oiling. In hindsight, what I should have done was spend even more time disassembling, re-assembling and attempting to regulate the movement. Lesson learned! After the ST-36, I tackled my grandfather’s Hamilton 974. It took me a little while, but I restored it to working order after replacing a few parts and troubleshooting one performance issue. I didn’t oil and regulate, because I wanted to practice more before I tackled that task. At that point, I was confident enough to try another pocket watch. Enter the Elgin in this thread. I had a misplaced sense of confidence after my previous efforts, and dove in with disassembly, cleaning, fixing obvious issues (missing crystal, rusted click spring). Then the DU/DD problem cropped up, and I entered the rabbit hole. Again, in hindsight, what I should have done at this point was NOT go down the rabbit hole. Instead I should have gone back to the ST-36 and spent some more time with deeper work and practice there. With that said, I would not have had any practice with balance staff repair, because there would have been no need. Working with balance staffs seems like a Catch-22 to me. You can only get the experience by doing it, but you need the experience to do it. If I had not found this entire process interesting, helpful, and a great learning experience, I wouldn’t have continued. I’ve tried repeatedly to express my thanks for the time all have invested in this lively thread, and I’ll do it again: Much appreciated @mbwatch @nevenbekriev and others! And to be clear, many thanks to you (that was implied 🙂 ).
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