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My pocket watches


jdrichard

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Super nice collection and work behind!

I have bought a few PW's myself in the lower price range and usually find them being cylinder movements with broken balance pivots, which kind of halts my further advance since I find very little options for replacement parts.

I do have the staking set and have managed to swap out balance staff a few times on regular wrist watches, so if could just get the parts I would jump on it, even though I realize the cylinder movement has it's own issues to work around. 

Any hints or experiences in this direction would be appreciated.

/Bsoderling

 

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Nice collection, do you mainly focus on pocket watches then?

Yes, seems so. Love working on repairing the old ones. Cleaning watches is far to boring for me. Need to fix stuff, Engineer by degree and profession. Electrical Not mechanical


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I wonder how many other EE / computer engr types (like me) are on here?

I have bought a few PW's myself in the lower price range and usually find them being cylinder movements with broken balance pivots, which kind of halts my further advance since I find very little options for replacement parts.
...
Any hints or experiences in this direction would be appreciated.
/Bsoderling


I started with Elgin pocket watches of a particular size. What is nice is that they are common as dirt and there are still loads of NOS parts for common sizes on ebay. Elgin shared parts across many grades. That may be true for other big brands too.

I suggest starting with a few non-running movements and getting practice disassembling and reassembling without destroying the super delicate parts. The move on to servicing running watches. I spent too much time trying to fix broken movements way beyond my skills and tools.

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Nice PW collection. I too have quite a few. I find it hard to believe that I have only one Hamilton, a 992B. I have mostly Waltham, some early and later Howards, Elgins, etc. I got into servicing pocket watches many years before I started to take on wrist watches. If you can learn to turn a staff well on a lathe, you'll do very well fixing many broken pocket watches that are hard to source staffs for. Keep up the good work. Cheers.

 

 

 

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  • 8 months later...
On 2/3/2018 at 11:53 AM, Chopin said:

Very nice. Anything particularly fancy or interesting ?

I've never owned one but I do want to get my hands on one and service it myself... It's hard to find one in good condition sadly... Or they're simply too expensive.

Would a pocket malnija cater your taste? Comes with all spare parts you will need.

Regards joe

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