Jump to content

My pocket watches


jdrichard

Recommended Posts

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

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites


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.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 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

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.



  • Recently Browsing

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Topics

  • Posts

    • It looks like the canon pinion function is part of this great wheel. The pinion nearest the clip runs the minute wheel on the dual side. The pinion nearest the wheel is driven by a small wheel from under the setting lever cover plate that engages in hand setting position.    So when assembled the crown was driving the whole great train. Does this mean the pinions are too tight? Should I attempt to disassemble this great wheel and lubricants?
    • Picking up this side-tracked post again as I just removed a balance staff of a 1920's Omega (35,5L-T1) I was impressed by the way @Delgetti had his setup when he had to change out a balance-staff (https://www.watchrepairtalk.com/topic/28854-new-balance-staff-not-riveting-to-balance/page/2/#comment-244054 Not only that, but also the idea of removing the seat first before punching the staff out from the seat-side, avoiding the whole discussion of the rivet yes/no enlarging the hole. I didn't have the fancy clamps & tools Delgetti has, so I used my screw-head polishing tool. Initially I used #1500 grit diamond paste on the steel wheel, which kinda worked, but very slow. I changed to #800 grit diamond paste, which worked better, but still slow. Then I glued #240 sanding paper to the steel disk; That worked and the disk was hand-driven. Once close to the balance wheel, I took the sanding paper off and continued with #800 diamond paste. One can only do this when the balance wheel sits true on the staff and has no "wobble". I went on grinding until I saw some diamond paste on the rim of the balance wheel. This was as far as I could grind and it seemed that there wasn't much left of the seat. Carefully, with my staking set, I knocked the staff from the seat-side out. Turns out that the thickness of the seat left, now a small ring, was only 0.1mm. The balance wheel hole is in perfect shape and no damage done to the wheel at all. Of course, if the wheel has a "wobble" or isn't seated true on the balance staff, you can't get as close and there will be more left of the seat. In my case, it worked perfect 🙂 I'm very happy how this method worked out ! 😊  
    • As is tradition, one step forward, two steps back. Got the board populated and soldered into place without any issues.   But no hum. So I started testing the coils with an ohmmeter. I got 5.84k ohms across D1 (from red to red in the picture below), which is as expected. But I'm getting an open circuit for the other drive coil and feedback coil, D2 and F1 (from green to each of the two yellows).   Since the movement was working with my breadboard setup, it implies I somehow broke the connection between the coils and the solder lugs. They're all the way at the bottom of the lugs, but maybe the heat migrated down and broke the connections? I guess it's possible it happened while cleaning the flux off, but I used a soft artist's brush and isopropyl alcohol. I did a lot of high magnification examination, and I don't see any issues, but let me know if you see anything I missed or if you can think of anything else I should check.
    • 1947 NOS Ambassador 'C'. Actually, the case came without the movement so the movement isn't NOS, but she sure is pretty.
    • Hi attached is the AS 20XX. Service sheet although there is no 2063 mentioned it may be of some use to you AS_AS 2060,1,2,6,4,6.pdf
×
×
  • Create New...