Epilame / Fixodrop

[Klassiker]

I think that tells us precisely nothing about how their product works, and I suspect that is intentional.

[Neverenoughwatches]

8 minutes ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

They weren't keen on providing information of its use, i think we mentioned earlier that the oil makes the barrier between the epilame and a mechanical disruption of it. I also thought that but i assume the ST measurement is in it's solution form not as a film.

It kind of makes sense to me , to rub out the Epilame so beneath the oil is a more adhering surface. I started an experiment but its not exactly accurate as I'm using stearic acid. Surely a simple test of dragging oil around on an Epilame coating with an oiler will answer the question. Will it pull away from its position or will it resist being mobile. The oiler replaces the mechanical drag of the escape teeth.

6 minutes ago, Klassiker said:

I think that tells us precisely nothing about how their product works, and I suspect that is intentional.

Exactly, why set themselves up for complaint. Here's our product you figure out the best way to use it.  I feel a patent coming on, I'll be Rich yet.

[Klassiker]

6 minutes ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

I'm using stearic acid.

Which was the standard for years https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epilamisierung

[Neverenoughwatches]

10 minutes ago, Klassiker said:

Which was the standard for years https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epilamisierung

I know Stephen there was no way i was paying out for a brand name, being yorkshire born and bred i go direct to an ingredient and hope its just one. I've had a big jewel suspended over a jar of 90° heated stearic acid for 5 hours , its time to oil it up.  No idea if i reached enough temperature but it was a bit wiffy so i assume fumes were produced. Well its certainly fumigated the jewel, it looks like a thick coating of frost

42 minutes ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

I know Stephen there was no way i was paying out for a brand name, being yorkshire born and bred i go direct to an ingredient and hope its just one. I've had a big jewel suspended over a jar of 90° heated stearic acid for 5 hours , its time to oil it up.  No idea if i reached enough temperature but it was a bit wiffy so i assume fumes were produced. Well its certainly fumigated the jewel, it looks like a thick coating of frost

I have some findings but the experiment needs to be more controlled.  The first sample was a large old jewel, tested untreated the oil didn’t really wet the surface, maybe that is the nature of an old real ruby ? After fuming in stearic acid the jewel took on a heavy coating of vapour after a considerable length of time. Then oiled up the oil formed a good round bead, vigorous shaking would not move the droplet. Pulling an oiler through the droplet would move it but only momentarily as the bulk of the drop would pull back anything drawn away. I guess the bigger mass is pulling a lesser mass back into position through cohesion. But the droplet was certainly mobile ( i could drag it to the edge of the jewel ) and i can imagine that the constant thrashing of an escape wheel through it would have a considerable effect above what i could manage with an oiler. Heres where it gets wierd, i next mopped up the oil with watchpaper this removed the thick coating and a leather pad buffed up the jewel back up to a full shine. I then reoiled and the droplet action was exactly the same, so whether the coating is still present or a previous coating is still there i dont know. Next up i found a more modern standard jewel, oiling this i could manage to wet the whole surface of the jewel, very little surface tension present. That jewel is now in the stearic pot being fumed. A final test sample will have a groove through the coating to see if the droplet will pull from a non epliamed surface toban epilamed surface. Please note this is steric acid vapour coated and not a proprietary epilame treatment. 

Edited April 30 by Neverenoughwatches

[HectorLooi]

5 hours! You have slow cooked it! It must be really tender by now.

@nickelsilver posted about his Greiner machine a while back. It had a heated chamber of stearic acid to epilame jewels and it only took 60 seconds.

I've tried stearic acid dissolved in ethanol with a flake of shellac. I'm not really convinced by my test results. I conducted a side by side test by coating a mirror with a stripe of stearic acid and putting several drops of 9010 on the treated surface and untreated surface and observed it for several days. The 9010 spread out about the same for both the treated and untreated surfaces.

I spoke with my mentor recently regarding epilame and lubricating pallet jewels. He has stopped doing both because he finds no significant improvements to the end result.

[Neverenoughwatches]

6 minutes ago, HectorLooi said:

5 hours! You have slow cooked it! It must be really tender by now.

@nickelsilver posted about his Greiner machine a while back. It had a heated chamber of stearic acid to epilame jewels and it only took 60 seconds.

I've tried stearic acid dissolved in ethanol with a flake of shellac. I'm not really convinced by my test results. I conducted a side by side test by coating a mirror with a stripe of stearic acid and putting several drops of 9010 on the treated surface and untreated surface and observed it for several days. The 9010 spread out about the same for both the treated and untreated surfaces.

I spoke with my mentor recently regarding epilame and lubricating pallet jewels. He has stopped doing both because he finds no significant improvements to the end result.

yep certainly overdid it , i wasn't sure if i had enough heat so i went out and left it cooking. You can see the thick frosting, bit like my cherry buns.

[HectorLooi]

I guess it also depends on the precision and quality of the watch. He works on vintage watches mainly and surface treatments on 50 - 60 year old watches probably isn't going to make much difference.

I read about nano coatings for car finishes. The article claims that nano coatings can reduced the coefficient of drag by 5%. Is that number significant? I don't know. Maybe if you were trying to break the land speed record. But applying that on a 50 year old clunker isn't going to make it go any faster, accelerate better or save on petrol. 

[Neverenoughwatches]

15 minutes ago, HectorLooi said:

5 hours! You have slow cooked it! It must be really tender by now.

@nickelsilver posted about his Greiner machine a while back. It had a heated chamber of stearic acid to epilame jewels and it only took 60 seconds.

I've tried stearic acid dissolved in ethanol with a flake of shellac. I'm not really convinced by my test results. I conducted a side by side test by coating a mirror with a stripe of stearic acid and putting several drops of 9010 on the treated surface and untreated surface and observed it for several days. The 9010 spread out about the same for both the treated and untreated surfaces.

I spoke with my mentor recently regarding epilame and lubricating pallet jewels. He has stopped doing both because he finds no significant improvements to the end result.

I would try the vapour treatment very simple just a simmering pot of the stuff and jewels bluetacked ( not whitetacked this time, you still haven't said if I'm forgiven yet ) to the underside of the lid. You're now gonna tell me that stearic acid can be highly explosive above 90° C

Edited April 30 by Neverenoughwatches

[Klassiker]

20 minutes ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

You're now gonna tell me that stearic acid can be highly explosive above 90° C

No idea Rich, but for your own sake please avoid inhaling the fumes.

[JohnR725]

6 hours ago, HectorLooi said:

spoke with my mentor recently regarding epilame and lubricating pallet jewels. He has stopped doing both because he finds no significant improvements to the end result.

I wonder if I'm really reading your quote correctly no epilam and no lubrication the pallet jewels? The epilam is only there to keep the lubrication in place depending upon the lubrication used it can disappear by basically spreading itself superthin and no longer doing its job. so basically if you don't epilam especially with light lubricants they just won't last as long. But not lubricating the escapement that has a really dramatic effect so maybe I didn't read that part correctly?

 

[HectorLooi]

4 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

I wonder if I'm really reading your quote correctly no epilam and no lubrication the pallet jewels? The epilam is only there to keep the lubrication in place depending upon the lubrication used it can disappear by basically spreading itself superthin and no longer doing its job. so basically if you don't epilam especially with light lubricants they just won't last as long. But not lubricating the escapement that has a really dramatic effect so maybe I didn't read that part correctly?

 

I recently helped my mentor to service 7 Seikos and he told me not to lubricate the pallets. His reason was from his experience from the advanced classes that he conducted, his students all ended up with worse amplitudes after oiling the pallets.

I have to admit that I had the same problem when I oiled the exit jewel, like so many videos on YouTube show. I actually ended up with worse amplitude. 

But now I oil the escapement by oiling the teeth of the escape wheel. I think Rolex used to train their technicians this way. I find that I get about 20° -40° increase in amplitude oiling the escapement this way.

I've only started playing with epilame recently. I got a bottle from a Chinese seller on AliExpress. It's supposed to be Episurf Neo but everything on the bottle is in Chinese. When the bottle arrived, half of it had evaporated or leaked. And when I brushed on a thin layer on a mirror, it dries rather slowly and even feels a bit tacky.

When I did the oil spread test, like my experience with stearic acid, the treated and untreated surface of the mirror yielded similar results. The contact angle of the oil drop looked about the same for both the treated and untreated surface.

When I epilamed an actual pallet fork, the escapement was so sluggish that I couldn't even get 180° amplitude.

I dunno if I got conned by the seller but the results are just not convincing.

[Neverenoughwatches]

4 minutes ago, HectorLooi said:

I recently helped my mentor to service 7 Seikos and he told me not to lubricate the pallets. His reason was from his experience from the advanced classes that he conducted, his students all ended up with worse amplitudes after oiling the pallets.

I have to admit that I had the same problem when I oiled the exit jewel, like so many videos on YouTube show. I actually ended up with worse amplitude. 

But now I oil the escapement by oiling the teeth of the escape wheel. I think Rolex used to train their technicians this way. I find that I get about 20° -40° increase in amplitude oiling the escapement this way.

I've only started playing with epilame recently. I got a bottle from a Chinese seller on AliExpress. It's supposed to be Episurf Neo but everything on the bottle is in Chinese. When the bottle arrived, half of it had evaporated or leaked. And when I brushed on a thin layer on a mirror, it dries rather slowly and even feels a bit tacky.

When I did the oil spread test, like my experience with stearic acid, the treated and untreated surface of the mirror yielded similar results. The contact angle of the oil drop looked about the same for both the treated and untreated surface.

When I epilamed an actual pallet fork, the escapement was so sluggish that I couldn't even get 180° amplitude.

I dunno if I got conned by the seller but the results are just not convincing.

I often get an amp drop after i oil the stones with 9415, not sure what difference can be achieved with oiling the teeth.  I guess the oiling surface is very small on a tooth as opposed to on the stones a larger drop might have more drag as the teeth plow through it. I oil with a bristle from a brush now, strangely enough the last movement i oiled five escape teeth and the amp was much higher than i usually get , coincidence ?

[Waggy]

35 minutes ago, HectorLooi said:

my experience with stearic acid

I have seen several mentions of steric acid, how do you use this, I have only seen it in crystal/powder form?

[JohnR725]

25 minutes ago, HectorLooi said:

I recently helped my mentor to service 7 Seikos and he told me not to lubricate the pallets. His reason was from his experience from the advanced classes that he conducted, his students all ended up with worse amplitudes after oiling the pallets.

I have to admit that I had the same problem when I oiled the exit jewel, like so many videos on YouTube show. I actually ended up with worse amplitude. 

But now I oil the escapement by oiling the teeth of the escape wheel. I think Rolex used to train their technicians this way. I find that I get about 20° -40° increase in amplitude oiling the escapement this way.

I assume you're using 9415? the concerned with 9415 and I'm attaching a PDF from Omega is too much can cause a decrease in amplitude. This is why you look at what they do they go to extreme lengths to put extremely tiny quantities.

so as you've discovered proper lubrication of the escapement increases the amplitude. We've seen it on this group where people are having typically newbies issues and I will ask if they lubricated the escapement the usual answer is no they had not because and once they did they saw spectacular improvement.

one of the amusements with lubrication tends to be so many variations. For instance I was in a classroom once and the students all came from for the most part accredited schools in watch repair. So the instructor asked how did we lubricate our escapement's and I don't remember the actual quantity but it's really quite amazing how many people can interpret slightly different ways of doing the same ask. Of course the instructors method was the approved one. This was the place a drop of oil on the impulse face of the exit stone. Allow one third of the teeth to go by and place another drop then another third and your escapement should be lubricated. But sometimes and yes it will show up in the timing machine you'll see in your regular line because if the oil didn't transfer all the way around to the other stone that does cause a issue with the timing machine.

Oh but when I was in school we were using 9010 as 9415 did not exist yet although 941 did which is an oil recommended for escapement's.

4 minutes ago, Waggy said:

I have seen several mentions of steric acid, how do you use this, I have only seen it in crystal/powder form?

it has to be dissolved in a proper solvent with the right amount of concentration as you want a microscopic layer on whatever your treating. My understanding is the vapor process is the very best but the vapors are not good for human consumption. The reason why the vapor process is nice is that it puts a very very thin coating on versus dipping in a solvent which can vary depending upon the concentration.

 

8645_WI_40_rules for lubrication cousins.pdf

[Waggy]

Would be interesting to see how well steric acid compares (or not) to the various epilames out there - anyone know the mixing ratios and solvent(s) etc for the steric acid?

[Neverenoughwatches]

13 minutes ago, Waggy said:

I have seen several mentions of steric acid, how do you use this, I have only seen it in crystal/powder form?

Thats what i have scott. Read back a little i posted a few pictures. Basically i put a small quantity of around quarter inch in the bottom of a tin and heated it on a leccy oil burner. It doesn't need much heat, stuck the jewels to the lid with bluetack and the fumes coat the surface pretty quickly although the first i did i left for 5 hours but it does only take 5 mins if that. The coating does seem to come off easily so i am not sure if it actually works, but the stuff is really cheap and worth an experiment or two.

2 minutes ago, Waggy said:

Would be interesting to see how well steric acid compares (or not) to the various epilames out there - anyone know the mixing ratios and solvent(s) etc for the steric acid?

I have seen that mix somewhere but vapour coat is supposed to be better.

[VWatchie]

39 minutes ago, JohnR725 said:

I assume you're using 9415? the concerned with 9415 and I'm attaching a PDF from Omega is too much can cause a decrease in amplitude. This is why you look at what they do they go to extreme lengths to put extremely tiny quantities.

Yes, in my experience, 9415 must be applied very precisely so as not to impair the amplitude. It must be checked at a high magnification. Before realising this I got less than stellar results with 9415 and preferred and got better results with thin non-thixotropic oils.

[Neverenoughwatches]

Just now, VWatchie said:

Yes, in my experience, 9415 must be applied very precisely so as not to impair the amplitude. It must be checked at a high magnification. Before realising this I got less than stellar results with 9415 and preferred and got better results with thin non-thixotropic oils.

I'm getting a little blip on a trace line at the moment and wondering if my lubrication isn't as good as it should be.

[Waggy]

6 minutes ago, VWatchie said:

9415 must be applied very precisely

Not sure how/why I started using 9415, must have picked it up from some forum or youtube I suppose and I used to slop this stuff on with my largest oiler... now I use my finest oiler and under highest microscope magnification, and I have seen a difference. what do you use on your pallet stones, epilame and...?

[HectorLooi]

1 minute ago, Waggy said:

Not sure how/why I started using 9415, must have picked it up from some forum or youtube I suppose and I used to slop this stuff on with my largest oiler... now I use my finest oiler and under highest microscope magnification, and I have seen a difference. what do you use on your pallet stones, epilame and...?

Even the amount picked up by the smallest oiler can be too much. I made my own oiler with a 0.2mm wire. And I use the amount picked up by the smallest black oiler and use that to transfer an appropriate size droplet to the tip of my homemade oiler.

The final amount of 9415 used is so small that it seems ridiculous. 

[VWatchie]

1 minute ago, Waggy said:

what do you use on your pallet stones, epilame and...?

Moebius 9415. Hope that answers your question.

57 minutes ago, JohnR725 said:

I'm attaching a PDF from Omega

Just browsed it through and found a reference to "Working Instructions", but I would need a login for that and I guess that won't happen without being accredited. I'm super curious to know if Omega recommends the "rub of epilame method" on the pallet stones before applying the oil. Can you please check for us @JohnR725?

[Waggy]

2 minutes ago, HectorLooi said:

The final amount of 9415 used is so small that it seems ridiculous. 

So do you use the 9415 along with epilame, or just the 9415 by itself - my understanding was that the 9415 was viscous enough that it didn't need the epilame, but now starting to question my thinking

[Neverenoughwatches]

Just now, HectorLooi said:

Even the amount picked up by the smallest oiler can be too much. I made my own oiler with a 0.2mm wire. And I use the amount picked up by the smallest black oiler and use that to transfer an appropriate size droplet to the tip of my homemade oiler.

The final amount of 9415 used is so small that it seems ridiculous. 

I set a brush bristle into a pinvice, its diameter is around .15. Dip it vertically in oil with a slow withdraw leaves just enough at the very tip . The flexibility of the hair i also like, makes oiling teeth or stones a really gentle proceedure.

[VWatchie]

3 minutes ago, HectorLooi said:

The final amount of 9415 used is so small that it seems ridiculous.

Indeed, and yes the risk of over-oiling is imminent!

6 minutes ago, HectorLooi said:

I made my own oiler with a 0.2mm wire. And I use the amount picked up by the smallest black oiler and use that to transfer an appropriate size droplet to the tip of my homemade oiler.

[Neverenoughwatches]

1 minute ago, Waggy said:

So do you use the 9415 along with epilame, or just the 9415 by itself - my understanding was that the 9415 was viscous enough that it didn't need the epilame, but now starting to question my thinking

I dont use epilame at all just 9415, thixotropic oil that changes viscosity when its struck. Epilame and 9415 = belt and braces ?