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Revisiting an old hobby


AndyHull

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Time for something a little older, and slightly more refined. 

An early (my guess is sometime between 1956 and 1962) Timex model 22 based Marlin ? Aluminium front loader. No doubt someone can give me a more precise date for this.

This one is another "Scotland" mechanism from Dundee.

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This is what it looks like after a service, and crystal polish, but with a few grubby marks still to attend to, despite manually scrubbing the case under the hot tap. The grime and paint splatters on this poor thing were set like glue.

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.. and finally a picture from the listing, showing it in its previous state.

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What I will say, is whoever thought up the arrangement of the second hand on this mechanism really should have handed in their "I'm an engineer" badge, and gone back to playing tiddlywinks. It must have taken me at least a dozen attempts to remedy the "flapping about in the breeze" second hand that it arrived with. Fiddly and hit or miss, to say the least.

 

 

 

 

Edited by AndyHull
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18 minutes ago, AndyHull said:

Time for something a little older, and slightly more refined. 

An early (my guess is sometime between 1956 and 1962) Timex model 22 based Marlin ? Aluminium front loader. No doubt someone can give me a more precise date for this.

This one is another "Scotland" mechanism from Dundee.

RIMG0608.thumb.JPG.f2d32bcaf8c17873cb34411aeff5d85f.JPG

This is what it looks like after a service, and crystal polish, but with a few grubby marks still to attend to, despite manually scrubbing the case under the hot tap. The grime and paint splatters on this poor thing were set like glue.

RIMG0609.thumb.JPG.47ed57bdd7eab36099567c8b65fe009f.JPG

.. and finally a picture from the listing, showing it in its previous state.

AsPurchased.thumb.jpg.7a02792403c4219a1e5f5d8547bba0a1.jpg

What I will say, is whoever thought the arrangement of the second hand on this mechanism really should have handed back their "I'm an engineer" badge, and gone back to playing tiddlywinks. It must have taken me at least a dozen attempts to remedy the "flapping about in the breeze" second hand that it arrived with. Fiddly and hit or miss, to say the least.

 

 

 

 

Hi AndyHull lets go 1959 logic can't be out by too far then ,nice watch 

Edited by Graziano
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I took a look at the close cousin of the previous Timex Marlin "Aluminium" today. 

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This one has quite an interesting patina on the dial. The original cream has developed a slight pinkish tinge.

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Inside the case there is an ink stamp, which makes the date of  manufacture is pretty obvious (7)=1960 and/or 60=1960  .. the 'P' may indicate November, so the case was made in Germany, or the watch was assembled most likely in November 1960, and the mechanism was probably made around the same time. The whole thing was almost certainly assembled in Dundee.

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This aluminium case is a two parter, and arrived slightly twisted, so a little bit of pressure gingerly was applied to straighten out the lugs.

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It is currently on my wrist and sitting at around -60sec per day. I'll let it run for 24 hrs and then see if I can adjust it to be a little better than that. I may also see if I can chase a few more of those tiny scratches out of the crystal, although they are not actually visible unless you go looking for them with a bright light.

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image.thumb.png.33e60f0dea4149d1fb192e34d904ce56.png

Ooops. Maybe that is why it doesn't run.

An Indian Timestar which had evidently been dropped. The hairspring was hanging out of the side of the balance, and even after I straightened that, it would run for a couple of seconds, then stop suddenly. I wonder what the chances of me being able to straighten that are, since I don't have a donor movement. I give myself about a 5% chance.

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After a lot of effort, I actually got it to run. The second hand has a slight stutter every time it passes the duff tooth, at about the 25 seconds marker, and the beat error shoots through the roof briefly when it does, but it does actually run.

RIMG0659.thumb.JPG.0ebb11be73b8d878c8fa2bfdf0e0dcc6.JPG

If I spot a Lorsa P62 donor I may have another crack at it, but I suspect I'm wasting my time pressing on any further.

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The balance is more or less OK.

The hairspring is no longer more concave than a wok, and hanging out of one side. The palette stones/jewels point in the correct direction and are fixed in place, rather than one of them pointing at the sky. No,  not fixed in place with superglue before you ask, tempting though that was, done properly, more or less.

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The main bridge is now flat, or at least not so bent that it binds everything up, though it is still not 100%, and will bind up if I crank down hard on the screw next to the balance cock screw, but if I then back of 1/8th of a turn everything spins freely. 

The keyless work is clean and works. The canon pinion and gears on the dial side are no longer caked in sticky residue. It is sitting with a beat error of around 5ms, and the rate is +200sec/day.. most of the time, but given the rest of its issues, and the fact that it has run for a full 20 mins without sulking, I think I'll call it quits. 

I have to admit, this thing was in a far worse state than any of the HMT Mumbai specials I've worked on, and that includes the self proclaimed "worst watch on ebay"

Edited by AndyHull
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This one was a whole let easier. Strip, clean, re-assemble, test. Working.

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The case was sanitized, fresh strap pins and a new crystal fitted, and here it is.

More Scottish pin lever fun, this time from Dumbarton, rather than Dundee. 

I don't have a strap for it, but once I find one, I'll see how it goes when worn.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, the white "movement holder" you can see above is made of silicone rubber, and presumably doubles up as shock protection.

s-l1600.jpg

EDIT2: I also forgot to include the "before" shot of it looking particularly scruffy.

Edited by AndyHull
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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, if the last one was easy, this one wasn't.

 

Today we have a Timex LED, with all sorts of issues.

 

When I opened it, and chucked in a couple of "H" Cells (AG12,SR43SW, LR43, LR1142, V12GA - these things have more unnecessary and obscure names than members of the royal family), it blinked all the LEDs in a rather dim and uninspiring way, and neither of the buttons worked, so I dived in and tore it down.

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The first, and most obvious issue was that the two spring contacts that the pushers should touch were missing. Since the broken bits were not in the case, and since the case has more chisel marks from ham fisted attempts to open it than is good for it, I can only assume that they fell out a long time back.

So.. I replaced them with bits of gold plated spring contact from a scrap connector in my junk bin. This was no easy task, as they are about 1.5mm wide, however with a little bit of jiggery pokery, I was happy with the results, and re-assembled the watch.

Now it still blinked at me, but when I pressed the buttons, it stopped blinking for a moment, so the new contacts were doing something.

Above is the module ready to re-assemble, with fresh double sided tape on the display mask, the plastic cell holder, and the cell spring retainer contacts.  Those huge chunks of scrap metal are what I manufactured the new button contact springs from, and the contact springs are soldered to those nice shiny blobs on either side of the crystal.

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Everything about this module is designed to be admired, with clear plastic above the crystal, the LED's and the IC COB. Ahh the wonder of it, an entirely electronic watch. What exciting times we lived in back then.

Next I turned my attention to the mechanical constriction. The cells seemed loose, so I fiddled with the battery contacts till I was certain they were working fine. Still no joy.

RIMG0724.thumb.JPG.4ea40e03f4087f1308a2f788bb6206ea.JPG

 

I tried a couple of fresh cells, but still dim, and still blinking. so I cleaned off all of the gunk on the front of the module and checked it with good magnification. It looked fine.

I grabbed another packet of batteries and tried those.. it worked!

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For about five minutes :( then back to blinking.

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I checked the pack of batteries. Manufactured in 2018... Hmmm... not so good. I looked to see if I had any others... which I did, but they were even older.

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The trouble with these ancient LED modules is that they draw a relatively high current from the cells, so this means that not only do the cells not last very long, but if their chemistry is not fairly fresh, they will be incapable of supplying the necessary voltage and current, and the module will go into sulking mode, blinking all of the display segments.

RIMG0728.thumb.JPG.e064d00e80c2e0ce9b3f7c7f1ccea5eb.JPG

So, I've ordered some fresh LR43 cells and I'll re-visit this when they arrive. For the time being however I have picked out the best of the old cells by measuring their cell voltage and it is currently working, but for how long I have no idea.

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PCB1.thumb.png.3e140f038eb7c73753f33aab7d591f32.png

I have a sneaking suspicion that all of those bond wires, and the blue paint dabs were placed by a manually operated machine.

Furthermore I suspect the PCB was designed by hand, laid out with tapes  and photo reduced. Even the epoxy blob holding down the main IC die has the uneven quality of something squirted out of a syringe, rather than laid down by a robot.

If you look closely, you can see the way the bond wires are used to multiplex the LEDs into a common cathode or anode arrangement. With a little more magnification it would be possible to see the individual driver transistors laid out on the die.

You can also see why the display shows only certain LEDs lit on the different digits, this is because while all of the LED dies are identical, only certain lands/pads are connected on each chip.

Edited by AndyHull
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I remember having an LED watch back in the early 1970's Andy, they really used to eat batteries then, battery life, under normal use, measured in a very few weeks rather than months. I seem to remember that the screen was usually blank and only illuminated , for a few seconds, when you pressed a button to read the time. The nearest, that I can find a picture of,  to the one I used to have, is this Omega one:-(and no, my one wasn't an Omega!)

omega1600tc1led1.jpg

 

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That is an interesting little watch. If you look closely you can see that it has multiple LEDs per segment. There seems to have been a number of different technological jumps, which slowly improved on the reliability and readability of LED watches. The Timex module looks relatively primitive compared with some.

That Omega may use bubble display type LED modules, which tended to be more reliable, but also more expensive than the bare die construction of the Timex.

s-l300.jpg

Here are some bubble type display modules, which had a primitive lens to make the display look larger and brighter. These ones are on a lead frame, so they can be PCB mounted, but they also came in custom arrangements, including later in their development surface mount, and even some dot matrix modules that could display a full range of ASCII characters.

The Timex digits are single LEDs per segment, so when one led fails the whole segment is toast. You can also see that one of the bond wires is obscuring the bottom corner of the left most digit in the pictures of the Timex.

The seven segment Omega modules were much better constructed, with very short bind wires on to the adjacent substrate and since they had multiple LEDs per segment, a single LED failing open circuit, didn't render the watch completely unreadable.

All of this died a rapid death when reliable LCD displays came on the market, since they were much more reliable, used far less current, and could be fabricated in any custom arrangement you could think of. These early LCDs did however require a split voltage power supply, as you need to drive them with pulsed DC in both directions as it were, other wise they fail or become unreadable. The circuitry to drive an LED by comparison is very simple.

Edited by AndyHull
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  • 2 weeks later...

I was looking at a couple of watches last night, and at lunch time today. One of them was a "Veranda" 17 jewel EB8800 based pocket watch probably from the mid 1970s judging by the design.

There is nothing particularly remarkable about this watch, or the process of fixing it, but I thought I'd share a couple of time graph results, just to show the importance of allowing things to settle down after cleaning, in order to best judge the effect of your efforts.

This particular mechanism was stripped, cleaned and re-assembled at lunch time today, and once it was all back together I immediately stuck it on the time grapher to see if it was running acceptably well.

image.png.4341ce6009aef019c9d91ed3d6c51120.png

This is what I saw with it fully wound,  dial up at around 13:00 - not bad, considering the fact that that there was evidence that the watch had taken a serious knock, which had jammed everything up, prior to it coming in to my possession. The dots for the "tick" and "tock" are following a nice straight line, with no real deviation.  The rate is a little fast, and the beat error is slightly high,  but we can attend to those two minor issues later.

image.png.6b75e8ab44107b112552d1ef484cb01c.png

 

This is exactly the same watch in the same position fully wound once more, at 20:00 after all of the lubrication has had a chance to get to work. As you can see, the swing has improved substantially. The rate is still slightly fast, and the beat error is still slightly high, but for now, I'll just carry it around with me to see that it runs consistently.


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Naturally the case, crystal, dial and hands all got a thorough cleaning too. 

The back of the case polished up so well that you can see your face in it.

I wont touch anything in the watch mechanism again till some time tomorrow, probably after it has ben run for at least 24hrs, otherwise I might actually make matters worse, rather than better, as there is every chance that the rate will have changed slightly as the running gets a little smoother.

The improvement is often that the rate slows down slightly and the swing angle increases. However if the rate increases and the beat error or the swing angle gets worse, then this may indicate that some oil has migrated to places where we don't want it, for example the hairspring.

One thing this game teaches you above all else. Patience is most definitely a virtue when it comes to fixing old watches.

Edited by AndyHull
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Raketa2609HA.thumb.jpg.5dee17bb3ec541eb19e650402a4e4ca5.jpg

Continuing this theme, here is a Raketa 2609.HA from the mid 1970s immediately post-op, and the same watch some 12 hours later, both dial up. 

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The big balances in these 1800bph movements make for some nice stable traces, and allowing everything to bed in has improved the picture immensely. Nothing has been done to the watch between the first graph and the second, other than wearing it on my wrist for a few hours, and letting it sit overnight. The improvement is entirely down to the fresh lubrication doing its work.

Edited by AndyHull
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Today's mystery movement, in the Rone Sportsmans watch I just posted in the Watch of Today thread.

Sportsmans15jewel2Adj.thumb.png.29f3b54c72247302526869f0767b525b.png

 

Does anybody recognise this? It is very nicely put together, but my quick stint in front of the Google machine didn't come up with a caliber number, and no, before you even ask, unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the keyless work.

BA15230.jpg

More about the Rone brand here ->  https://thewatchforum.co.uk/index.php?/topic/115422-rone-watches-nothing-to-do-with-rolex/

 

Edited by AndyHull
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1 hour ago, AndyHull said:

Today's mystery movement, in the Rone Sportsmans watch I just posted in the Watch of Today thread.

Sportsmans15jewel2Adj.thumb.png.29f3b54c72247302526869f0767b525b.png

 

Does anybody recognise this? It is very nicely put together, but my quick stint in front of the Google machine didn't come up with a caliber number, and no, before you even ask, unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the keyless work.

BA15230.jpg

More about the Rone brand here ->  https://thewatchforum.co.uk/index.php?/topic/115422-rone-watches-nothing-to-do-with-rolex/

 

Can't help you with the movement cal. but did you know that address on the Ad above is next door to Bravingtons head office in Pentonville Road? They were a importer of several Swiss watch makes from the 1930's onwards and 294 was almost certainly their import business address and workshops, 298-296 being their retail showrooms...

RlxlugN.jpg

I did some research on Rone watches when I had this pre-war Rone refurbished for my brother.

Ry007xP.jpg

aA054hK.jpg

It originally belonged to his father, our mother's first husband, who died as a Japanese prisoner of war..

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5451581509_02cfae47ae_b.jpg

Using the magic power of the internet, here is the building next door, and yes, it too has Bravingtons on the signage.

image.thumb.png.aa3dfafb50797da04586037c371267d9.pngimageproxy.php?img=&key=8c41f123521b3122

 

Sadly, like every other shop these days, it is now a MacDonalds/Pret/Starbucks etc.

Click the link below to get a full view.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5308053,-0.1220827,3a,75y,131.45h,93.33t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sO--wFeJNM_UxkLKqFE5rdw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

Edited by AndyHull
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21 hours ago, AndyHull said:

5451581509_02cfae47ae_b.jpg

Using the magic power of the internet, here is the building next door, and yes, it too has Bravingtons on the signage.

image.thumb.png.aa3dfafb50797da04586037c371267d9.pngimageproxy.php?img=&key=8c41f123521b3122

 

Sadly, like every other shop these days, it is now a MacDonalds/Pret/Starbucks etc.

Cheers Andy, my supposition has been proved right then:).

Almost certainly my brother's watch was bought there as my mother was bought up in the Caledonian Road area, just around the corner, in the 'buildings' overlooking the Caledonian Cattle Market.....

 

And how it is now, all that is left is the clock tower..

 

Caledonian Market.jpg

Caledonian market now.jpg

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2 hours ago, FLwatchguy73 said:

When you live in a city that has been continuously inhabited for nearly 2000 years, I guess change is to be expected, lol

True, at the other end of the line as it were, from the "Caledonian Cattle Market", up in Glasgow, you had a similarly massive cattle market, which presumably served to "export" cattle and meat to London and elsewhere via the once extensive railway network. 

SC01315615.jpg?download=1&u=1315615&c=%C

https://canmore.org.uk/collection/1315615

3148332010_9be9cc2ace.jpg

 

image.thumb.png.c3c2a5e04de0b6a7338abb61c1e82431.png

The Gallowgate entrance today.

This meat market and abattoir too has mostly been demolished, with the land mainly redeveloped into flats and office blocks. A lot of the old shops on the high street nearby, including a clock repairer I remember from my youth have gone, replaced with coffee shops and such like.

Click  -> here <- to explore Graham Square now, and note the Drover Bar (just behind you).

This name refers to cattle drovers, the people who moved the cattle round Scotland over ancient drove roads (aka drovers roads).

If you are interested in these, this is a good book to read -> https://www.amazon.co.uk/Drove-Roads-Scotland-R-B-Haldane/dp/1841586951

These old trade road through the remote hills are well worth exploring if you are fit enough and fancy a visit to Scotland (once the covid19 travel restrictions are lifted of course).

Edited by AndyHull
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6 hours ago, AndyHull said:

These old trade road through the remote hills are well worth exploring if you are fit enough and fancy a visit to Scotland (once the covid19 travel restrictions are lifted of course).

As far as I remember we visited Scotland every year since we live in the UK, some of these ppl must have lost a watch while chasing cattle and I have a metal detector!!! :)

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Speaking of lost watches, today I was looking at this little treasure. A cylinder escapement pocket watch.

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When I say "little", it is fairly petite. 

The case (not the movement, the entire case) is  a diminutive 33mm across and 39mm from stem to stern.

Just slightly  larger than the top joint of my thumb.

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Only the balance is jewelled, the dial is completely plain, and other than having Swiss Made inside, it gives no clues as to who made it.

It arrived with 100 years of grime and a bad case of hair spring salad, but is now shining like a new pin. The photos don't do it justice, the contrast between the brass details and the gun metal case is very attractive. 

It winds and sets now, but still refuses to run consistently, however I do have the hairspring more or less back in order, and re-fitted to the balance cock. I have put it to one side for the time being as I'm starting to get tired, so I'll pick it back up later. It will make a very worthy member of the 404 club once it is ticking away.

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2 hours ago, luiazazrambo said:

As far as I remember we visited Scotland every year since we live in the UK, some of these ppl must have lost a watch while chasing cattle and I have a metal detector!!! :)

So have I and yes they did, this Georgian silver pocket watch was one detecting find about 30 years ago.....

2YDHPDX.jpg

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Here it is next to what I would say is a pretty small but more modern (1970s) picket watch, namely the "Veranda" I posted about recently. 

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It makes the Veranda look like a Goliath.

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The insides, looking a lot healthier without the green stuff and the rust, and with all of the hairspring concentric with the balance shaft (more or less :blink:). I suspect I need to wrestle with the hairspring retaining pin again and push the balance slightly further round anticlockwise and it should take off.  All of that practice on Timex hairsprings has paid off, I managed to remove and refit this one without loosing the pin, or using too much interesting language. The pin on this is even smaller than the ones on the Timexes.

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