What kind of watches do you have?

[SkinnyPupp]

Originally Posted by Badhobz

i dont even know wtf im looking at but its all pretty neat stuff. i love tiny itty bitty stuff!!!

your wife: WTF YOU DOING!?!?!

you: what what!? I'm lubricating this tiny movement

your wife: heh.

That is the 'fourth wheel' which rotates once every 60 seconds. So when a watch has a seconds hand, it attaches to this wheel somehow

This movement, being basically an old pocket watch movement, has a post on it that goes right through the dial, which you put the seconds hand on directly. On the dial the hand will be beside the 9 o'clock (most would have this at the 6 o'clock, like the Rolex 1908 I posted above)

My watch does not have a seconds hand. So when Panerai orders their movements for this model, they get a version of this wheel that doesn't have this post. But the Chinese version of the movement only has one version of the wheel, so if you want to put it in a watch with no seconds hand, you have to cut that post shorter. Otherwise you can't put the dial on

The one on the right was my first attempt at doing this last year with no real tools. I used a file to shorten it, but it looks like I broke it right off. Also I cracked the jewel that it sat in. The thing actually worked somewhat, but would stop after a few minutes.

So the first thing I did was move the bridge over from the original movement that came with my watch with the non broken jewel, but kept this wheel. It worked, and had great overall timing, but when you look at the graph, the watch slows down and speeds up over the course of one minute. This is what gave away that something is wrong with this particular wheel

The one on the left is the one that came with my watch, snipped by whoever put the replica together. Yesterday I moved that wheel over too, and it runs perfect now.

What's keeping my latest build from perfect is that there is now a 1.0 ms beat error that I have to figure out. In reality this is irrelevant, but I know it can hit 0 so I want to get there.

Today I am going to re-lube the balance jewels - this is the hardest part of a basic service by far. I managed to do it the first time, but I probably didn't do a good job, and the oil probably touched the edge of the 1.3mm jewel. It has to stay in the middle. This will take a lot of practice to get right, but I am down.

If that doesn't fix it, I have to try regulating the beat error out. Not too hard on this type of movement, but I haven't tried that before

Edit: Regulated, this is dial down (all other positions good except dial up, which is probably due to bad balance jewel lube)

[underscore]

Originally Posted by SkinnyPupp

re-lube the balance jewels

[SkinnyPupp]

Walked right into that one

[SkinnyPupp]

Did another service today, with a couple goals in mind

1) Do it using no reference whatsoever
2) Oil the balance springs again (this is the hardest thing to do by far)

#1 achieved! Had no problem putting this simple movement together in the right order (which can be important for some parts) and even remembered the correct direction of the click

#2 was tough. First of all I lost an end cap jewel, so I had to take one from the donor. (also lost one of the smaller screws, so I took that as well)

This is what Incabloc springs look like when opened



See that brass fork looking thing sticking up? That is about 0.7mm wide at the tip, and oh by the way it is a spring. The slightest bit of torsion will cause it to jump (and how much torsion do you think it takes to wind a <1mm spring that is microns thick?).

Oh, and it's not really attached to anything, it just wedges in at the base as you can see. If it gets twisted by more than a few microns, with another few microns of force going in another direction, it will slip out. I think you can see where this is going.

It took a long time, but I was able to get it back in. Furthermore, oiling the end caps went much smoother this time (minus the lost jewel). It took a couple tries, but I was able to get the oil centered, and drop the chaton on top without the oil leaking out towards the side. This keeps a pocket of oil suspended right over the pivot, which results in as little friction as possible. Importantly, both sides should have the same amount of oil (a drop about 700 microns wide).

There are easier methods using expensive automatic oilers, but I am learning to do it the old school way, to improve my overall dexterity. If I can do this well, I will be able to do much more, and when I get to do this as work, I can use the tool efficiently.

It takes about a day for everything to settle in to be able to regulate the timing, but it's looking good so far. We'll see.

I ordered some stuff as well - a clone of the ETA 2824-2 movement which is in approximately 10 billion Swiss watches around the world. Seriously, if you see a watch with legit Swiss branding on it, chances are it has this movement, or a Swiss clone of it from Sellita. It's more modern and a lot smaller than what I have here, and has an automatic winding system and a calendar to learn with.

I also ordered a replacement mainspring for one of these 6497's. The amplitude is really low, so I want to see if a legit Swiss spring helps. It's less than $10 so whatever. If it goes well, it will go into my watch. This also gives me something to learn - replacing a mainspring.