So sure enough, I broke the pivot on a wheel
I'll show you why this thing is such a pain to work with
On most watches, there are 2 or 3 bridges you need to install, which have holes that line up with 2 or 3-4 pivots each. This makes it easy to line everything up. I'll show the 6497-2 clone as an example. This is actually Panerai's refreshed version of it from the 90's:
You can see at the top there is the barrel bridge, which only needs to line up with the barrel in this case. Below that is the train wheel bridge, which lines up with 3 pivots (you can see the jewels). Below that are two cocks (yes Badhobz that's what they're called) one of which is dedicated to the escape wheel (the original ETA version moves some things around and has 2 bridges)
This is especially important on older designs, or low end manufactures, because the tolerances are loose making it hard to get so many tiny pivots to line up. Spreading them across 2 or 3 bridges means only having to line up a few shitty pivots at a time.
There are high end single bridge designs, called 3/4 bridge. But with super tight tolerances, these are pretty easy to get lined up.
Well the Miyota puts everything under one bridge:
Along with the balance cock, there's the one bridge with SIX pivots to line up, plus the barrel. And tolerances are good, but not that good, so it takes a lot of patience to line things up. To make matters worse, there is a spring underneath it, pushing down on the center pinion, so even if it's lined up perfectly it won't just settle into place on its own.
So yeah while these are serviceable, it's clear that they aren't really designed to be worked on often. This has more to do with the fact that they are so cheap to replace, it makes more sense to do that than to service them. But there you go.. It's possible, but a real pain to do.
It's a real challenge! I'll have to order some replacement wheels and try again later. I might take that center spring off first to see if that helps during practice