This is the first watch I tried servicing in Christian’s workshop and in the process managed to mangle the hairspring.
We decided to put the project aside until I felt ready to tackle the problem myself. Unfortunately, I did not take a picture of the watch before taking it out of the case.
Movement is in very good condition besides a broken winding stem. When I remove the top cap jewel I manage to break the shock spring. To replace the shock spring you need to remove the balance from the balance cock. When I was fixing the balance back on to the balance cock, my hand slipped and the screwdriver went through the hairspring bending it out of shape.
I fix the balance to some rodiko so that I can reshape the hairspring.
Here is the balance after mending it with two special hairspring tweezers.
Not much dirt on this movement at all. Only specks of grease around the winding pinion.
The mainspring looks good and goes back in to the movement after cleaning and greasing.
The movement looks almost new when putting it back together
Back in the case and looking great with a new winding stem and crown.
I’m very happy with this result.
The dial and hands are in really good condition and with a new crystal this watch just looks and feels great.
If anyones interested in giving me a fair offer any of the watches I post, just let me know:)
Well done Mitka, in my opinion, repairing hairsprings is THE most difficult job to do, especially considering how easily you can make it much much worse!
More useful experience under your belt!
Yes, well done indeed! You either fix it in less than 15 minutes, or you make a complete mess of it 😉
Hi Mitka
An eye for the unusually nice.
I guess it’s true that you just can’t rush genius…I am sure Christian will know that after the years of learning.
Could the beat error be improved upon any? Or is this an acceptable margin for this movement?
Stephen
It can be improved but it is really hard to get it better on a movement like this which is collet adjusted.
On a collet adjusted movement, I’m happy when I get close to 2ms. It is almost impossible to get any better, as any movement on the collet translates to a fair amount of degrees on the mainspring stud.
This type of construction is from the days when watchmakers didn’t have a timegrapher, and few had vibrographs. A visual adjustment (e.g. pallet fork straight when balance is at rest) did the trick, and that is probably +- 4ms or so.
Looks fairly large for the time – 1950s or 60s? Cleans up well 😉
I would say late 60’s or early 70’s.