Another great watch from my favourite brand! This time it is a calibre 1416 U.
This Eterna is not ticking and hopefully only needs a service to get going again.
Besides being dirty the movement looks to be in good condition.Removing the oscillating weight you can see that the grease inside the reverser wheels has solidified in to a green paste.Here you can see the auto winder gears.With auto winder assembly removed you can appreciate the high build quality of the 50’s Eterna with nice perlage decoration on the bridge and my favorite under the regulator on the balance cock.The dial in good condition with no scratches.The set lever spring is broken and will need to be replaced.Here the balance is removed.Here the train bridge is removed showing the geair train.Only the barrel and intermediate wheel left on the base plate.Old mainspring is extremely dirtyI gently clean the dial and apply new varnish, as the browning does not appeal to me.All the parts clean and nice ready to be put back together. On the photo you see I have a new mainspring, but when assembled the watch had to much power and was banking.To sort out the banking problem I clean and reuse the old mainspring as it still has plenty life left.I test that the balance moves freelyBarrel and intermediate wheel back in placeGear train and bridge back in place.Pallet back in placeMovement is back together and ticking happily.What more do you want from a more than 50 + year old watch;)Movement back in the caseLast but not least the oscillating weight.This is one of the most successful dial cleans I have preformed and the watch looks great!
This is so good I’m making a desktop background just to stare at it all day! 🙂
What a great result. Beautiful watch!
Beautiful transformation 🙂 Is it a problem that the regulator on the balance bridge is moved all the way to the – (minus) indication?
No there is no problem as that is only the fine regulation on this watch.
the movement looks lovely! It always makes me worry about the future when you cannot use a modern new mainspring – if the old mainspring was US did you have a plan B? Also, are you ever tempted to remove the dial furniture before revarnishing as I’m assuming that’s how the original finish would be applied; I can see that the effort would be vastly increased but would the results be worthwhile?
I could try a thinner mainspring, but since the original spring looked pretty good I decided to go with that;) Well removing the dial furniture is risky as you need to re-rivet. The varnish on the batton’s can always be removed with peg wood when fresh. If the varnish is applied evenly it actually will protect it a little against the elements.
What is the best varnish to use for dials? How do you remove the old varnish?
Excellent transformation 🙂
I use hot water with vinegar 50/50 mix. I use standard water based varnish.