Mechanical and quartz watch repair pdf

Winding a mainspring and getting it back into the barrel can be a challenge if you don't have the right tools at hand. Bergeon makes a complete set of mainspr Read More Watch Repair Guides 7 Comments 3.

If you have a watch with an Oyster style bracelet or even a genuine Rolex with a Jubilee bracelet you might have noticed it start to get loose and "droopy" over Watch Repair Guides 7 Comments 7.

The design of a mechanical watch movement requires regular maintenance including lubrication to reduce the friction on moving parts that causes them to wear o Watch Repair Guides 22 Comments Here is the data chart for the Moebius Oil and Grease that gives you the information you need.

Find the temperature range, the viscosity, pour point and more. Watch Repair Guides 1 Comment 3. Here is a breakdown of all the clock movements and their features to help you easily identify which type of movement will work best for your project. How to Watch Repair Guides 12 Comments 3. Battery operated clock movements come in a variety of options and they all vary a little bit from manufacturer to manufacturer.

The holes used to mount the cl Watch Repair Guides 7 Comments 1. Your stainless watch is looking worn and scratched? It can look like new again with just a few of the right tools and a short time. Smooth out deeper scratches Watch Repair Guides 8 Comments 6. There are several different systems used to measure the size of a watch movement and which one to use will depend on who you talk to.

No matter what system yo But this is not as easy as it seems, you must completely tear down your watch movement, clean each little part, reassemble and oil it.

This video will show you how a modern watch works starting with the spring barrel down to the balance wheel:. In World War II numerous manuals like this were written to train any year-old to learn advanced skills in a short period of time. To make it run again you will have to completely take it apart, clean its mechanical parts and plates in an ultrasonic cleaner, and oil as you put it back together following the procedure in TM For videos of watch repairs and cleanings of all types of pocket and wrist watches, check out this YouTube channel on watch repair.

Re-assembly is time-consuming and this is often where things break. In this video, [bunnspecial] completes re-assembly in 33 min, which is very quick. Screws in vintage watches are tougher than the screw driver tips, cheap screwdrivers will disintegrate quickly. You can buy vintage watches at antique shops or on ebay, they are not too expensive.

Key issue you must look for is a good balance staff. One way to test for this is to take a toothpick and touch the balance wheel and observe if it moves freely, if so then you should be able to service the watch. Also, if the watch runs somewhat and stops it likely has a good balance staff.

Need help or want to learn more, take classes, and goto meet-ups? Do not restore a watch that has a great deal of meaning to you. Expect to damage or permanently break your first one or two pocket watches and about half of your first wristwatches. Even as you get better at this I would not recommend cleaning a high-end Chrono. Unfortunately watch repair shops are few and far between these days and most can not handle the complexity of a vintage mechanical movement.

Watch repair is a fascinating hobby, one of the few that is actually worth doing yourself. There is nothing more satisfying than taking apart a dead movement, making repairs and cleaning, then seeing it run again. Express yourself, wear vintage, make a connection with history and always have a story at the next social gathering explaining how these little machines work. Gregory L. Charvat , Ph. He has taught short radar courses at MIT, where his Build a Small Radar course was the top-ranked MIT professional education course in and has become widely adopted by other universities, laboratories, and private organizations.

Starting at an Early Age , Greg developed numerous radar systems , rail SAR imaging sensors , phased array radar systems ; holds several patents; and has developed many other sensors and radio and audio equipment. He has authored numerous publications and received a great deal of press for his work. Greg earned a Ph. You can detect earthquakes on the other side of the world Riefler Clock detects the Anchorage earthquake near Minuch , a 9 sqare-feet concrete column gets in motion with clocks on both sides, synchronizing them… The Bond clock is measured to a precision of 1s in 12 years…?

To me, this is fantastic! A watch beeing in motion throughout a day and showing precise time! Why do we still develop watches and clocks: because we can, for the mere spirit and fun! Examening a Peter Hehenlein watch ? IS exciting, not only for the technology, the workmanship but also for the pure existance of it. I think nobody will check an Attiny in years. Used rubidium standards go for surprisingly cheap online. How can I achieve a sufficient precise rate with this device? Using a RTC or an external clock changes things.

The above calculus let me to the statement about Attiny precision. Been there, done that. Getting them to be within 10 ppm of UTC yes, time! You know what I mean is the tricky part. And when they break you throw the worthless things away that is why they are considered thow out movements. I love mechanical things,.. Digital watches are lame because everybody wears those, it takes somebody with class to see the value of an old fashioned mechanical watch. Always wanted to do this!

Thanks for compiling all the info. I have a hour mechanical wind-up pocket watch that uses the vintage jeweled design, but with all new parts. Now I have an excuse to pick up one next time I go to an antique market. I wonder if this same design is upscaled when dealing with larger vintage wind clocks. Hi CJ, clocks are alot different. Clocks are under significantly more torque from the mainspring. But, just like watches a clock simply needs to be taken apart, cleaned, and oiled. Sometimes the bushings need to be replaced, this is rather involved.

Be careful when bringing down the mainspring on a clock, it is very dangerous, suggest you put it in a drill chuck and dump the energy into the drill. Other than the power of the mainspring clocks really seem easier to me. That is my profession is clock repair and I find the larger size parts much easier and more forgiving to work with.

However I suppose different people find different things easier. And really to let the power off a main spring all you really need is a screwdriver to let the click off the ratchet, and a let down key, and to hold the let down key with a cloth with a strong grip, turn it as if to wind it before letting off the click and then barely loosen your grip on the let down key just enough to let it slowly turn in your hand.

Not really, mechanical watches and mechanical clocks are very very different things. Watches for one are more complicated and also more compact, while clocks are generally simpler, less compact, and built with a totally different way of thinking I suppose you could say. They do both have gears however. I have an old building temperature plotter that I rescued several years ago that had a rudimentary clock mechanism that had to be re-worked.

It is indeed difficult to find anyone to work on or help ya work on timepiece mechanics. I had the best luck at a local vacuum repair shop, where the nice gentleman helped me get things SAFELY unseized and slowly plotting again. The thing had a large tension spring that would have leapt out of the back to slice me. Not so much a problem with smaller watches maybe, but something to look out for on their larger brethren. IIRC it ran for at least 6 months on a wind up and I had made some new circular graph paper for it but never really used it.

That paper can still be purchased. I have seen it used on heat treating ovens. Not unlike mechanical timepieces. Chart recorders are still made today of course they run off electric movements, not mechanical so the paper is widely available. Any idea on the little inky tip? I was just going to try some pen tips and such but you may have an idea with more experience- I would love a shortcut haha.

I will treat it with respect ; I nearly sliced myself just messing around with the coil in the plotter. All rusty and thirsty, it were. I can only guess it has vorpal capabilities flying out with force haha.

Everybody seems to have their own pens and paper, but looking at Grainger they carry quite a few brands, maybe one matches your recorder. Thanks for the linky : I have to replace the glass in the bezel as the glue strip is its age but should hit that up after it is in.

I lucked out that the hammertone was intact. The mainspring on a watch is located inside the spring barrel. You must remove it to clean the watch, but fortunately it is not as dangerous as the mainspring on a clock see my reply above, clock mainsprings are very dangerous.

In fact watch mainsprings are more or less harmless. Only issue is to make sure when you remove the mainspring from the barrel you do not fling the winding arbor or the spring barrel across the room in different directions. To mitigate this, place a towel over the spring barrel then pull it out with nettle nose pliers, the towel will catch the little parts as it flings apart.

The proper way to let down a watch mainspring is to slightly twist the crown until the click is pushed away from the ratchet wheel, then use a tweezer or screwdriver tip to hold the click away from the ratchet wheel.

There are all sorts of little things you can learn about servicing a watch that will make things a lot easier, but most of them tend to be lessons of experience rather than things you can easily find and read about on the web. Chances are that you will lose a few parts or bend a few pivots before you truly become comfortable working inside of a watch.

If you do loose parts on the floor get a big magnet to sweep the carpet around your watch repair area, sometimes you will get them back… Be sure to demagnetize afterwards. Have there been any DIY ultrasonic cleaners? So what about other horologists and jewelers? What frequency ies should a maker be looking for?

And if anyone has built one, any tips? Choice transducers or power supplies, or maybe a whole instruction set? I have looked there. Most are hand sanders attached to plastic jars and are shaker cleaners, not ultrasonic. Another use a computer soundcard to output a 44kHz wave form from a 44kHz card…Nyquist is crying somewhere and used that to drive an amp and transducer.

A better idea, but still. If you got different results google does customize results, ya know then feel free to point me to an actual build. Great post! I carry a Elgin 17j pocket watch most days, and also have a beautifully faced Illinois 17j for a back up. Regulating takes some patience, but the craftspersonship and precision of fine timepieces of the early 20th Century rival the prized and expensive handmade watches of today, IMO.

According to the technical manual we should be able to get a pocket watch to within m a day and a wrist watch to 5m. But you can probably dial in that Illinois to a min or less. My runs about 30s-1m fast per day, give or take, depending on how much the spring winds down. Keeping it fully wound it keeps very tight time I find.. Guy did a good job of repairing some dents too. Total clock nerd. It runs—barely.

He was a jeweller and beautifully engraved it by hand with his initials in a script so ornate that you can barely tell what the letters are. I would LOVE to be able to disassemble and clean this by myself, but that last paragraph has me spooked now. Also you could work your way up to it. Buy a few old Walthams from ebay that are similar in size and movement type. If you can successfully restore all of them then you might be ready to take on the important one.