Cleaning another watch

Another watch needed cleaning... this one is a Waltham pocket watch.  Again, I am heedless of the advice to avoid antiques.  This watch appears to have been completed in 1891, roughly 129 years ago.

This post shows my usual process for cleaning.  I'm not a professional, so I probably do things in a weird way, so don't copy my steps if you don't know what you're doing...  Of course, I am not really sure I know what I'm doing, but here is someone who does...

After popping off the bezel (holding a glass face), the first step is to remove the hands.

Removing the two case screws lets the movement drop through the front of the case.  Immediately secure it in the movement holder so that you don't damage it.

The dial is held in by three small screws on the side, which can be withdrawn just a little bit to release the dial.  Removing the screws all the way is unnecessary and increases the risk you'll lose them.  (They are also a bit of a pain to reinstall if they fall out!)

Once the dial is off, be very careful not to crush the seconds hand arbor.  I did that once on a wristwatch.  Fortunately, I was able to obtain a replacement part. Always pay attention to where the seconds hand arbor is!  I often have to be changing the grip of the movement holder to access different parts, so I have to remind myself to check for the seconds hand arbor every single time before I choose a new placement.

I like to remove the motion work so that I don't lose anything once the movement is flipped over.  Most motion works aren't held in by anything but the dial, and since the dial is now removed, they're not held in at all!

Like many old American-made watches, the winding works are rather weird.

Here are some parts of the winding work that are notable.  This part is particularly crazy. It retracts (counterclockwise movement) during winding, and then springs back to the way the photo shows when the winding ceases.  Check out the long-neck spring on the left!

 

The crown wheel for the winding stem is a two piece assembly with a pin that runs through the center.  The retaining spring is really interesting-looking, and holds the pin head in place.

Every American watch I've opened has a different winding mechanism.  I have a funny feeling that the diversity of winding works on American watches has to do with patent laws, but I am not really sure.  Swiss watches all basically use the same (Breguet) winding works.  Although the Swiss works have their problems, I am pretty comfortable with their fail mechanisms.  American movements are harder to figure out!  Fortunately, this watch's winding works were in perfect working order, so I didn't have to investigate them too closely.  However, it took me a while to find the click (buried under the barrel, oddly) so that I could take the power down before proceeding.

Once the power is removed, the next step is to carefully remove the balance.

I recently learned from Nicholas Hacko's really awesome website that a good way to manage the balance is to hold the complete balance by the cock, letting the balance dangle.  That makes sense (since this is how you vibrate the hairspring if you need to change anything about it), and is super easy to get the balance engaged properly with the fork.  However, it is also a bit unnerving to have the balance "sproinging about" as you remove/install it.

Here is the balance (placed safely upside down).

 

In order to clean the balance cock jewel, there is a small grub screw holding the hairspring attachment point.

A zoom in on the jewel shows it to be in good condition.

There is a small chip in the jewel (just to the right of the hole in the picture below), but I think it's out of the way enough that it won't damage the balance pivot.

That's good, so I just put the balance cock (wholesale) into the ultrasonic cleaner.  By rights, I should remove the cap jewel, but since I didn't see any grime in it, I didn't want to go through that hassle.  The other balance jewel is in similarly good condition.

Here's the other side of the lower balance jewel.

My next step is to remove the lever fork, which goes into the ultrasonic on its own so that none of the "bigger" parts move around to squash it.  The fork cock has no jewel, but is not too worn either, even thought its hole is slightly oblong.  Not bad for being 129 years old!

Here's the movement after the fork and its cock are removed for cleaning.

This watch has a single plate for the train, so that comes off next and goes in the ultrasonic cleaner.

I usually have to clean the plate holes, too.  The official material is "peg wood", which (being a carpenter) seems a bit mysterious to me.  What is a "peg tree" anyway?  Toothpicks work just fine if you're gentle.

Here are the train wheels, removed and ready to be cleaned.

After getting the train wheels in the cleaner, I took out the winding barrel.  There was a surprise waiting there!  Something is very weird about that click spring...  (The click arbor is in the right of the image.  I have already removed the click.)

Let's change the lighting for a better look...

What?!  The spring evidently broke at some point in the past.  Rather than fixing it "properly", the watchmaker soldered a piece of wire onto the end in a rather awkward way, leaving both ends raw.  I thought about replacing this altogether, but decided to leave that for later.  It does work, so I guess it can stay.. 

Once I got over that fright, I disassembled the barrel and cleaned it completely.  Usually, I leave the of a watch barrel alone, but this one was particularly grimy.  The click is the part all the way on the right below.

Here's the main spring removed from the barrel.  Based on its curvature it is definitely not new, but it ought to still have enough power to run the watch.

I just wiped the spring clean and then regreased it with mechanic's Slip-It.  That seems to be a mild but effective grease.  It's also not very messy, which is a major plus. 

I had a little trouble keeping the spring end hook attached to the barrel.  Unlike most movements that have the spring hook in-plane, and the hook engages with the inner wall of the barrel, this one had a pin that fits a hole in the lid of the barrel.  The pin kept popping out of its hole.  After a bit of wrestling, I got it back in place.

At this point, the watch is completely apart.  It's merely a matter of waiting for everything to take time in the cleaner.  I had to use isopropyl alcohol to loosen some of the grime, clean off fingerprints, and carefully scrub some parts.  But all in all, this watch was much cleaner than some clocks I've fixed! 

The process from there on out is the slow, careful reassembly, basically the reverse of everything just shown.  Reassembly is also the time when things have a habit of breaking, but fortunately that did not happen!  Everything just fit together as it ought, aside from a few minor missteps that were quickly resolved.

The only new step is the oiling...  I use a very fine oiler, which looks like a small spoon under the microscope, but basically is a very fine needle.

It pays to be sparing with the oil or else it will run out of the oil sinks.  I usually add a bit less than a full "drop" of oil; just enough to about 1/3 fill a sink.

Once back together, the watch started right up with just shy of a quarter of a turn on the winding stem.  Great news!

Antiques and heirlooms

Among amateur watch repairers, it is good advice refuse to work on antiques or valuable heirlooms.  Doing so without sufficient experience can lead to frustration!  Old watches also have non-standard parts and other oddities that can trip up the unsuspecting would-be repairer.  I have followed this advice until recently... and ended up in a bit of an adventure.

What tempted me down this path was an antique heirloom watch that was in very poor shape.

It was apparently my great grandmother's watch.  It is quite pretty, but when I received it, it had not been well kept by its owner.  Furthermore, it had been to some very poor watchmakers!  Slowly, over the course of three years, I made a number of repairs, none too difficult:

1. I replaced the missing glass with an acrylic face.
2. The case wouldn't close because it was slightly out of round... I put it back into the round, so the case opens and closes correctly.
3. I remade a case screw that someone had snapped the head in half (!). There are marks on the plate where the screwdriver skidded off after snapping the screw, so clearly way too much force was involved.  Ouch!
4. The winding stem that was acting up, because a brake was tensioned incorrectly.
5. I put the hairspring back in order because it was twisted badly.
6. Finally, recently, I took the movement apart and cleaned it.  This was completely uneventful.

It now runs reliably, but gains about 5 minutes per day.  That's terrible, of course.  But given that I don't have a replacement hairspring and given the age of the watch, it's well within what I'm willing to tolerate.

I had a very different experience -- and it's not over -- with a watch from my wife's family.

This watch wouldn't run, but didn't have anything visibly wrong with it.  Upon disassembly, I found that the lever fork cock was ever so slightly bent and was pinning the fork down.  Since it couldn't move very well, that kept the train stuck.  That wasn't the only problem...

As I was reassembling the balance, I was a bit less careful than I should have been.  I noticed the balance was not able to turn freely in both directions.  The balance was simply on the wrong side of the fork, and needed to be carefully lifted over the fork.  Unfortunately,  I couldn't visualize what was wrong.  Instead of the correct move, I gave the balance a sound push the other way.  That was not a good plan, and I really did know better!  Disaster!  The impulse pallet jewel was shattered!

After carefully sizing the missing pallet (seems to be about 19/1000"), I realized that it would be useful to make the pallet out of blued steel.  It should have nearly the same characteristics, and it should "just work."  (I also ordered a ruby impulse pallet, but I'm not confident of my measurements...)

It took five tries to make and install the impulse pallet, because I lost the first three pallets I made, and although the fourth worked, it was very poorly made.  The fifth looks nice enough and seems to be working. 

Of course, the first step was to disassemble the balance.  I removed the old pallet by heating the roller table with a soldering iron with a fine tip at roughly 250 degrees F.  Using a needle, I cracked off all the old shellac.

First, I trued up the end of a 0.5mm blued steel rod, using an arkansas slip.

After truing, I rounded and burnished the end.  Next, under the microscope, and on a soft piece of wood, I ground a flat surface using the arkansas slip.  In the picture below, the flat is visible as the slight smear at the end of the rod.  (The flat is about 1 mm long.)

This made the rod into a D shape.  I kept grinding the flat until the rod barely entered the hole in the roller table.  Then, I burnished the flat surface.

Unfortunately, the rod was too large to fit the slot in the lever fork.

So, I ground a fine taper to the rod by hand, by eye, under the microscope until the rod would just barely bind in the lever fork as I rotated it with the tip in the fork.

Then I switched to a steel burnisher to smooth the surface of the rod.  After burnishing, the rod freely fit the lever fork, with the base of the taper still fitting the roller table.

To cut the pallet off the rod, it's important to cut it to the precise length.  Since I ended up making five pallets, I was able to zero in on the correct length by comparing with an earlier attempt.  But in any case, I reversed the rod in the pin vise, and then used a narrow file as a saw to slice off the pallet.

Once again, I switched back to the arkansas slip to true the end, and then polished it with the burnisher.  Even though this cut end is completely invisible, this was an important step because the cutting raised burrs.  Burnishing removed those burrs.

OK, now the pallet was small!  It's the apparent "grain of sand" on the left of the frame in the balance cock in the picture below.

Getting the impulse pallet into the hole in the roller table was... irritating.  The pallet is slippery by design, and rounded... which means that holding it too tightly (or gripping the wrong surface) with tweezers will launch it across the room.  I lost three attempts irretrievably and lost another one for a very long time.  Eventually I got it pressed in place.

To anchor the pallet, I gripped the balance in surgical clamps and applied shellac.

Someone before me was way too liberal with the shellac and glued together several turns of the hairspring.  I was able to knock them apart, but if it impacts timing, I may have to immerse the spring in alcohol.  I'm loathe to do that because the spring has a nice overcoil and is very, very delicate!

Here is the balance reassembled with the new impulse pin installed in the roller table.

And a zoom-in:

 
But the balance reassembly did not entirely go well the last time...  I bumped the attachment point with the tweezers, and snapped the spring at the balance attachment point.  Previously, I had thought it nice that there was a removable clamp that made removing the balance easy.  However, that clamp was installed very permanently onto the hairspring.  It took a good two hours to remove the old pin (brass, extremely tightly fit; I think it was staked in place at the factory!), fashion a new pin (I used soft copper, and much longer, since I wanted be able to get it out in the future if needed), and get everything back to working order.  As wooden clockmaker Clayton Boyer says, "Mistakes take a lot of time. I spend some of my best woodworking time making them."  Yeah, I agree.

Still, after all that, the watch still would not run.  What!?!  No visible trouble... actually, not.  I had never worked with a watch with an overcoiled hairspring.  It can happen that the overcoil turn can foul on both the balance cock and the main turns of the spring.  That was the problem.  A very slight touch on the spring attachment point fixed the overcoil's path, and the watch sprung to life!

The movement is now running, which is a relief!  It sounds different from the other movements I've repaired, because it's quite a bit lower frequency (around 2 Hz) than other movements of the same size (typically 4-6 Hz).  Assuming it all goes back together, I wonder if it will keep reasonable time?

One final thing, though.  The winding works for this watch is not the usual Swiss mechanism.  It's a bit simplified, which seems elegant at first.  Here it is when correctly assembled.

However, should the stem get loose and you simply try to reinsert it, you will likely knock the cylinder gear assembly off its retaining spring.  This is rather subtle.  In the picture below, the lower retaining spring is supposed to be running in the cylindrical groove right below it.  All you need to do to repair it is slip the stem back in, and push the spring down gently.  It reseats easily, and then you can carefully withdraw the stem, leaving everything in place.

This process is extremely annoying, because although fixing it takes mere seconds, to access this mechanism you have to uncase the movement, dismantle the hands, and dismantle the dial.  Reassembling the movement into the case involves reinserting the stem, which has a tendency of knocking the winding mechanism out of order... so you need to back up, disassemble everything and try again...

Balance staff (next step)

Continuing with my balance staff repairs...  I have a watch that is in pretty bad shape: no hands, no case, etc. and it has a broken balance staff.  So, I'm trying to fix it by replacing the balance staff.  The rest of the movement appears to work -- though it's very dirty.

The first step is to dismantle the balance to get at the staff...

Here is the movement without the staff.  It's a six-jeweled wristwatch.  Seems to be well-enough made, at least on the surface.  Edges are generally not filed smooth -- ok....

 
But surprisingly, on the back of the balance cock it appears that the drill for the cap jewel skidded across the surface!

Anyway, here's the balance assembly on its way out.

And another shot of the other side...

Here's a view of the spring collet.  It's easily removed with a screwdriver...

...and the roller table.  I also was able to pry it off with a screwdriver.

And indeed, one pivot is broken off (the bottom one in the picture above)...

After about 4 tries, I managed to turn half of a new balance staff.  It's very small:

Here is the view through the microscope.

You can see the upper pivot (appears at the bottom of the frame, and is too long) and that I've yet to turn the lower pivot. In all the watchmaking books I've found, turning balance staffs the the lathe requires flipping the staff around.  This causes lots of trouble, it seems especially since I don't have a small enough collet.  Previously, I tried a pin vice, but this is very off center when gripped in a collet.  For whatever reason, the three jaw chuck does a better job.

I was able to shorten the staff a bit (the pivots are still to large, but need polishing) using the turns/lathe I made.  Here is a view of the staff, the pulley for driving it, and a dummy for checking length.  The dummy is just a hair too short...

A drive pulley for the turns

Since I had sooooo much trouble driving the turns I made, I had to think of other options.  I realized that it might work to take the idea of a super-glue arbor for the lathe, and anchor the pulley to part with super glue.

Anyhow, I turned a very small pulley from 1/4" brass rod.

Here it is attached to the part with a tiny drop of super glue, viewed under the microscope and mounted in the turns.

It's still quite difficult to operate, but seems much less troublesome.

I added an electric motor drive that seems to make it easier to use.  I guess it's now a lathe...