Reply To: New member with lever set movement

[c.kelly]

Hi all,
Have marked the stereo microscope link on ebay to watch so I can think about it. Have also just finished cleaning and repairing my first mechanical wristwatch. I had picked up a Gruen 401 off ebay to fix. Seller said it did not run. Came to me with a mangled hairspring, broken balance staff and broken part on the setting mechanism. Got a 401c from Dashto that had the parts i needed except for hairspring. I hate hairsprings by the way. Will explain that in a minute. Got some more Gruen movements cheap later. Now I took all the good parts I had, cleaned them and put them on 401 base as it’s setting mechanism wasn’t broken. I thought about just putting everything on 400 but little screw that releases setting stem worried me. Anyway put everything together and gently manipulated pallet fork and everything seemed to work. So now I was going crazy wanting to see if it would run. Could not find good balance complete. Finally decided that I had those junk movement and some hairsprings looked like they would fit. First one I took off and put on my balance worked until I tightned up balance cock. Looked close and saw I had not completely seated the stud in cock. As I was trying to fix that my wife let our pet bird out and it landed on my head at just the wrong time. Hairspring sort of looked like a funnel then. Tried another but when I saw it that spring was bent so that it rubbed on the balance which caused balance to stop. Tonight tried last spring that I thought might fit. Watch has been running for two hours now. Bit fast but I haven’t tried to regulate it at all. Was a lot of fun but now that it is running I have to find some extra parts to get that bulova going.