Reply To: Where did everybody go?

[wingman]

Hello David

I wish I had a machining background. Sounds like we are at about the same level with watches. I’m still trying to get the tooling. I was at the NW NAWCC regional last month in Portland and bought some tools. In the thrown in misc stuff was a watch spring gauge for determining mainspring sizes. I had no idea what it was at the time but found in in my De Carle watch repair book You might be able to find one on Ebay. I’m sure they aren’t expensive. Speaking of books the De Carle book on watch repair is really good. I got mine on Amazon for $15. Also the Joseph Bulova Watch School book is excellent.

I hear you about the wonder of those little parts. My wife bought a older Omega ladies watch at the NW Regional. I couldn’t wait to get it home so I could look in side. Beautiful engineering. It will be awhile before I tackle it. My background is aircraft maintenance mostly on big round piston engines. We didn’t exactly work with sledge hammers on them but it was darn close.

I just did my first clock repair using my Unimat lathe. I had an escapement wheel that turned opposite to what I needed. I carefully cut away the staked side and flipped it over. I tried restaking it onto the pivot shaft but had to use solder. Not pretty but it worked and the movement is now running strong.

Steve