Reply To: steam cleaning parts

[c.kelly]

Hi all,
Would like to throw my two cents worth in here. First off I’m in agreement about information overload. I wanted to learn watch repair for years. Hung around the watch shop and tried to absorb what owner would tell me. Bought several books but at best they caused me to become discouraged. Guess that is why I started working on Accutrons to begin with. The Accutron repair books were well illustrated and written in a step by step manner much like Bob’s videos. I guess they were written assuming that the watchmaker would not have any knowlege of those new contraptions.
Now to the topic of oiling the escape wheel. I just put together a puw 1560 and that was the only issue I had. On this movement it is impossible to reach escape wheel from balance side so you must use holes in main plate. Now it may just be my eyes but without magnification these hole are extremely small. Under magnification it looked like you were trying to oil the head of a pin with a log. Using my smallest oiler it appeared as if you would have to hit stone and tooth at same time. I tried it with a dry oiler and it was impossible for me. At this point I flipped watch back over, took out balance again which gave me access to escape wheel. Then I oiled escape wheel by oiling a tooth and then manipulating pallet fork with a piece of a tooth pick to allow escape wheel to advance. May not be the way to do it but it worked for me and as I was doing it I was also wondering if you could oil escape wheel while it was out. On some ladies watches I worked on recently I found there was a cutout on the side. I’m sure this was to allow access to properly position wheels when installing plate but it was right next to the escape wheel and for me was a perfect place to oil that part far away from pallet stones. I don’t know if what I did was right but it seemed to get job done. By the way that puw is still running and has kept perfect time for the past 24 hours.
Charles