Reply To: condition of jewels????

[watchthebear]

Good morning all, thanks for the ideas David, I will add the troubleshooting advice to my list of things to try when I am confused and don’t see any clear answer to the trouble, which is 9 times out of 10. Here is one more case: I remove the balance cock and wheel, then I try to run the train manually. Sometimes the pallet fork moves back and forth, other times it appears “stuck” . So, I remove the pallet assembly and sometimes the escape wheel now turns freely, sometimes it “bucks up” when I try to run the train. Is the first place where the train gets stuck the culprit, or is the trouble someplace else and I just don’t understand what is going on? This one really gets me. One thing i have realized is that i am trying to trouble shoot 17 jewel movements, but they are very cheap 17 jewel watches. Some are pin-levers, which I junk, others are about the quality of dollar watches (part by part) but are just designed to appear to be of higher quality. Bob mentioned that better quality watches are usually (or often) more repair friendly; I was wondering if it might be well to hunt down good quality non-working watches to learn on. One last comment before this becomes a short story: I have taken apart several good quality working watches, and reassembled them. At present, my interest is something of a forensic nature. The idea of taking something that doesn’t work, diagnosing the problem, and fixing it if it is realistic from a time and money point of view, has really grabbed a hold of me. thanks all for past and future input.take care……….b