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#52429
david pierce
Participant

    Watchthebear,
    You really should buy a microscope. A microscope with sufficient quality to do watch work is surprisingly inexpensive. They are particularly helpful putting the pilar plates and bridges back into place and making sure that all of the pivots are lined up with the jewel holes before squeezing the plates together. They also allow you to get a better look at the individual watch parts. Don’t be impressed with a designer label on a watch. You will be suprised at how crude gears and pinions look on both inexpensive and expensive watches. The precision of a watch gear is far below the precision of a gear out of a car transmission. This is due to the fact that torque loads on watch gears is extremely low and ultra precision is not of great relevance to the longivity of the machine. Automobile transmission gears are hobbed, hardened, tempered, ground and then lapped to an extremely high degree of precision. If they were not done this way they would not last long. Watch gears, on the other hand, can be stamped from a soft metal in a punch press, and the watch will function quite well. If you disassemble a watch and reassemble it and the gear train does not turn properly, one of the pivots is probably not in the jewel hole. A microscope will help you avoid this.
    david