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Great advice William!
David, I know you are trying to help but telling someone new to watch repair that they may need to adjust the balance wheel timing screws may not be the best advice. If the watch has underlying problems and you did manage to adjust the screws to get it to run correctly you would then cause the watch to wear at an accelerated rate. Before you make any adjustments to the balance the first thing to check is if the watch has been serviced. There are a number of things that should be checked that could make a watch run slowly.
When you get a watch in for a service the first thing to do is assume that everything is as it should be. As you take the watch apart you may then begin to find problems which you know need to be sorted, rough pivots, over-size pivot holes, cracked jewels, dirt etc. These problems need to be sorted first so you know that the watch should run properly. If after the clean and service the watch does not run properly you then start looking at other issues that are not immediately apparent.
A watch can run slowly because of;
1. Dirt
2. Pivot and hole wear
3. A cracked jewel
4. A cock that has been mishandled, i.e bent slightly and now there is not enough end shake and the pivot is running with too much pressure on the cap jewel.
5. The hairspring has been pinned back in the wrong position making the effective length too long.
6. A bent pivot
7. The wrong or weak mainspring
8. The wrong type of oil i.e too thick
and I am sure there are other reasons, I recently bought a ladies cylinder pocket watch that had the lower pivot snapped off of the lever, to overcome this the previous jobber had glued a small piece of brass onto the bottom of the plate and drilled a larger hole in it so the arbor was acting like the pivot. Safe to say it didn’t run quite fast enough because of the excess friction this caused.
Michael, as I stated before when you feel ready the first thing to do is strip and clean the watch. Please don’t adjust the screws on the balance just yet.
As David stated get a couple of good books and watch Bobs videos until you feel comfortable enough to have a go at servicing the watch. (remember that you can ask as many questions as you like if you come across anything you don understand )
Paul.