Hamilton 926 Tear Down

[gerene]

David,

I did not dare to use naphta in the ultra sound because I was afraid for a fire hazard when the naptha heats up in the ultra sound. I guess I am a little bit too carefull

Jan

[david pierce]

Jan,
I have not had any problems with it but that does not mean that nothing could go wrong. According to Dewey Clarke, L&R cleaner is Naptha that has been inhibited. I believe that is a fancy name for adding water and alcohol to the Naptha in order to raise the flash point. For those interested, finding the flash point (the point at which a chemical becomes volatile) is determined by putting the test chemical in a paint can with a spark plug screwed into the lid. The can is placed in a pan of water that is heated in incraments while the spark plug is continuously sparking. When the lid of the paint can blows off the temperature is recorded and that determines the flash point.
When I first tested the ultrasonic cleaner with Naptha, I went out to my driveway away from my house and ran the cleaner with an extension cord. I also had a fire extinguisher at hand just in case something happened; it worked fine. When I use it now I place the cleaner in a deep sink as a precaution but nothing has happened. A bathtub would also be fine to provide some peace of mind but the process has so far been event free. I also will not use a tourch or open flame around a work bench. I do that type of work on top of my kitchen stove and always have a fire extinguisher close at hand.
david

[chris mabbott]

David, I think you raise a very good “common sense” point. I have seen first hand many times how most people will approach a task without taking any precautions or really thinking it through, as in taking a few moments to determine any possible hazards and then use the appropriate safe guards to eliminate those potential threats. They tend to react after the fact and then blame …. The product or the machine.
Kinda like the stories of those that work under their auto while its sitting on the jack, then the car falls on them… It’s the jacks fault lol

Yes, naphtha is a flammable liquid, but there are ways to use it safely and usefully, just like the “bomb” we drive around in everyday 😆
As you correctly state, flash point is a very important piece of info to be aware of and can be readily found online on the MSDS site.
In fact, the only products that aren’t listed are watch lubricants, wonder why that is?

Chris

[gerene]

You can find MSDS sheets for most (all) watch and clock oils, together with cleaning products and others at Cousins UK in the download section. https://www.cousinsuk.com/document/department/consumables.
Maybe you have to login before you can get to the page.

Jan

[chris mabbott]

Thanks Jan, you my friend are a wealth of information that I can never find 😆
You’re also my new official EU contact and go to guy for parts and equipment

Thanks for all the tips and great links.

Chris

[chris mabbott]

Hi all,

A little update on this watch, as i’ve mentioned, my area is partially closed due to a little construction, but I received a few new items that I’m itching to get in to, so I have to finish this one first. I don’t want another unfinished symphony 😆

OK, I found the staff I needed for this grade, a Hamilton #127 staff with the small collet, which I hope was described correctly, the last three I received were #126, for a double roller model, they were in the incorrect packages..

I know that the way I remove a staff is NOT the recommended way, and that most people will frown upon this method, but, it works for me

My thinking is this.. The amount of material that is squashed/peened over on the rivet is 3-5 times less than that which it is fastened to. So that part, the rivet, is weaker. The weakest link will always break before the strongest.

I don’t use the K&D staff removal tool, simply because I find it awkward and a little clumsy, for me. I just use the machined flat base of my staking tool. I use my little Italian tool, the punches are very fine in diameter, in comparison to the Horia, K&D, and others, so they work great.

Here I simply lay the balance on the lapped flat surface, the contact points are almost 100% so the balance is not going to distort.

[david pierce]

Chris,
You would love a PLATAX tool. It looks similar to a staking tool but is designed specifically for removing roller jewel collars and staffs. If you get one consider buying a new one because some people use the slots instead of the holes to remove the staffs. The slots are very thin and can break easily if misused. You can see one in use on the WATCH REPAIR CHANNEL by Mark Lovick; fantistic tool.

[chris mabbott]

I place two finger tips around the end of the punch tip so that it prevents any slippage that may occur, but normally there is no slip, and also because I can feel when the rivet begins to move and so reduce my tapping a little.

I use many small gentle taps rather than a few heavy blows, I just found that this way seems to work better and gradually weakens the rivet, we don’t want to damage the hole for our new staff..

You can see in this shot how little material is actually holding the staff in place, and how much material is preventing the hole from being damaged, before the rivet.

It reminds me of large motors that would seize up due to some failure, some of them react violently and actually break their mounting bolts. The bolts would shear off before the motor feet would break, due to differences in construction and shearing forces..
The staff is really no different, we have a difference in material construction, material thickness, and we have a shearing force that is vertical, instead of lateral.
When a staff is peened into place, the rivet is never perfectly flat, it should be, but isn’t. There is always one spot of the rivet that is thinner or weaker, and this yields first as you can see here, it isn’t a problem because now we can reduce our tapping to gentle blows and the staff will fall out easily at this point.

You can see in this shot that the main part of the rivet has sheared off, and a small piece is left to follow the staff, without causing damage to the hole. We still have a nice, sharp edged, well formed hole for our new staff.

[chris mabbott]

@david pierce wrote:

Chris,
You would love a PLATAX tool. It looks similar to a staking tool but is designed specifically for removing roller jewel collars and staffs. If you get one consider buying a new one because some people use the slots instead of the holes to remove the staffs. The slots are very thin and can break easily if misused. You can see one in use on the WATCH REPAIR CHANNEL by Mark Lovick; fantistic tool.

David, you are either a mind reader or a fellow tool addict 😆 I was actually looking at this tool on ebay, I think, just a few days ago but the cost was…Hmm 😮 but yes, I would love to try one. Have you tried it?

Thank you for recommending it..

Chris

[david pierce]

Chris,
Who me a tool addict; positively unthinkable. I watched Mark Lovick using one on his repair channel and immediately went over to the Bergeon Tools site on Ebay and bought a new one. About a day later five used ones came up for sale on Ebay for about .25 cents on the dollar so I bought all of them. Hey, call me a horder, just spell my name right.
david

[chris mabbott]

SIX 😯 David you have to post pics of your collection, I haven’t fallen off my chair for a while, I miss hitting the floor 😆

My current dilemma is finding a tailstock for my new little Marshall lathe, which I have been polishing and fondling since it arrived. It’s big, heavy, and now shiny

Chris

[david pierce]

Chris,
Eight out of ten leading experts agree that it is healthy to fondle your tool if it is big, heavy and shiny. Last weekend I wasted two days of my life trying to get three pictures up. There is some procedure that I have wrong and every time it looked like it was going to post, it would allow me to put up other pictures but not the three I wanted to send. I am going to have to wait for Bob or Tom to step me through the process in order to get it to work properly. I apparently left out a step and it will not work until I follow the entire procedure properly.
Tailstocks on WW lathes can be a problem. When the lathes were made at the factory, the tailstocks were custom fitted to each lathe. Unfortunately the people who sell them on Ebay part them out and it is difficult to get a headstock spindle and tailstock spindle to line up. The Wolf-Jahn Geneva lathes always seem to line up precisely if interchanged which is one of the reasons I like them, but they are one of the few lathes that were made with that degree of consistancy. Judging from NAWCC blogs the Horia lathes also have a problem in this area.
david

[mahlon]

Tom, I’ve got two retired clock guys here that told me to mix 1qt. naptha with a gal. mineral spirits as a rinse, after cleaning with a non ammonia cleaner. You don’t use naptha in your ultra sound do you? Mahlon

[chris mabbott]

@david pierce wrote:

Chris,
Eight out of ten leading experts agree that it is healthy to fondle your tool if it is big, heavy and shiny. Last weekend I wasted two days of my life trying to get three pictures up. There is some procedure that I have wrong and every time it looked like it was going to post, it would allow me to put up other pictures but not the three I wanted to send. I am going to have to wait for Bob or Tom to step me through the process in order to get it to work properly. I apparently left out a step and it will not work until I follow the entire procedure properly.
Tailstocks on WW lathes can be a problem. When the lathes were made at the factory, the tailstocks were custom fitted to each lathe. Unfortunately the people who sell them on Ebay part them out and it is difficult to get a headstock spindle and tailstock spindle to line up. The Wolf-Jahn Geneva lathes always seem to line up precisely if interchanged which is one of the reasons I like them, but they are one of the few lathes that were made with that degree of consistancy. Judging from NAWCC blogs the Horia lathes also have a problem in this area.
david

David, I’m somewhat comforted to hear that it is a completely normal practice to briskly polish ones tools and not a result of some deep, underlying trauma from my childhood 😆
I’ll also happily volunteer to trade a little photo posting knowledge in exchange for your machine skill, maybe we can do the deal in a dark alley while we swap paper bags full of these products 😆

OK seriously, I wasn’t aware that each lathe was produced as a set, I’d rather imagined a more mass produced system for some reason, even though I know they have matching serial #s
I wonder how they assured the fit of replacement parts & attachments etc..
I also wonder if there was some kind of serial number record to fabricate new parts for a certain range of lathes, keeping within the specs of any given range.

Has anyone ever seen photos of the plants, manufacturing process, old parts catalogs etc. It would be an interesting study..

Chris

[david pierce]

Chris,
The reason for the alignment issue has to do with the geometry of the bed on the WW design. The bed has two angles and a flat that the underside of the headstock and tailstock must fit precisely into. Just getting the conponents to fit onto the bed is challanging. Since the bore holes in the headstock and tailstock must be in precise alignment, the most reasonable way to accomplish this would be to first fit the castings to the bed, and then align bore the holes. This is why the serial numbers are so critical. It is tragic that people go to estate sales and then sell off the machines in parts.
david

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