hello...i have gotten pretty good a staking balances and getting the finished product to work well in the movement(although i do lose a roller table ever so often) so i think i am ready for the next step..i bring this up after a 10bc that i tried to get running WELL for like a week still isn't..the problem was in the balance.because i used a new balance complete from another movement...and now its running 3+ 3- a day... know if i had a hairspring vibrator well then i could cut a new spring and from it...i found this on ebay..NOW i know it is not homemade but sure looks like it..i mean what would it take an old pocket watch balance and cap jewel,someone one to cut the glass for me(which i know my neighbor can do) a couple hours on my lathe(which i got a proper watchmakers lathe instead of the unimat)a few premade screws to save time.. some finishing and then boom there you go...has anyone tried this? How hard really would it be..i understand it would be only for 18000 bpm.but i would be alot easier than to count every other swing on the balance....
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now some would say just buy one..that would be fine if i didn't get sniped on this one. and two if the other ones didn't cost 500-800 dollars...like the song goes...I'M ON A LOOOOOOOOW BUDGET..also before companies started making tools for watchmakers..people would make there own..and still do..
This other balance you mention, it was from a 10BC or compatible movt? The 3+ and 3- is in minutes, or do you mean seconds? Using a balance from a pocket watch would only work if the said balance was quite accurate to start with, which you would have to check with a timing machine that would give you the actual frequency, which the cheap ones don't. 10BC's are a dime a dozen, and the nightmare you would unleash trying to fit a hairspring from scratch would be unnecessary. This tool is only to determine the terminal pinning point for mounting a fresh hairspring. The whole procedure is like brain surgery.
I wouldn't pay for a home made one like this, you can do it without, I think I described the method in a past post.
Unless the hairspring you already have is really bent or otherwise messed up, it would be simpler to simply repair it. Failing that, just get some more 10BC's for parts. The hairspring adjustment can make all the difference in the world to the running of the watch, but keep in mind, that the watch may have issues elsewhere. Anything from tilting barrel to damaged wheel train teeth, damaged jewels and endshake, balance out of poise, beat error, you name it. The most likely culprit is hairspring not centred or perfectly between the regulating pins. This is assuming the balance is in perfect poise, the endshake of all the train jewels is not excessive, the beat error is very small, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. This is not a chronometer movt, and plus or minus 1 minute would be acceptable, especially since the watch has very probably been run for a long time without service, as the majority of watches have.
I don't think they are commercially made anymore. If they were, they would be expensive, as are most commercial Swiss made tools. I did vibrating in school, but I was the only one in the class who did it, it was for an old Fusee pocket watch. My Professeur had been a watchmaker for over 35 years, and had never done one outside of his time at his original school. I won an award partly because of this restoration, but I probably will never do another one, it would have to be something really special, and I would have to have the time to do it.
I MEAN IN SECONDS..I DID FINALLY USE A DIFFERENT BALANCE COMPLETE FROM A DIFFERENT PARTS MOVEMENT..BUT THE THING WAS THAT I REALLY WANTED TO FIX IT..I I KNOW IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN LONGER TO DO BUT I WOULD REALLY LIKE TO KNOW HOW TO DO IT..AS I TOO WANT TO BE ABLE TO RESTORE WATCHES..GRANTED I WOULDNT HAVE DONE IT ON SOMETHING THIS INEXPENSIVE..BUT I WOULD REALLY JUST WANT TO BE ABLE TO..I UNDSTAND THE VIBRATOR IS JUST TO FIND THE LENGTH OF THE SPRING..BUT YOU HAVE TOO START SOMEWHERE..AND IF I AM ABLE TO MAKE SOMETHIGN LIKE THIS THEN WHY NOT..REALLY IF I DO TRY TO MAKE IT WILL TO JUST GET A FEEL FOR THE LATHE..THANKS ROB FOR ANSWERING ALL OF MY QUESTIONS..I AM REALLY GRATEFUL..SOME PEOPLE ARE GREEDY WITH SHARING INFORMATION..I UNDERSTAND NOT EVERYONE HAS TIME..BUT THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO ARE ALWAYS HOORAY FOR ME AND @#%# EVERYONE ELSE.. I HAVE AN OMEGA POCKET WATCH MOVEMENT THAT I WOULD LIKE TO RESTORE AND TO PRACTICE THIS KIND OF WORK ON ..SO I WOULD NEED SOMETHING TO VIBRATE THE SPRING..I AM NOT WORRIED ABOUT OVERCOIL TWEEZERS AS THEY KEEP POPPING UP FOR DECENT PRICES..BACK TO THE 10BC I HAD ADJUSTED THE HAIRSPRING AND IT WAS RUNNING ABOUT 3 MINS FAST ,THEN IT STARTED RUNNING TERRIBLE ..I RE CLEANED IT AND THEN IT WAS RUNNING EVEN WORSE SO I DONT KNOW WHAT HAPPEN..I KNOW IT WASN'T ANYOTHER PART ON THE MOVEMENT BECAUSE ONCE I CHANGE COMPLETES IT WAS KEEPING GREAT TIME...3+ 3- secs a day..which i would say is pretty good..
also i been having trouble putting a watch in beat..i understand lining up everything but then even when i turn the collet to make the roller line up with the pallet fork the jewel and the escapewheel jewel..it doesn't make the beat error go down..i happend to see my watchmaker's timing machine with a movement on it and the beat error was pretty low like .3.now i don't know if the movement was vintage or newer..but if was vintage i would like to know how he got that well..i know that you have to take other things in to consideration. but even when you put the watch in beat,even with other possible errors,should the beat error still go down? asked him about putting a watch in beat,but i couldn't get him to explain it to me..
The amount you move the collet to put the watch in beat is quite small. If you move it too far, it goes out of beat again, past zero and on the other side. It is very easy to move a watch with a beat error of say, 4.8 ms past the zero point and 4.5 ms on the other side, making it look like nothing has happened. The right tool is critical, unless you have a modern movt which has a movable stud carrier, then it is relatively easy to correct beat error. The old way with the collet adjustment is trial and error, you have to make a few adjustments to get it right. After each adjustment, you have to re-install the balance wheel onto the balance cock, and put it back in the watch to check it. Time consuming.
To use a hairspring from another balance is easy, because the collet is attached already, and the point where it is pinned to the stud is obvious. Most times the stud is still pinned on the end. To get a raw hairspring, cut the inner coils, determine the correct pinning position for the collet, and then find the end pinning position and make the correct terminal curve, whether flat or overcoil, is a LOT of work. Chances are you would destroy the first 10, and have poor results with dozens. It takes hundreds of hours of practice with proper hands on instruction to learn this, along with hairspring correction and repair, poising, dynamic poising, etc. I don't want to dissuade you from learning this if you really want to, but you need proper instruction from someone who can spend the time required. After this, you will use the skills to correct hairsprings and fix minor bends, but installing hairsprings from scratch is highly unlikely. It is very time consuming, and no one I have run into does it at all. In the real world of watch repair, the customer would not pay for the time required, unless, as I mentioned, it was a very special watch. The only reason I did it was because the watch I had had a hairspring snapped at the end, and it was a very old pocket watch. I vibrated a used hairspring from another watch, pinning it to the old ones' balance, and got it back up and running. The watch was from before 1850, if I remember correctly, and timekeeping with these old watches wasn't exactly good from modern standards.
Another thing I should mention, all it would take would be one coil touching another momentarily, or one edge of a coil touching the underside of the balance cock, or touching an arm of the balance to throw everything right out the window. The balance must be perfectly flat, perfectly round and concentric, centred perfectly around the staff, and must be exactly in the middle of the regulating pins. These pins must neither be too close together nor too far apart. The pinning at the collet must be correct, and the terminal coil is critical. You need a double loupe to even see any of these things. Plus or minus three seconds isn't just good, it is COSC, and hard to achieve. Of course, this would be spread across all positions, not just flat.
I can recommend De Carle's "Practical Watch Adjusting". It takes years to master this.
right i remeber from the last time you told me about the hairspring problems plus what i had read in the bulova watchmaking school..i have a 15 power loupe but i am soon ready to invest into a nice loupe..the time was dial up and dial down it went up a little with the crown up and down...but not much i am still kinda happy with that...
Three positions for non chronometre wristwatches should give a good idea how the watch is performing, but the final evaluation is always on the wrist. Dial up, Dial down, and 6H, that is, crown left when viewed from in front, the way it would be with your arm resting on a desk. Wristwatches spend a lot of time at an angle between that and crown down, when your arm is at your side. If the variation in three positions is less than 30 seconds, you are doing well for an old watch that probably hasn't been serviced properly throughout its life. You want an overall gaining rate, nobody wants to be late. IE., plus 12 minus 8, the minus being the vertical 6H position, would be a delta of 20 seconds, and an overall gaining rate. I would consider this a good result for an old watch. Just for comparison, when we adjusted Breitling chronometres after overhaul, we would go for 6 positions, with a delta of less than 10 seconds overall, and a gaining rate of less than ten seconds. No single position could be negative in this case, so max would be plus ten to plus 1 or zero, Dial up, dial down, 6H, 3H, 12H, 9H. H=haut, "up". Usually we would get between plus 6-7, and plus 2-4, the delta being around 5 seconds. This would be after adjusting and checking virtually everything, the endshake on all jewels to the new mainspring to intense hairspring scrutiny and adjustment. Technically, COSC is less than 4 point something seconds. For further comparison, most inexpensive quartz watches gain 140 seconds a month, while an expensive quartz will be zero to three seconds per month.
quick question,how bad does a hairspring have to be to become unrepairable? also lets take for granted that i have master the ablity to manipulate a hairspring back into shape...which you would get the practice to do that from vibrating springs ,pinning the collet and stud...also thats the thing i lack is hands on instruction..i don't even think the timezone videos or something simliar would cover something like that.
Anything past 60 degrees is likely to break, but you won't know until it does, but that means the hairspring is pooched. A tangled hairspring is toast. Sometimes a hairspring with too many corrections will not function correctly even when repaired. It is pretty much impossible to get it perfect by just manual manipulation. The situation you will most encounter is correcting hairsprings. I don't know if the online lessons discuss this, but it is very hard to pick up unless you have someone watching you and showing you.
Correctly pinning to the collet is very difficult, and forming the overcoil or terminal coil is also quite difficult. Vibrating is easy, and pinning to the stud is not as difficult. The taper pins are almost microscopic, especially for the collet, and you absolutely MUST have the proper tools to do it, ie, cutting tweezers, and hairspring tweezers, and they must be new or in mint condition. I used a binocular microscope to do mine. Mine wasn't an overcoil, although I have made one from scratch. There are various terminal coil designs, and I used a digital caliper to measure and then map out the various distances on a piece paper under a plate of glass, upon which I was working on the spring. You can print out various sizes of Lossier or Phillips curves, and then put this under some glass to try and match it with your spring. De Carle's book(s) have the curves in many sizes.
thanks again for the info..it really seems that people talk more about studding the hairspring to be harder then the collet..but that may be because some of the hairsprings come colleted already..i just hate the idea of buying a whole parts movement or doner movement just for the hairspring..although there are so places where can still buy balance completes,how long is that going to last....there are companies i found were you still can get new hairsprings..
Most hairsprings you can order for specific movts or balance staff numbers, will come colletted, and also with stud, in many cases. If you were to purchase these unstudded, then you would use a vibrating tool more often. Raw hairsprings are available, but the work involved to mount them is not to be underestimated, especially in wristwatches.