Making a hand

At some point in it's long life this watch lost all of  it's hands. Some research indicated that I had a minute hand in the correct style in my parts box. The hour hand had to be made.

I started with sheet brass. The hole for the cannon/hour wheel is always the starting point of any hand. Below, you can see the basic design has been scribed with the hole as reference.

Rough milling- 

 Basic shaping-

 All shaping done, polishing not done yet-

Brass is much softer than tempered steel. This makes filing and sanding much easier. But therein lies the problem. It is also much easier to remove too much material and bend the hand. I have a renewed respect for those who make hands out of gold!

Where would one find an A D Sambhare watch in the wild?

Over the last few years I have received inquiries from all over the world, in fact right from Hawaii to Arunachal pradesh! As of today this is where my watches have gone. 

Needless to say, My aim is world domination!!

163 years old!

This is a seven jewel English fusee from 1851. I just finished restoring this watch to working condition. A lot was wrong with it. It took a lot of work to sort everything out but I think it is ready for another 163 years of service. And this is one of the reasons why I love mechanical timepieces, they can be fixed!

So here it is. The dial is a little tired but I think it wears it's age with pride. The case is sterling silver and hallmarked for Birmingham, 1851.

And here is the lovely movement. 

The hole for the fusee arbour in the back plate presented a bit of a problem. Most of these watches had a bush at this location even when new. This is corroborated by the fact that often the bush too is gilded. Well, in this watch the hole for the arbour was not concentric with the bush. Since it was worn I had to replace it. So I plugged the hole, took the fusee-centre wheel and fusee-third wheel centre distances from the dial plate, and marked them on the plug (red arrow, below). 

The barrel hook for the fusee chain had to be made 

The balance cock had indentations on the underside to increase the end-shake. Closer examination revealed that the entire backplate was bent, it would not sit flush on all the pillars. So, the resultant reduction in end-shake was compensated for by punching up material in this manner. A good example of how one problem is solved but another is created. Needless to say, I straightened the plate and cleaned up the underside of the balance cock. 

This watch has an English lever escapement. In this watch the exit pallet was locking too deeply, with the result that the tooth of the escape wheel would not leave the pallet. The cure is to adjust the locking. This is done by adjusting the lever. The lever is two parts held together with a brass rivet (red arrow, below). The locking can be adjusted by rotating the parts relative to each other (green arrow, below). The trouble is that one cannot see the escapement in action. The only way is to make an adjustment and test in the movement using ones judgement. 

The dial carrier plate had a missing foot. This was causing the motion works to foul and stop the watch. A new foot was made (red arrow, below) and installed.

One of the pins that help keep the back cover in place was missing. Due to this, the back cover would occasionally foul with the lever and stop the watch. A new foot was made and installed (red arrow, below) 

I find this sort of work very fulfilling!

No.4-00, more pictures

These pictures were taken by the future owner of No.4-01. I think they are refreshingly different from the clinical pictures I take in the light tent. Of course, the fact that he has a great camera and is an ace photographer also helps!

Here it is on his wrist-

And on mine-

And here I am wearing the watch. I am just happy that the watch looks better than it's maker :-)

No.4 Videos

Here are some videos of No.4-00

No.4 Wristwatch

Here is my No.4 wristwatch. This one is a semi-skeleton. The idea is to show only the interesting bits. This includes the escapement, the mainspring barrel & the keyless works. Everything else is covered by the stepped dial.

In this model the dial and movement are in bare, frosted brass. I feel this is a more muted, understated look as compared to gold plating. Also, the brass will acquire an interesting patina over time. Something like a service indicator :-)

The hands are 'Sambhare' hands. The case is 38mm excluding the crown, 47mm lug to lug and 11mm thick. 

Seiko Striking Clock fixed.

As a follow up post to this one- 
http://awatchmakersdiary.blogspot.in/2013/07/seiko-striking-clock.html , 
I have opened her up and it was as I had suspected. Here is a picture of the dial side of the movement. The hour snail, rack and gathering pallet mechanism is as on purely mechanical clocks. However, there is a motor turning the gathering pallet.

And in the picture below you can see the problem. However, instead of dirt it was a bit of wire (green arrow) getting in the way of the rack (red arrow). 

The wire has been tucked away and all is well with the clock now!