Thread 2949909

Hello, I saw another watch thread here people were responding to so hopefully this question isn't too retarded. Pic related is my grandfather's old watch. It runs fine, but the second hand doesn't turn. I think it has to do with this copper wire you can see in the upper part of the mechanism. Anyone know what that's for/what it might be replacing? Potential fix? I know nothing about watch mechanics but I have a good amount of small general tools and my day job is electronics repair so I'm not bad with my hands.

>>2949909 (OP)
Bro you have a fucking chiming watch movement, don't touch that shit. Take it to a professional and if you can't afford the $10,000 to fix it then sell it to some one who can.

>>2949916
And yeah, that gold gear with the tiny ass teeth on the bridge that is being held by wire should be touching the gold gear in the center with the tiny ass teeth, that is what turns the seconds hand.

>>2949916
What does that mean, chiming watch movement? Sorry, I don't know anything about this stuff. Any guess on the purpose of the wire?

>>2949949
It has a built in alarm that rings every hour etc, it's the circular ring around the outside. It's way more complicated and rarer than a normal movment.

As for why it's like that idk, it seems more deliberate than just something broke and that was all they could do to fix it. That bridge seems to be for more than just holding that gear in place, maybe tying up those parts disables the alarm idk.

>>2949949
>>2950122
it kinda looks like someone wired the hammer that hits the chime to make it stop chiming

It looks very similar to the mechanism in this listing, I think op has a chronograph and they disabled the chrony function.

https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/antique-quarter-repeating-chime-chronograph-pocke-1001-c-a584da29c8

You can see in this video that the wired up wheel shifts to the seconds hand when he presses the chrono button.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLbkEujMvyA

In either case, OP has a work of art and shouldn't be fucking around with it. Take it to a professional to have the wire job undone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqGsFLlQCdA

OP here, thanks for the replies. The chrono button doesn't appear to want to press down (obviously I'm not putting substantial force, I don't want to break something). I'm guessing it's stuck in the down position, potentially due to the wire. It does strike me as odd that if the wire is meant to silence the chime for whatever reason that it was also placed in a way that prevents the second hand from moving too. Wouldn't it make more sense to put a damper on the hammer that hits the chine itself?

Professional service is out of my budget for now so I think I'll just leave it for a while until I can afford it.

>>2950328
you might be able to get a big youtuber to do it
that guy wristwatch revival will do stuff like that, and this movement would be something he would like to work on im sure.

My watchmaking school days are far away but I reckon that it's not a "second hand" that you have in the center but the chronograph's hand.

When you press the button, (1) the start/pause cam turns one increment, (2) the chrono's cam, pushed by its spring rotate in place (3), and put its wheel ,which is connected to the main gear train and is always turning, in driving range of the central hand (4), causing it to turn (5).
Pushing the button again will turn the start/pause cam an other increment, pushing away the chrono's cam, and thus the central hand will receive no more input force.

You can see a gap below the chrono's cam. It's there to allow the axle to move.

You can't press the button because the start/pause cam can't overcome the tension in the copper wire. My theory is they blocked it because the chrono would often trigger in the pocket which puts a higher load on the spring, sometimes enough to stop the balance from oscillating and stopping the watch.

I don't think anything is broken with it, but like other anons says, pocket watches with a chiming movement are worth quite a bit of money. You have one beautiful watch on your hands.

>>2951003
This is a very detailed response, thank you! So in your view that wire can be removed without damaging the watch? Do you think it's risky or worth trying?

>>2951285
It's not holding anything broken, just stopping the chronograph from being driven by the main gear train so no risk on a mechanical standpoint. Like I've said imo the purpose of the wire is to avoid accidental chrono start in the pocket.
Since you're used to working with delicate and small parts, you should have the confidence to work on something at such a scale. It's the usual, have good lighting, steady hands, know what your cutting pliers will touch as to avoid scratching the delicate brass. You know the drill. Then after that you can untangle the wire.
If you're not feeling it, just take it to a jeweller (they're usually cheaper than watchmakers which in these days are glorified wriststraps and battery changers) and it should take them 10 minutes and hopefully they shouldn't charge much.

So yeah, low risk unless you have butter hands. The only real risk in the operation is, when cutting, that you have a small piece of wire falling down below the bridges, into the gears, which would then need a disassembly, but it should be alright if you take your time and watch what you're doing

>>2949909 (OP)
Interesting thread and great replies. Not a watch person myself, but will keep an eye on this thread just because it has piqued my interest.

>>2951317
That watch is a 100 years old probably, it needs a disassembly and clean/ oiling regardless if he actually plans to run it.

>>2951331
It looks well maintained, last revision was probably done last decade. The true test is if the balance lacks amplitude. I reckon it's not that urgent, but yeah if you can spare the cash it's never a bad idea.

OP here. >>2951317 gave me the confidence to take a shot at the wire. I was able to remove it with no trouble. No need to cut as it was easy to just untie by hand. The functionality does not appear to have changed, however. The timekeeping works, including the second hand (not what I now know is the chrono hand). The chrono mechanism still doesn't work. The chrono button doesn't want to go down. I suspect it is already stuck in the down position.

>>2951331
This is a Soviet watch that has an inscription from 1964 (or possibly it's a western watch that was smuggled in around that time). So maybe not quite that old.

>>2951334
As far as I know this has been sitting in my grandmother's drawer for probably at least 30 years. The timekeeping mechanism seems to run just fine, though. I have no equipment to really accurately test the timekeeping, but it kept 5 minutes without being off by a noticeable amount.

I poked some parts with a toothpick a bit and I think I might know what the problem is. The chrono cam (2) doesn't have the range of movement to actually put the chrono gear in contact with the central hand's gear. It gets close, but the end of the cam close to the pillar (1) actually comes in contact with the edge of the screw before the gap between the chrono gear and the central gear (3) closes fully and the gears engage.

I think maybe if I just turn the screw on that pillar a little clockwise, it might let the cam move far enough to get the gears to engage. Not sure how much room for error there is for something like this, but maybe whoever did the service last time didn't care about the position of that screw since the chrono was wired away from that section in any case. Only problem is, even my smallest flathead doesn't fit into these heads. I don't want to use pliers on something this delicate, though. Maybe a knife... I'll wait a while first and see if anyone here wants to weigh in on how I'm about to catastrophically destroy my apparently valuable watch.

>>2951747
The watch in that video I posted earlier does have the screw in a different position.

I wouldn't try it without the right screw drivers, it wouldn't be hard at all to slip and gouge the teeth on that tiny fucking gear.

>>2952391
The problem is, even if I allow the chrono movement to engage, I don't see a way to release the chrono button. It seems to push something deep into the mechanism that I can't get into without pulling the whole movement out.

OP here with an update. I turned the screw with a knife in the end. Aliexpress takes too long to deliver these tiny screwdrivers and I'm not willing to pay for a quality set. The gears have engaged and the chrono hand turns. I'm converting a video of the movement in action now. It has a stutter which is almost certainly beyond me to fix, and still no clue about the chrono button or how to get a chime out of the thing.

>>2954006
Finally got the video to convert. Sorry for the quality. As you can see around 21 seconds the central two wheels start skipping for a bit. It seems that the engagement between the gear attached to the chrono cam ((2) in >>2951747 ) and the leftmost gear with the movement itself isn't so good. I don't see an easy fix since the gears are all screwed in place... as usual, open to suggestions.

>>2954024
The intermediate wheel on the cam arm for the chrono start/stop meshes with wheel connected to the fourth wheel (part of main gear train) and chrono seconds wheel (the center wheel seen in the video stuttering). The engagement on the intermediate wheel (from looking at the pics and video) looks to be adjusted by the oval shaped screw by the top left of the cam arm with the intermediate wheel. Turning it ever so slightly will allow you to tune the mesh depth to get the stutter fixed. Use a loupe or scope when adjusting to get the depth right.

I would recommend looking over the teeth on the fourth wheel and intermediate wheel to make sure the stuttering hasn't stripped any teeth of their profile, in really bad cases it'll make it such that adjusting with the screw won't fix the stutter.

OP here. A Chinese seller shipped me a bunch of tiny screwdrivers as a bonus along with a circuit part so I have a flathead that fits now.

>>2955246
I played with that screw quite a bit but it didn't seem to adjust the distance at all. You gave me an idea, though. The screw on the left side of pic related mounts the fourth wheel. I loosened it and while tightening it, pressed the part to the right. Visually the gears still seem to have a slight gap as visible in >>2954024 (compared to the intermediate wheel's engagement with the chrono seconds wheel) but I guess it made a microscopic difference because the chrono hand now keeps in time with the main movement.

Still hoping to figure out how to get this thing chiming. My only guess is that the hammer (pic related) is supposed to catch on the teeth in the gear to the left of it which is mostly covered with only 4 teeth showing. When that gear turns far enough, the hammer slips out of it and hits the chime (wire on the right). The problem with this theory is that this gear and the hammer are actually on different planes. The gear doesn't seem to want to move at all (tied to the chrono button, maybe?) and the hammer is pretty set in its plane too.

>>2955322
I did a bit more research and there's no way this idea is even close to right. I still have no idea what that gear is for though. It doesn't seem to ever turn. I guess what's supposed to happen is I push the repeater button, the wheel with the four spokes at the bottom of >>2954024 spins, and somehow this impels the hammer with a mechanism hidden underneath a panel I don't have the confidence to remove.

The repeater button (pic related) is really bugging me, though. The button is connected to a flat piece with a hole in it that has a post passing through it. The post is secured and doesn't want to move in any direction. Therefore the only movement the component the button is attached to can make is up or down (into and out of the watch, looking from above). The way the button is housed doesn't actually allow any movement along this axis, though (I'm pretty damn sure it's not a slider). So I'm really confused what could even be the problem here. If it's a missing spring or something, where was it supposed to be? I have no intuition on how this component should work.

Anyway, on the bright side, I now know exactly what watch this is. By the flag it's a Swiss watch with either serial number or patent number 13244, which is for the Le Phare movement. So that would date this movement to around 1910.

Is it possible this watch was made by an apprentice who messed up and decided to keep the messed up components in there just to troll a guy 100 years later? I had a lefacheux revolver from the 1860s that was roughly made and someone crossthreaded the trigger guard screwhole so it was made a folding trigger model instead. The guy also made the cylinder turning hand too thin and it snapped maybe 120 years ago. I hammered and filed some metal to that size but slightly bigger and said i did a better job than its maker. Took an entire day to get the timing right by filing down the hand. Man i wish i was born in the 1800s.
But these craftsmen or their 10 year old apprentices messed up sometimes and there may be no fixing every mistake.

>>2955341
That 'post' is just a pivot link. Pic is from the video below and I believe it's the same movement design, it has the 13244 number.

The backside of that watch is a clusterfuck of shit you have no business dicking around with.

https://youtu.be/-yJWAvOrFyw?list=PLNQb5_nzHdtVHWJ_iaPHvWmeXQ5AAmgnQ&t=2819

My advice is stop running it, disengage the chrono and throw it in a box with a packet of desiccant and forget you have it until you become a millionaire and can afford to have it restored. If you keep running it in its current condition you're going to grind away the teeth on those tiny ass gears. I can already see damaged teeth in that pic on the chrono idler gear.