Like tinkering with watches?

[aztecknight]

I've been working myself up the tinkering with watches ladder. I prefer my watches to keep reasonably good time, meaning less than 8s/day off, preferably on the + side. When I get a watch that is off, it will just annoy the crap out of me and I'll either rid myself of it or pay a watchmaker to tweak the daily rate. I usually don't mind doing this for the expensive watches, but doing this for the cheaper ones gets kind of annoying. So I decided to do a little learning and have played with a few watches with great success. With a little patience and the right tools, it isn't very hard to do. Here are some of the helpful posts I've found on the web that gave me the balls to try it.

Difference between regulation and adjustment:

http://www.timekeeperforum.com/showthre ... regulation

Nice little post on daily rate regulation. This is the easiest one to do. It is good for tweaks of about +18 to -18 seconds a day from the watches I've played with. Sometimes this isn't enough though.

http://www.christopherwardforum.com/vie ... p?f=5&t=22

For those times where the watch is >30s/day off, there is this nice little post on coarse rate regulation. The slightest tweak can swing the time keeping +20s to -20s a day. I use this for watches that are more than +30s/day off followed by some tweaking of the daily rate from above. This one requires patience if you don't have a timegrapher. I've had to open and close the watch multiple times before to get it just right within a span of a day or two.

http://www.christopherwardforum.com/vie ... f=5&t=2339

If you're watch is running really off, there of course could be something wrong with it and might require actual service so e pluribus unum. There is also a chance that it might be magnetized, though from what I've seen this is really less likely to happen nowadays. I do plan to get a de-magnitizer at some point though.

The best part is that so far I've seen 2824s and 2892s and the above info applies to both.

[deepcdvr]

Cool... thanks for the info.

My watch tinkering - battery changes, an attempt at regulation - have ended in complete failure. Probably due to the lateness of the day and the amount of beer consumed. Oh, and my tools usually include a hammer

[AZpops]

I don't think I got the huevos to open a watch, but the coolest machine I had a chance to see was the time Thomas Gref repositioned the second hand on my Shark Diver. After fixing the second hand he showed me his digital watch timing/regulating machine. Pretty cool stuff to see the difference in the graphs between the Miyota and one of his ETA's.

Otto Frei has these for sale anywhere from $300.00 to $1,300.00 buck-ah-rhoos!


http://www.ofrei.com/page256.html




Disclaimer: I have no relationship, nor do I work for Otto Frei!



PS Yup when I'm working on the Eagle (especially at night), I make sure I have two hammers with me. This way I don't have to worry about finding the one I threw into the darkness. Well, unless I actually hit something with it, then I'll know kind of where it landed! ....

[AZpops]

Delete Dbl Post.

[sixtysix]

Alright! A dose of technical info!! Thanks...

[AtomicTom]

Hey this is so cool Azteck ! Most of us probably think about tinkering with
our watches, but usually end up not taking any chances. Hearing about your
experience, and also looking at these links though makes it seem possible !
Thanks a lot, and congratulations on trying this out yourself.

[FlyPenFly]

My general policy with mechanical undertakings is smash it until it works so I can't say I've been that successful with watch tinkering.