The watch was keeping excellent time (within 5 s/d) with excellent timegrapher traces showing that the escapement (balance/pallet fork/escape wheel) were working very smoothly without any hint of an issue. In all fairness the watch would've probably ran just fine like it was, and no one would ever notice anything, but the timegrapher's amplitude readout clearly showed that there was a fault somewhere stealing power from the watch.
The first thing I did was strip the movement down completely again, re-cleaned everything, and started the process of inspection, again. I found that the center wheel had a bit too much end shake (up and down free play). You need a little bit, but this watch had a bit too much. This was fixed by simply adjusting the depth of the jewel in the center wheel bridge, lessening the amount of available up/down travel that the center wheel has between the upper and lower jewels. Inspecting further I found a damaged lower barrel arbor jewel, where the inside of the lip has a very small chip in it. This will definitely steal power from the watch. When the watch came from the factory, it had a jewel in the lower barrel arbor port, but a steel bushing in the upper port as previously detailed.
As luck would have it when I purchased the barrel arbor jewel kit for the watch it came with both an upper and lower jewel. I only ordered the upper jewel because that's all I should have needed, but when it arrived it had an upper and lower jewel together. This was really great news because I had exactly what I need to make this repair without having to order anything else.
Here's a picture of that damaged jewel. It is very small, and the chip is even smaller, so it was difficult to get a clear pic of it, but I think you can see it well enough. In the 11 o'clock position.
I can see why I missed it in my initial inspection. I had to remove the 0.5 Barlow lens off of my microscope, effectively doubling it's magnification, and then play with the light source to be able to view this flaw in the old jewel. Thankfully having the part on hand, I removed the old jewel and installed the new one using the same process as previously described when upgrading the other barrel arbor jewel.
After getting this repair completed, I took all of the parts for the watch and fully cleaned them (yet again) and assembled/lubricated everything......yet again.
That fixed the low amplitude issue, and now this thing was running beautifully.
The dial and hands were then installed.
After testing that the resets all worked correctly, I put a full wind in the watch and let it run in for nearly 48 hours with the chronograph running the entire time. During that time I reassembled the case and installed the new crystal.
The first thing I did was strip the movement down completely again, re-cleaned everything, and started the process of inspection, again. I found that the center wheel had a bit too much end shake (up and down free play). You need a little bit, but this watch had a bit too much. This was fixed by simply adjusting the depth of the jewel in the center wheel bridge, lessening the amount of available up/down travel that the center wheel has between the upper and lower jewels. Inspecting further I found a damaged lower barrel arbor jewel, where the inside of the lip has a very small chip in it. This will definitely steal power from the watch. When the watch came from the factory, it had a jewel in the lower barrel arbor port, but a steel bushing in the upper port as previously detailed.
As luck would have it when I purchased the barrel arbor jewel kit for the watch it came with both an upper and lower jewel. I only ordered the upper jewel because that's all I should have needed, but when it arrived it had an upper and lower jewel together. This was really great news because I had exactly what I need to make this repair without having to order anything else.
Here's a picture of that damaged jewel. It is very small, and the chip is even smaller, so it was difficult to get a clear pic of it, but I think you can see it well enough. In the 11 o'clock position.
I can see why I missed it in my initial inspection. I had to remove the 0.5 Barlow lens off of my microscope, effectively doubling it's magnification, and then play with the light source to be able to view this flaw in the old jewel. Thankfully having the part on hand, I removed the old jewel and installed the new one using the same process as previously described when upgrading the other barrel arbor jewel.
After getting this repair completed, I took all of the parts for the watch and fully cleaned them (yet again) and assembled/lubricated everything......yet again.
That fixed the low amplitude issue, and now this thing was running beautifully.
The dial and hands were then installed.
After testing that the resets all worked correctly, I put a full wind in the watch and let it run in for nearly 48 hours with the chronograph running the entire time. During that time I reassembled the case and installed the new crystal.
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