I've shown a few technical posts of me playing around with some watches, but so far the things I've shown have been quite basic. Now this isn't exactly rocket science either, but I thought you might enjoy something a little more in depth than I've posted before.
When I started doing watch repairs my family found out and suddenly a pile of broken watches appeared! LOL! I certainly don't mind doing the repairs, since it's all experience for me. At our family Xmas, my sister approached me with her husband's first watch - an old Bulove that wasn't working. She asked me if I could repair it for his 50th birthday, and I agreed.
So here is the simple time only, manual wind Bulova.
The watch was actually in decent shape when I received it. The dial is in good shape, and everything else is able to be repaired. I cracked it open to see the movement:
It's a Bulova 11ANC movement, decent quality with 17 jewels, but unadjusted so it won't be a stellar timekeeper likely.
So here are a few shots as I disassembled this watch....
After opening it up, I remove the crown and get the movement out of the case and into my movement holder.
Next the hands come off, but I need to protect that very nice dial.
Now that they are off, time to remove the dial, which requires unscrewing the dial feet screws, one shown here.
With the dial off I can then proceed to remove all the parts from the main plate. I'll show just a few of the shots I took during this process....
The plate is bare now!
Now just trays full of parts.
Next I tackle the barrel. I carefully pop the barrel cover off to expose the mainspring.
Then the spring is removed - I have to be even more careful here to prevent parts from flying off in all directions, and to prevent losing an eye!
Seriously I do wear safety glasses when removing mainsprings since they can whip out and bite you if you slip. But this one came out without incident.
The next step is cleaning the various parts. I use a small ultrasonic cleaning unit, and use 4 steps for each part. Two initial cleaning steps using one type of solution, and then two rinsing steps using a different solution.
The parts are sometimes placed in small mesh baskets to protect them while the cleaning is done. This is the pallet lever in one of my stainless mesh baskets.
So with all the parts cleaned, that's the end of part 1. Part 2 to come, and I'll show the reassembly and some lubrication steps!
Thanks for looking.
Al
Best,
K
A true friend stabs you in the front.
-Oscar Wilde
