On My Bench - A Turtle

Nice work Jim! Glad the barrel as okay - if it tips to the point where is contacts the bridges, then that's when you need to take some action to determine if it's in the barrel itself, or in the main plate or bridge. The wear on the flat surfaces of the barrel drum and the over should be looked at to make sure there aren't any rough parts there that might snag the mainspring. If so, a new barrel should be used, or if you are in a pinch, the roughness can be removed.

These Seikos tend to have amplitude that sucks, so anything you can do to get it up will help get you better results in the end. Another area where I see issues on barrels is the top surface of the hole that the arbor goes through in the drum. Ham fisted watchmakers who don't use barrel arbor holders, or are just clumsy with them, can chew up the top surface of the hole when inserting the barrel arbor, and this is another cause of amplitude loss. Sometimes this damage can be cleaned up so the surface is flat again, and then you just have to check the barrel arbor end shake.

Case work looks good too. It's a whole other set of skills really.

On the subject of spring loaded balls....no we are still talking watches...and rotating bezels...

Here is the Omega version of the same, as shown in a vintage Seamaster:



Here the ball is a ruby sphere, with a spring in a hole drilled into the case. In later versions, they went to a design that is more of a self contained capsule, and the ball is some sort of ceramic material, likely similar to what is used in ceramic ball bearings for rotors:



In contrast Rolex at the time had no clicks in their bezels at all, just a friction spring under the bezel (my 1680 from the early 70's has this), so very different approaches back in the day.

Not sure who was the first with a one direction bezel, does anyone know? I do know the old Doxa 300T's had a one direction bezel, and they were made in 1969 I believe. In the past I've made new click springs for them, like on this one several years ago - it's just a wire spring and the one for this watch was missing, but I knew what it looked like, so out came the wire:



Getting there:





Hard to see as my photography skills were a bit lacking back then, but it's on the case. There is a section that turns down to go into the anchor hole, and then it wraps around the case, and a small section is turned out towards the case edge:



When installed, the bezel only turned CCW...


The common flat click spring with 3 tabs on it that Omega uses now is a more recent design, and many of the early click designs used the balls or a wire.

Sorry, bit of a diversion from the topic but I do wonder who was the first with a one way bezel...

Cheers, Al

Fortunately, not often. This click spring was an easy task that didn't take long, but for something more complicated it often comes down to what people are willing to pay for. If I can source an actual pre-made part, that is always the best and likely cheapest option.

Other than costs, the thing that most often limits what I can do is the equipment I have. I have a watchmaker's lathe that I use regularly, but it doesn't have attachments for gear cutting, so anything requiring a new gear being cut isn't something I would be able to do without spending a lot of money. I actually had experienced watchmakers who were mentoring me when I first started, telling me not to bother getting a lathe, because they never used one. I found that strange at the time, and I use mine quite often, but a lot of what you need depends on the type of work you do. So if you are sort of a "retail" watchmaker that spends their days flipping batteries and adjusting bracelets for walk-in customers in a store, and doing the odd mechanical service in the back when time permits, you are not likely going to need a lathe. If you restore true antique watches that are 2 centuries old, you had better be fully equipped to fabricate pretty much anything from gears to complete fusée chains...

Note that I use mine as much for making tools that I need (for example a custom punch or stake for some operation) as I do for making or modifying watch parts. It is also useful in many refinishing operations for case parts.

There are a few guys in the watchmaking community who focus on parts manufacturing, so they started out being watchmakers who service watches, and over the years gathered the equipment to do a lot of manufacturing, and have specialized in that now, and no longer service watches. There's one that I use on occasion when I have a job that I'm not equipped to do, and his prices are reasonable for the work that goes into it, but in the end still quite expensive.

The modern Doxa's are notoriously difficult to get the bezels off. I have the Omega set for removing dive bezels, and despite trying on a number of different models, it wouldn't work to remove a bezel from a modern Doxa. Some people have suggested prying bezels off, but I have seen so much damage done by that method that it's not something I want to do personally. I even contacted Doxa (who I bought many parts from in the past) and asked them what tools or procedures they had for removing the bezels, but they always said that I needed to send the watch in if I wanted the bezel removed...I was always able to work around it on the watches I had in the shop, so never did that.

Cheers, Al

Likely a Bergeon 7820 - the newer version of the 6820 (which had 3 jaws). I've used the 6820 before, and honestly wasn't a fan as it used steel jaws, and if anything slipped there was potential for gouging. Omega now makes a version that functions in a similar way, but the parts that contact the n=bezel are hard plastic, rather than steel.

Love it. Makes me want to send my 6306 to one of you guys for a service.

Hi Jim,

Good to see it coming together. The method of oiling the escapement is a little unorthodox, and my concern would be that in the process of installing the pallet fork with oil already on the jewels, you would end up getting oil from those jewels where it doesn't belong. In addition, it's unclear if you would be getting the right amount of oil on the escapement.

I cover the oiling of the escapement in detail here:

https://omegaforums.net/threads/basic-watchmaking-tips-oiling-part-4-the-escapement.87072/

Oiling it after installation is pretty much a universal thing - I only say pretty much because who knows if someone is out there instructing in a different way, but this is the accepted practice. I don't recall these Seiko movements being specifically an issue when oiling the escapement installed as the thread I linked to shows, so you would likely get a more consistent result if you tried doing it the way shown in that thread.

Cheers, Al