Post by Archer on Sept 15, 2008 6:37:02 GMT -6
So to continue the tale of the Seiko my nephew brought back from Rwanda, over the weekend I tackled the reassembly and lubrication of the movement.
BTW here are the first 2 parts...
watchtalkforums.proboards26.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=7610
watchtalkforums.proboards26.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=7630
The first step was what is called “pegging the jewels.” This means that you use a small stick of wood called “peg wood” and sharpen it to a fine point, and use this to manually clean out the hole in each jewel. Some of the holes are very small, and occasionally a piece of the wood breaks off in the hole and it can be a frustrating task to get it out. This happened on the pallet bridge and it took me 30 minutes to clear the wood out of the hole!
Anyway, once that was done I started putting part in place on the main plate…
Before I could put too many parts back on, the barrel had to go in, so time to tackle putting the mainspring back in he barrel.
Here is a reminder of what the inside of the barrel looked like when I cracked it open.
Well after cleaning I prepare the parts and the barrel lube.
So two types of lube are needed in an automatic barrel. One is the standard lube that helps keep the spring from wearing on itself and the barrel, but then there is the braking grease. The braking grease is what helps keep the spring from slipping inside the barrel, and allows the mainspring to reach full wind. However it had to allow the spring to slip inside the barrel so the spring does not over wind. So it controls the amount of friction between the barrel walls and the outer coil of the spring. You can see the 8217 grease bottle on my bench. This is applied to the barrel walls, and then the spring is coiled in. There is a “tail” on the spring called a bridle that provides some additional tension between the outer coil and the barrel wall.
Here the spring is back in and the barrel arbour will go in next, then the cap is pressed on - much cleaner now!
The barrel in place:
Continuing assembly, the rest of the wheel train goes on and the bridge that covers the wheels.
Now I flip the plate over and place the keyless works (a.k.a. winding/setting mechanism) in place – at least some of it.
Along the way I lubricate the first cap jewel for the balance. Note the circle of oil between the cap jewel and the pierced jewel in the shock assembly – BTW I really hate this style of shock spring – they fly really easily and are a pain to get out…
I skipped taking some photos as this job was dragging on….anyway back to the other side and I have assembled the winding mechanism at this point, and the balance is now in place.
Now before I go on I wanted to explain the auto winding on this movement. There are many different systems out there and this one is one I had not worked on before. The auto winding bridge is installed here but here is a shot as I took it apart that shows the main parts on the underside of this bridge:
So here you can see a wheel at the bottom of the bridge, and a fork-like piece that has a jewel at the top of it. This is a ratchet system that works when the rotor spins. The rotor is fixed to a shaft in a ball bearing, but the shaft is not at the centre of the bearing. So when the bearing rotates, the shaft moves in a large circle and this creates movement of the part that looks like a fork - the pawl. The ends of these forks mesh with very fine teeth in the wheel in this photo. As the fork moves from side to side, it grips and turns the wheel, and this wheel meshes with another wheel that winds the spring.
I asked my wife to shoot a video while I turned the mechanism as that shows how this works. Took a few tries but she got one that is in focus!
When you watch this you can see that I am turning the bearing, and you can see the fork-like pawl move back and forth, and it turns the small wheel – you can even see the larger wheel that is attached to the barrel arbour turn a tooth or two. Oh yes – you can see the movement is running too with the balance moving on the left of the video even though the second shock assembly isn;t in place yet.
media.putfile.com/Seiko-Cal-6309-Auto-Winding-Mechanism
Hope the video works!
So now I flip the movement over again and turn my attention to finishing the keyless works, and the calendar mechanism. Here the cannon pinion, hour wheel, and minute wheel are in place.
Now the rest of the calendar parts are in place, and the date wheel has been installed.
And finally the day wheel is in place, and the c-clip installed to hold it all together.
Now all of the work to this point would have taken a professional watchmaker maybe 3 hours. For me this has been done over a couple of weekends and I probably have 10 hours in it already.
Next I need to clean up the case and crystal, then install the dreaded movement spacer, the dial, the hands, the rotor, and then case it up! Stay tuned for more.
Thanks for looking.
Cheers, Al
BTW here are the first 2 parts...
watchtalkforums.proboards26.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=7610
watchtalkforums.proboards26.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=7630
The first step was what is called “pegging the jewels.” This means that you use a small stick of wood called “peg wood” and sharpen it to a fine point, and use this to manually clean out the hole in each jewel. Some of the holes are very small, and occasionally a piece of the wood breaks off in the hole and it can be a frustrating task to get it out. This happened on the pallet bridge and it took me 30 minutes to clear the wood out of the hole!
Anyway, once that was done I started putting part in place on the main plate…
Before I could put too many parts back on, the barrel had to go in, so time to tackle putting the mainspring back in he barrel.
Here is a reminder of what the inside of the barrel looked like when I cracked it open.
Well after cleaning I prepare the parts and the barrel lube.
So two types of lube are needed in an automatic barrel. One is the standard lube that helps keep the spring from wearing on itself and the barrel, but then there is the braking grease. The braking grease is what helps keep the spring from slipping inside the barrel, and allows the mainspring to reach full wind. However it had to allow the spring to slip inside the barrel so the spring does not over wind. So it controls the amount of friction between the barrel walls and the outer coil of the spring. You can see the 8217 grease bottle on my bench. This is applied to the barrel walls, and then the spring is coiled in. There is a “tail” on the spring called a bridle that provides some additional tension between the outer coil and the barrel wall.
Here the spring is back in and the barrel arbour will go in next, then the cap is pressed on - much cleaner now!
The barrel in place:
Continuing assembly, the rest of the wheel train goes on and the bridge that covers the wheels.
Now I flip the plate over and place the keyless works (a.k.a. winding/setting mechanism) in place – at least some of it.
Along the way I lubricate the first cap jewel for the balance. Note the circle of oil between the cap jewel and the pierced jewel in the shock assembly – BTW I really hate this style of shock spring – they fly really easily and are a pain to get out…
I skipped taking some photos as this job was dragging on….anyway back to the other side and I have assembled the winding mechanism at this point, and the balance is now in place.
Now before I go on I wanted to explain the auto winding on this movement. There are many different systems out there and this one is one I had not worked on before. The auto winding bridge is installed here but here is a shot as I took it apart that shows the main parts on the underside of this bridge:
So here you can see a wheel at the bottom of the bridge, and a fork-like piece that has a jewel at the top of it. This is a ratchet system that works when the rotor spins. The rotor is fixed to a shaft in a ball bearing, but the shaft is not at the centre of the bearing. So when the bearing rotates, the shaft moves in a large circle and this creates movement of the part that looks like a fork - the pawl. The ends of these forks mesh with very fine teeth in the wheel in this photo. As the fork moves from side to side, it grips and turns the wheel, and this wheel meshes with another wheel that winds the spring.
I asked my wife to shoot a video while I turned the mechanism as that shows how this works. Took a few tries but she got one that is in focus!
When you watch this you can see that I am turning the bearing, and you can see the fork-like pawl move back and forth, and it turns the small wheel – you can even see the larger wheel that is attached to the barrel arbour turn a tooth or two. Oh yes – you can see the movement is running too with the balance moving on the left of the video even though the second shock assembly isn;t in place yet.
media.putfile.com/Seiko-Cal-6309-Auto-Winding-Mechanism
Hope the video works!
So now I flip the movement over again and turn my attention to finishing the keyless works, and the calendar mechanism. Here the cannon pinion, hour wheel, and minute wheel are in place.
Now the rest of the calendar parts are in place, and the date wheel has been installed.
And finally the day wheel is in place, and the c-clip installed to hold it all together.
Now all of the work to this point would have taken a professional watchmaker maybe 3 hours. For me this has been done over a couple of weekends and I probably have 10 hours in it already.
Next I need to clean up the case and crystal, then install the dreaded movement spacer, the dial, the hands, the rotor, and then case it up! Stay tuned for more.
Thanks for looking.
Cheers, Al
