Citizen manual lost lower balance shock spring

[thecodedawg]

After spending 30 minutes removing cap jewel retainers and lubing the 3rd, 4th and escapment bearings on the watchmaker side, I flipped over the movement and  tried to remove the lower shock jewel.  This was my first time working with the Citizen style of shock spring.  It's from a ladies 21j movement with a date complication. As I lifted it off the cap jewel in the same way I would lift an incabloc spring, It pinged away.  I have searched for the infinitly small, unfortunaly nonmagnetic brass spring for about an hour and cant find it.  Does anyone know what this style of spring is called?  Anyone know where I can source one? Is my only hope a donor movement? 
 
 

I may have tried to remove this in the wrong direction, I disengaged the narroweer pins and lifted.  Perhaps I should have gone with the wider ones?  It was a $10 watch so I am not broken up about it. My wife loves Citizen, and it was to be a small token to her.  

Edited January 6, 2021 by thecodedawg
add info

[watchweasol]

Hi Codedawg   do you have the caliber number of the movement and I will have a look for a sheet for you

[thecodedawg]

IT has 5120 stamped under the balance cock. 

[Poljot]

1 hour ago, thecodedawg said:

After spending 30 minutes removing cap jewel retainers and lubing the 3rd, 4th and escapment bearings on the watchmaker side, I flipped over the movement and  tried to remove the lower shock jewel.  This was my first time working with the Citizen style of shock spring.  It's from a ladies 21j movement with a date complication. As I lifted it off the cap jewel in the same way I would lift an incabloc spring, It pinged away.  I have searched for the infinitly small, unfortunaly nonmagnetic brass spring for about an hour and cant find it.  Does anyone know what this style of spring is called?  Anyone know where I can source one? Is my only hope a donor movement? 
 
 

I may have tried to remove this in the wrong direction, I disengaged the narroweer pins and lifted.  Perhaps I should have gone with the wider ones?  It was a $10 watch so I am not broken up about it. My wife loves Citizen, and it was to be a small token to her.  

It landed somewhere near your or even on you. Step by step search for it under good light and you will find it.

[thecodedawg]

Yeah, I figured it may have landed on me.  I was wearing holed fabric athletic shorts. If it made it thought one of those, its gone.  When I am done with work today, I will look some more. I have a vector cone I can focus on becuase I saw the flash of light reflecting off the part and got a sence of its directon.  So perhaps I will find it.   

[JohnR725]

I didn't find the specific watch tech sheet but I found this. It talks about the balance jewels system or basically all of them. Then it covers a whole bunch of other information related to citizen watches that you should find useful.

1971 Citizen Technical Information - 03 Watch Movement.pdf

Edited January 7, 2021 by JohnR725

[jdm]

13 hours ago, thecodedawg said:

As I lifted it off the cap jewel in the same way I would lift an incabloc spring, It pinged away. 

It has been said before, it won't hurt to say it again.

When working on anything that has even a remote possibility of flying away, do that with rodico over it, or within a clear bag. That is 100 times more important when the person working is not a skilled professional - ask me how do I know.

Unfortunately, the chances of finding the part again or a replacement are never guaranteed.

[watchweasol]

Hi had a look there is nothing to be found on the 5120 but according to Ranfft  its a family of 5100-5300,5310  and others  the device is a parashock and the watch dates to about 1975, for further details  check out Ranfft for the 5100    cheers.

[Nucejoe]

Though called nonmagnetic, a big strong magnet will find it for you. 

 

 

[thecodedawg]

6 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

I didn't find the specific watch tech sheet but I found this. It talks about the balance jewels system or basically all of them.

Thanks, after seeing the pictures, I clearly removed the spring backwards. 

[thecodedawg]

4 hours ago, jdm said:

It has been said before, it won't hurt to say it again.

When working on anything that has even a remote possibility of flying away, do that with rodico over it, or within a clear bag. That is 100 times more important when the person working is not a skilled professional - ask me how do I know.

Unfortunately, the chances of finding the part again or a replacement are never guaranteed.

Duely chastised :).  The very first movement I took apart, I lost the yolk spring and the click spring.  I learned quickly to protect from flying springs.  However, this looked as if it would simply hinge up like an incabloc. I have serviced about 30 different watches ( I bought a large lot of mechanicals from Goodwill cheaply for this purpose.  ) Becuase it looked hinged, It was not in my realm of thnking that it would ping away.  I should have done more research to learn exaclty how the parashock hinges up.  Thats on me for sure.  And from now on, I will consider all springs to be a flight risk and take necesary precautions. 

[Nucejoe]

Pinging gymnastics isn't limited to springs only, a screw might not like a tweeze and fly off the first chance it gets.

A big strong magnet really saves our knees and is wallet friendly.

Its worth a six months free try, specially if you got a demagnetizer.

Regs

Joe

 

[jdm]

5 hours ago, thecodedawg said:

However, this looked as if it would simply hinge up like an incabloc.

I have worked on very few mov.ts with Incabloc, on the second one the hinged spring spontaneously left the block. The problem become not that it got lost, but to refit it without moving the block AND without breaking the spring. That and too many other "unfortunate" episodes have taught me to never leave anything to chances. 

[JohnR725]

7 hours ago, watchweasol said:

Hi had a look there is nothing to be found on the 5120 but according to Ranfft  its a family of 5100-5300,5310  and others  the device is a parashock and the watch dates to about 1975, for further details  check out Ranfft for the 5100

I think the reason why not finding a specific tech sheet is first off it doesn't exist at all. Second anything really old was covered in a book which has been broken up in the sections 2 of which I've attached to this thread. The book up above does cover the numbering system a little bit I've attached that is an image.

The section above covers generic or general mechanical watch stuff which actually applies to all watches. Has a really nice section on troubleshooting sections on mainsprings it's a really good reference for just about all watches and it does cover really tiny bit on the 5000 series. Specifically it has a picture of the calendar mechanism.

Then there is a specific section on ladies watches which I'm attaching. But it doesn't really cover that specific watch because the only thing apparently unique would be the calendar. I have snipped out a section of the jewel assembly lower balance and that is going to be a problem.

If we look at the suggestion by watchweasol Looking at the 5100 found at the link below. Then understanding of that it appears to be that the base caliber as the same components used in the whole series unless it's something specific.Then it looks like the 0110 being the lowest caliber we go to. It appears to be that you can only get this hard as something like this 400/1951   JEWEL, LOW BAL CAP & SPRING Then that is not a citizen number that's a bestfit number. Which is weird because if I do a search on the bestfit site to see what that goes into I've snipped out that it refers to a 2300? Which if you go to the link below turns out it is one of the same family. I've snipped out the section on the specific balance parts. The strange part is they don't list the citizen factory numbers?

http://www.ranfft.de/cgi-bin/bidfun-db.cgi?10&ranfft&0&2uswk&Citizen_5100

1971 Citizen Technical Information - 04 Ladies Movement.pdf

[jdm]

35 minutes ago, JohnR725 said:

Looking at the 5100 found at the link below. 

The real problem is that in most cases these are just bits on the screen, one can gather all possible numbers and references and that wlll not help a ready part materialize. 

The good news is in this case, Japanese lady watches, donor watches are very cheap and easily available. Like USD 2 a piece for a lot of 10. The best place to get them is Yahoo Japan auctions via a buying agent. Note the most advertised agent is not the best or cheapest for sure. 

[thecodedawg]

4 hours ago, Nucejoe said:

Pinging gymnastics isn't limited to springs only, a screw might not like a tweeze and fly off the first chance it gets.

A big strong magnet really saves our knees and is wallet friendly.

Its worth a six months free try, specially if you got a demagnetizer.

Regs

Joe

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Kobalt-Steel-12-in-Tool-Bar-Magnetic-Accessory/1000266015

I bought this 2 months ago for just such emergencies.  It has worked very well and partly becuase of it's 30cm length, I have found nearly all the ferrous parts I have lost.  It reacts very slightly with my brass tweezers, so I would have to go with a stronger magnet to find the brass spring.

I have a large collection of reel to reel tapes and with it a full tape demagnizer (Not a tape head demag) that also works great on tools and movements.  However, it is like taking a slege hammer tro a brad nail, so I also bought a cheap chinese demag.  

I have gotten pretty good at not puting too much pressure on screws and other parts.  But by far the worst I have had was a couple of months ago when a cap jewel pinged away. I was trying to oil it and when I put my tweezer over to secure the sides.  I misjudged and accidentally caught the edge of the stone with my twezers and sent it flying.  I found it a couple of days ago in a pile of lint as I was cleaning off my work table. I saw a glint of red in the worklight and did a little jig. 

Edited January 7, 2021 by thecodedawg

[thecodedawg]

39 minutes ago, JohnR725 said:

I think the reason why not finding a specific tech sheet is first off it doesn't exist at all.

I have a white whale.  Thank you so much for looking.  This is a spectacular community. 

 

[jdm]

1 hour ago, thecodedawg said:

But by far the worst I have had was a couple of months ago when a cap jewel pinged away.

Jewels are easily found in the dark with a 2 bucks UV light.

[Nucejoe]

3 hours ago, thecodedawg said:

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Kobalt-Steel-12-in-Tool-Bar-Magnetic-Accessory/1000266015

I bought this 2 months ago for just such emergencies.  It has worked very well and partly becuase of it's 30cm length, I have found nearly all the ferrous parts I have lost.  It reacts very slightly with my brass tweezers, so I would have to go with a stronger magnet to find the brass spring.

I have a large collection of reel to reel tapes and with it a full tape demagnizer (Not a tape head demag) that also works great on tools and movements.  However, it is like taking a slege hammer tro a brad nail, so I also bought a cheap chinese demag.  

I have gotten pretty good at not puting too much pressure on screws and other parts.  But by far the worst I have had was a couple of months ago when a cap jewel pinged away. I was trying to oil it and when I put my tweezer over to secure the sides.  I misjudged and accidentally caught the edge of the stone with my twezers and sent it flying.  I found it a couple of days ago in a pile of lint as I was cleaning off my work table. I saw a glint of red in the worklight and did a little jig. 

Judging by the looks, I am not sure if this is strongest magnet you can find, I took mine out of a big junked loud speaker, big and strong magnet, I have no trouble hunting shock springs with it or other parts for that matter. 

I have attached the magnet to  a shoe string  and just hold it a few centermeter above the ground so as to be no need to bend or get on my knees to search the floor.

Bag trick is useful too, I think I invented it. 

Regs 

Joe

 

[MechanicMike]

On 1/6/2021 at 3:22 PM, Poljot said:

It landed somewhere near your or even on you. Step by step search for it under good light and you will find it.

I can't tell you how many times my ol beer gut has been the resting spot of a pinged part.

[Poljot]

4 minutes ago, MechanicMike said:

I can't tell you how many times my ol beer gut has been the resting spot of a pinged part.

Once I was searching for a similar shock spring for at least half an hour. I was using my i-Phone flashlight as i find it very suitable for such "search & rescue" situations. Then I decided enough is enough! I turned off my i-phone flashlight and placed it on the desk near microscope.. And what did I see?... Correct! That "lost" spring was peacefully resting on i-phone's screen...