Balance spare?

[rossjackson01]

Friday evening, end of the week question.

Excuse the basic standard of the question, but if I don't ask then I will never know. As knowledgeable members, please bear with me. 3 weeks since starting.

Are certain parts interchangeable within watches? For instance, the balance? I see advertised on ebay, balance springs and balance wheels offered for sale. Sometimes the advert offers 10, 20 or more for sale.  Are parts like this able to be placed as spare parts in other watches?

Or, are items like the spring and balance made only for a specific watch and cannot be used in any other watch?

Thank you

Ross

[rodabod]

They are specific and rarely interchangeable. 

[rossjackson01]

rodabod

Thank you.

However I am confused. what's the point of items for sale on ebay like this 

ORIGINAL POCKET WATCH BALANCE WHEELS FOR THE WATCHMAKER

Tried to put in url but failed

Copy and past the above into ebay will give the item for sale

Edited December 10, 2021 by rossjackson01
update

[jdm]

15 minutes ago, rossjackson01 said:

However I am confused. what's the point of items for sale on ebay like this 

The same point that is in selling a mixed lot of e.g. used pistons taken from dismantling different petrol enginees. Even if the idea is that some may be usable by someone, they come without specifications or guarantees of any kind.

 

[rossjackson01]

jdm

I'm even more confused now. Parts are specific to a watch, but can be used in other non specific watches. ??

Thank you both for the answers. I'll keep practicing and learning.

Even harder to assemble than to disassemble. Great fun.

Regards

Ross

 

[rodabod]

Hi Ross. Mixed spares like that for watches are often worthless for watches which are made in the 21st century. Modern watches are like JDM analogises - like car parts and therefore most often unique and specific to the movement brand and model. 
 

It’s different when it comes to pre-1900 watches and clocks where parts are hand made and you may wish to adapt an existing part to create a replacement. This can be very difficult. 

[TimpanogosSlim]

6 hours ago, rossjackson01 said:

jdm

I'm even more confused now. Parts are specific to a watch, but can be used in other non specific watches. ??

Thank you both for the answers. I'll keep practicing and learning.

Even harder to assemble than to disassemble. Great fun.

Regards

Ross

 

 

Within a single brand and family of movements there is sometimes a little interchange. 

For example, The Seiko 7S26 and 7S36 share the same balance. 

Conversely, in the soviet days, Poljot, Raketa, and ZIM all made movements they called "2609", and they are similar, but will interchange parts result in a watch that runs as well as a new one from any of the 3 factories? I wouldn't bet much money on it. 

I have a 50 year old Beijing watch with a balance complete (including the cock) that is visibly from a smaller movement. Does it run? Sort of, but not for long. 

You're talking about whether a Volvo distributor cap will work in your Subaru. It won't even bolt on. 

To further use a car analogy - from 1999 to 2005 VW/Audi/SEAT/Skoda built a lot of cars with "1.8T" engines, and if you're rebuilding you can use a head from a 2000 VW Golf 1.8T in your 2004 Audi A4, but you'll need to transplant all of the variable valve timing stuff from your old audi head into the vw head, and you might have to drill some really specific holes. 

Hyundai made some 1.8T engines too. There is 0 interchange between them and the VW/Audi engines. Maybe the battery if you don't need it to bolt down correctly. 

Edited December 11, 2021 by TimpanogosSlim

[JohnR725]

11 hours ago, rossjackson01 said:

Are certain parts interchangeable within watches? For instance, the balance? I see advertised on ebay, balance springs and balance wheels offered for sale. Sometimes the advert offers 10, 20 or more for sale.  Are parts like this able to be placed as spare parts in other watches?

One of the problems with the interchangeability idea it is if you of a box of 50 balance completes and providing they been package properly so they were damaged in some way would they be labeled? How many separate watches separate balance wheels were made the beginning of time until now? Typically you can look at the balance wheel and tell what watch it comes from. They can make minor gases sometimes like typically American pocket watches have serial numbers on them. You can look at the stud on the hairspring until sometimes by that who made it. Then you go to the pocket watch database and see what watch it belongs to. But generically looking at a box of Swiss balance wheels trying to figure out what it goes to is very problematic.

On the other hand having a box of miscellaneous American balance wheels is nice if you need timing screws or sometimes even the roller jewel.

Then you didn't ask this question but typically the hairsprings do not interchange. There are minor exceptions where you can swap hairsprings but typically each balance wheel gets its own personal hairspring and you typically can't swap between balance wheels without having gross timing adjustments that you probably can't do.

I have a link below interesting website is extremely useful. Starts off innocent enough Three separate links depending upon the letter of the watch company you're looking for. So many names which one to choose for the example? Let's have some fun let's look at Rolex. That's the last lake then you get a list of all the various names find Rolex click on that randomly what number looks interesting?

Then that while were here we got to the Rolex list notice that it uses just the letters ROL that's because this is the designation that bestfit has. There is a best fit website but that's a pay site. There's also a book that goes with bestfit you can find that online or download but it doesn't use the three letter Representation

So notice even for Rolex they had quite a few different movements over time.Too many choices but let's go with this one  ROL 1055. Now you get a complete listing of all the parts that might have been available at one time. Not that you can order any of these Rolex they don't like us so they won't sell to us anyway. But do get part numbers A heck of a lot of those numbers are highlighted in pink that means are not available. At one time bestfit the other company I mentioned is to package up Rolex parts which meant you could buy generic parts in a bestfit package at a fraction of the cost. But or talk about balance complete so let's click on balance complete And we find out that four separate watches use the same balance complete. Plus we get a part number which isn't going to do us much good but?

Then depending upon where you are in the planet as I suspect this is not universal if they're out of the part you could try another material house.So for instance once you have your part you go here second link

When you're on the second link I got a different number I just picked one that said it was still available which is sometimes problematic 723/498 . That gives you a page with a image which has a price and if you click on the image You find the inevitable excitement crashing to an end it's out of stock but it was the balance staff.

But it also have a cryptic note which says STAFF, USE 100/1568? In case you're curious the first digits before the/Ari parts designation tell you what it is and in the case of the number 100 I believe that's a bestfit designation?  But let's have a laugh let's see what happens If we search for a new number and apparently is available.For $11.50.

One of the interesting problems is that at one time and they still do it their OEM companies basically making movements. Then lots of people will buy that movement sometimes the keep the original movement number on other times the put their own number on. Sometimes like Bulova they'll sell their own parts in their own envelope with their number. Which means conceivably you can have one really popular movement a whole bunch of parts for that for a popular movement with every envelope adding a different part number for each of the companies. Then a company like bestfit and others come along and do a cross reference at an end up with one part number for all the rest.

 

http://cgi.julesborel.com/

http://www.julesborel.com/

 

[rossjackson01]

JohnR725

Thank you for the very informative reply. Really interesting, and thank you for the contact information.

In my early stages of learning the analogy of the cars is quite good. However, it seems to me that any watch cannot be repaired. The exceptions being. Replacement parts can be obtained from the maker, if they are still in existence, or the broken part being replaced from spares from a similar broken watch.

In reality, only watches from companies still in existence are repairable by a hobbyist like me.

Doesn't stop me from having the bug to learn though.

Regards to all

Ross

Edited December 11, 2021 by rossjackson01
grammar

[nickelsilver]

There are many vintage movements that were made in the millions by makers who are no longer in existence. If you are working on commercial grade watches from the mid 20th century there's an excellent chance that one of the supply houses will have whatever part you need. If you have something more high end and rare like LeCoultre, Patek Philippe, AP, etc., parts are very hard to come by. What's a bigger problem is getting parts for fairly recent watches, as the bulk of companies have decided not to supply spare parts.

 

So, actually your best bet is probably working on the mid 20th century stuff, movements made by Felsa, Fontainmelon, A.Schild, ETA, and others, made in mass quantities (only ETA still exists), and at a time when spares were provided and supply houses still have stock.

[JohnR725]

13 minutes ago, rossjackson01 said:

In reality, only watches from companies still in existence are repairable by a hobbyist like me.

Definitely not a true statement?

16 minutes ago, nickelsilver said:

There are many vintage movements that were made in the millions by makers who are no longer in existence. If you are working on commercial grade watches from the mid 20th century there's an excellent chance that one of the supply houses will have whatever part you need.

Providing the watch is repairable? A lot of watches for Variety of reasons will wear out and the ability to repair Whether you had the parts or not is problematic. But the existence of parts has little to do with whether the company exists or not. As mentioned above a lot of watches were made in extremely high quantities and there's lots of material out there.

You look at things like American pocket watches the companies do not exist. The companies as far as spare parts go haven't existed in some time. Yet you look on eBay brand-new original American pocket watch parts are available. I was find it amusing that a lot of times the original American pocket watch mainspring is much nicer than the modern replacement mainspring. A lot of times they will fit much better that's another reason for using an original part. So parts are available irrelevance of whether a company exists or not it just depends on how many parts were made and for a lot of the companies the quantity of parts was extremely huge which is why they're still out there.

 

[TimpanogosSlim]

On 12/11/2021 at 4:33 AM, nickelsilver said:

There are many vintage movements that were made in the millions by makers who are no longer in existence. If you are working on commercial grade watches from the mid 20th century there's an excellent chance that one of the supply houses will have whatever part you need. If you have something more high end and rare like LeCoultre, Patek Philippe, AP, etc., parts are very hard to come by. What's a bigger problem is getting parts for fairly recent watches, as the bulk of companies have decided not to supply spare parts.

 

So, actually your best bet is probably working on the mid 20th century stuff, movements made by Felsa, Fontainmelon, A.Schild, ETA, and others, made in mass quantities (only ETA still exists), and at a time when spares were provided and supply houses still have stock.

There are exceptions that should be looked into before taking on a project. 

For example, I have an AS 2166 on its way from India (I know, I know) as a non-working watch. 

There is no stem or crown which of course suggests a problem with the setting lever spring. One of the most commonly replaced parts so surely there must be spares right? 

The family of movements that the 2166 comes from has a complication that enables instantaneous day and date switching at precisely midnight. No weird sliding around of the wheels before finally snapping, it happens all at once, faster than you can see it. A luxury experience, I'm sure. 

Pursuant to that experience, the setting lever spring is actually an assembly of multiple plates with 3 small wheels attached to it. 

The bidfun database states that even the later members of that family of movements were modified to work with a setting lever assembly from a different caliber. 

The supply houses have exactly zero of these parts. 

There are a few on eBay for $45/ea. 

[JohnR725]

23 minutes ago, TimpanogosSlim said:

There are exceptions that should be looked into before taking on a project. 

This is watch repair there's always exceptions to everything. Like purchasing watches with eta movements only to find out that their proprietary to whatever companies selling them. The unfortunate common problems now with Swatch group watches. Technical sheets exist parts lists exist but no parts will be ever found in the wild unless somebody scraps a watch.

The reason I point this out is occasionally somebody will ask about servicing and wondering where to get the main spring or some other part from and no it isn't going to happen even if the watch was made  very huge quantities there are no parts.

But still there's a lot of watches out there that were made in huge quantities they weren't necessarily very expensive at the time there still not expensive and parts are available.