Braking grease - a myth?

[nickelsilver]

A watchmaker friend of mine did some testing on braking greases back turn of the century. I don't think Kluber was around or commonly available, and from memory it was between Glissalube A (8213 brass barrels), B (8212 aluminum barrels) and Glissalube 20  (8217). He's an ex chemist and used new barrels, which he would buy as different auto calibers came in. He milled away a window in the lid to observe the slipping.

 

He counted the number of turns to slip, then observe the amount of slippage, holding the position of arbor and barrel for some time.

 

Unsurprisingly the results backed up manufacturer's and Moebius' recommandations. I don't remember the super specifics, but sometimes slipping occured before full wind, sometimes continuing for a full turn or more (up to 2+ I believe). Sometimes it occured too late- which would cause rebanking and wear or breakage in the auto mech.

 

Glissalube A did work best for brass, and B for aluminum. 8217 did work well in general, but sometimes A or B were better. I have a feeling if he had had Kluber P125 it would have been the best general option.

 

It's good to question things, but I  also think the manufacturers put a lot of effort into finding lubrication solutions that worked best, both initially and over time. This fellow bought at least a couple of dozen different barrels for these tests, mechanically and machine cleaning between greases. Not to dispute what manufacturers said, just to satisfy his own curiosity and to see which lubrication was the absolute best for a given barrel.

[Kalanag]

Very interesting! That‘s what I‘m looking for!

Don‘t you think your friend has made some notes which we can study?

[JohnR725]

2 hours ago, Kalanag said:

A side note: On Youtube you can find a professional watchmaker who mainly services contemporary automatic wristwatches. Having watched a dozen of his videos I found that he never removes the mainspring from the barrel. He just cleans the barrel with the mainspring inside and then oils it. This practice obviously has been working good enough so far to stay in business. That‘s not a surprise for me anymore

I suppose as long as? If you look at modern mainsprings there supposed to be prelubricated and require no lubrication at all at least on the mainspring itself. The breaking grease that may be another matter but the mainspring itself requires no lubrication. So yes one of these you could wash off the nonexistent lubrication although the breaking grease may be an issue again. Then apply a lubrication and may be at work maybe it wouldn't? Obviously you have to do a proper quality control testing like a watches supposed to run X quantity of hours after its wound up and if the watches on auto winder it should be a little run and not whatever is as long as it passes the quality control tests and everything seems to work fine then I guess it's okay

unfortunately is always exceptions to the rule like anything that typically has a blued steel mainspring it should come out the make sure it's not set. The biggest factor in here is the testing to make sure that the watch does meet the criteria of proper power source. Because if you work on anything older the mainsprings can be set to longer functional or have extremely sticky lubrication which will never come out by just taking the lid off and cleaning in other words you do end up with a sticky mainspring.

I once got the service a watch from somebody who said it to somebody with a online website promoting watch repair. The same individual promoting watch repair had another section on teaching watch repair because he thought IED that knowledge was nonexistent. I noticed on mainsprings he advocated not touching them at all because they're basically a pain in the ass. I don't harbor the exact wording but he did not promote touching the mainsprings at all. The individual who gave me the watch said that he set it to the person they came back and it didn't run I don't remember the exact description was too long ago. So he set it back with a complaint and they came back with Apsley no change at all. This is because as a guess the person wound the watch up put it on the timing machine everything past and didn't do proper quality control like how long does the watch run for for instance and yes what was the problem he should've looked into the mainspring which was.

 

[Geotex]

On 7/25/2024 at 9:56 AM, spectre6000 said:

The test I thought would have been interesting in this would be a NON-braking grease vs braking grease. Every time I see the words "braking grease" it makes me wonder what about it makes it good for braking... Kinda like the friction modifiers used in clutch-based LSD differentials? Or something else?

Yes, that is the relevant question. As the OP stated, if you agree with the methods, then the conclusion from those efforts is that breaking grease isn't an improvement over a non-lubricated barrel for a short trial winding period. But there is also an acknowledgment that prolonged metal-on-metal contact wouldn't be a real-world option. So, if the "myth" this thread is addressing is the need to use a special breaking grease, then investigating how other types of lubricants compare would be the next step, perhaps using an automatic watch winder or something that could put the treated springs/barrels through successive days of winding. 

I personally don't doubt that watchmaking companies use this because it does what it says and is an improvement, but I can see that it might be a situation where a hobbyist could opt to not stock the special grease for their own projects if there is a multi-use lubricant that is functional without tanking the reserve so low that the wind wouldn't at least last overnight when you set down an auto watch. Then again, this is probably one of those "If you want a new idea, read an old book" situations because there were auto movements before many of the modern lubricants were available, so there might be old-school suggestions out there. 

[Kalanag]

10 hours ago, Geotex said:

… I personally don't doubt that watchmaking companies use this because it does what it says and is an improvement, but I can see that it might be a situation where a hobbyist could opt to not stock the special grease for their own projects if there is a multi-use lubricant that is functional …

That‘s exactly my point!

Based on my experience (as a hobbyist and engineer) there is nothing wrong with using affordable PTFE-, Graphite- or MoS2-filled watch greases to ensure sufficient lubrication and wear reduction of the barrel wall. I found no significant loss of power reserve.

I successfully used the well known „Molycote DX“ (PTFE) and „Dr. Tillwich 859+PTFE“.

Edited July 27, 2024 by Kalanag

[spectre6000]

I don't recall what I paid for it, but I got the teensiest cutie patootie little bottle of braking grease a few years back. Couldn't have been that expensive, but undoubtedly cost more than most of the 404 watches I've used it on! If it is any improvement at all, it's worth it to me to know it's done "right"; whatever that actually means. I'm screwing things up enough in ways I know the actual ramifications of!

[Birbdad]

On 7/25/2024 at 12:33 PM, nickelsilver said:

A watchmaker friend of mine did some testing on braking greases back turn of the century. I don't think Kluber was around or commonly available, and from memory it was between Glissalube A (8213 brass barrels), B (8212 aluminum barrels) and Glissalube 20  (8217). He's an ex chemist and used new barrels, which he would buy as different auto calibers came in. He milled away a window in the lid to observe the slipping.

 

He counted the number of turns to slip, then observe the amount of slippage, holding the position of arbor and barrel for some time.

 

Unsurprisingly the results backed up manufacturer's and Moebius' recommandations. I don't remember the super specifics, but sometimes slipping occured before full wind, sometimes continuing for a full turn or more (up to 2+ I believe). Sometimes it occured too late- which would cause rebanking and wear or breakage in the auto mech.

 

Glissalube A did work best for brass, and B for aluminum. 8217 did work well in general, but sometimes A or B were better. I have a feeling if he had had Kluber P125 it would have been the best general option.

 

It's good to question things, but I  also think the manufacturers put a lot of effort into finding lubrication solutions that worked best, both initially and over time. This fellow bought at least a couple of dozen different barrels for these tests, mechanically and machine cleaning between greases. Not to dispute what manufacturers said, just to satisfy his own curiosity and to see which lubrication was the absolute best for a given barrel.

Okay this gives me hope haha. Thank you for posting this. I'm currently going out of my mind with a 7s26 that for the first time i've fitted with a generic general resortes mainspring that according to here, my measurements and cousins SHOULD be the correct replacement and I simply cannot get my amplitude up to what it should be. I can tell the bridle is slipping prematurely and it's just never getting up much tension. I was told when i started to get 8217, but iv'e barely done any barrel servicing because seiko barrels arent' really made to be serviced so and i didn't have a winder till recently so this is sortof my first foray into servicing a barrel from scratch.

I have some 8213 on the way from cousins and i'm REALLY hoping this resolves my amplitude issue. I can tell when i wind it there's just no tension building after about 4 rotations of the barrel. It feels like after 3 or 4 rotations the mainspring is just spinning around in there. I will report my findings when it comes and i service the barrel with 8213. This IS a brass barrel too. 

 

I can also say i have serviced one other barrel with 8217 on the same movement but with a stock seiko mainspring that has that big reverse bridle and the stuff worked fine. 

[VWatchie]

To explain one of the reasons re-banking can occur In this video at 4:23 Kalle Slaap says:

"with an automatic winding system, it can be that there is too much graphite grease in the main barrel and that causes the spring to give extra friction to the main barrel so therefore too much pressure on the gear train"

Would you agree or disagree?

 

Edited September 28, 2024 by VWatchie

[RichardHarris123]

I will have to disagree this time. 

[tomh207]

1 hour ago, RichardHarris123 said:

I will have to disagree this time. 

I am with Richard. Though no means expert I suspect braking grease is more about creating a more constant coefficient of friction than you would get metal-to-metal with the surface variation on the barrel wall. My thinking is just enough braking grease will do this however too much will reduce friction potentially to the point there is none. 
 

probably totally wrong but this makes sense to me.

 

Tom

[VWatchie]

1 hour ago, tomh207 said:

probably totally wrong but this makes sense to me.

Your reasoning makes a lot of sense to me. I agree!

I guess the basic question is does braking grease increase or decrease friction. Perhaps it’s more complex than that.

Let’s see if and what our pros can add to the discussion.

[Jon]

1 hour ago, VWatchie said:

I guess the basic question is does braking grease increase or decrease friction.

It decreases friction. Depending on which braking grease you use will make a small difference to when the spring slips, as well as how much grease is used and the barrel material. I always use 8217 and have never had any real problems on a multitude of barrels from modern to vintage. I believe it is how much grease is used rather than which braking grease which makes the spring slip earlier or later, but that is my opinion and experience based on many barrels and springs

[JohnR725]

6 hours ago, VWatchie said:

braking grease increase or decrease friction.

I was always under the impression that especially if you look up the definition of breaking grease is that it has holding power. In other words it holds in place like the mainspring allowing you to wind it up to a point of where it breaks free and then it actually is a grease of some sort up until it grabs again.

10 hours ago, VWatchie said:

"with an automatic winding system, it can be that there is too much graphite grease in the main barrel and that causes the spring to give extra friction to the main barrel so therefore too much pressure on the gear train"

Would you agree or disagree?

Maybe I'm having one of my dyslexia moments and this is backwards? What's interesting about this is if you look at Seiko watches they literally fulfilled their mainspring barrels with graphite grease and they work fine. Because realistically any grease can be a breaking grease I think technically all lubrication's have a dampening effect anyway so that would mean all lubrication's have a breaking effect. But my experience with wrong type of grease on the barrel wall is that the mainspring will slip prematurely and when it slips degrees does a wonderful job and it continues the slip for quite some distance with zero breaking effect  at all.

On the other hand I remember once at work with the previous watchmaker when I was doing an automatic which typically I don't do anymore and I asked how to use the nasty black  really sticky stuff I used way too much on the outer wall and then it had almost 0 breaking. It was a Seiko and is why you get up with the screw on the ratchet wheel like you're allowed to do and when it came time to break I thought the screw head was going to break off. So some breaking greases if applied to heavily will not break at all or very very difficult to break.

It's a shame they used to be a really a wonderful video by perplxr Where he showed too much energy because of it wasn't breaking properly then he used the Rolex lubrication which looks like a very light toothpaste Probably Teflon base and he applied it around the entire outer wall which if you did that with the black grease would be no slipping at all and a case he went around the entire wall and that was the proper amount which brings up the problem of the various greases probably do have an ideal amount that you're supposed to use as opposed to one method fits all.

[Jon]

On 9/28/2024 at 9:32 PM, JohnR725 said:

a wonderful video by perplxr Where he showed too much energy because of it wasn't breaking properly then he used the Rolex lubrication which looks like a very light toothpaste Probably Teflon base and he applied it around the entire outer wall which if you did that with the black grease would be no slipping at all and a case he went around the entire wall and that was the proper amount which brings up the problem of the various greases probably do have an ideal amount that you're supposed to use as opposed to one method fits all.

I remember watching that, he looked like he was squeezing a thin line of toothpaste along the barrel wall. I thought at the time it was a bit excessive, but as you said, some grease will stop the spring slipping if applied too thick like that black gunk and some will slip too early if too much is used. I can't see how a plain breaking grease will reduce slipping unless it is cut with graphite, which adds something different to the mix.

If you look at the specs of Moebius breaking greases, they all have a different composition depending partially on the material of the barrel and different 'slips'. some slip earlier and some slip later. I don't think the grease inhibits the slip, rather it facilitates it.