Clean & lubricate NOS old stock mainsprings or just install?

[Neverenoughwatches]

1 minute ago, RichardHarris123 said:

The barrel could be converted to a  hook but is that sacrilege?

What do you mean Rich, this could be one of your patent-able ideas. I won't steal it....honest

5 minutes ago, mbwatch said:

On some random old Raketa, no. But on a railroad watch like mine, yes.

Too valuable to modify and you did manage to fit it, I expect next time you'll have much less bother. 

Haha I figured it out Rich ...after a sip of strong coffee my brain re-engaged itself

[RichardHarris123]

You can get tools to punch a hook in a barrel, the use a spring with an eye.

[JohnR725]

18 hours ago, RichardHarris123 said:

You can get tools to punch a hook in a barrel, the use a spring with an eye.

Usually it's frowned upon modifying the watch to fit the new replacement part.

Especially in the case of this particular watch where the mainspring is available. Even if it may be a challenge to get it in the barrel it does exist

 

Mainsprings Catalog 2018 Cas-Kar.pdf

[mbwatch]

Yesterday I checked over the whole train and cleaned all jewels (except not balance yet). I found an issue with the interaction between 3rd & 4th wheels where I could hear a ragged, scratchy sound when they were at high spin. I polished the 4th wheel pinion leaves with rouge & pegwood and that eliminated the scratchy sound. Before that, the train had just a little bit of backspin and afterward it has tremendous backspin.

But absolutely no change in the performance. Exactly the same DU/DD amplitudes as before so something is off with the escapement. Tonight I'll clean the balance jewels again but one thing I noticed about the pallet fork is it is very hard to seat. While I had the jewels out for cleaning, I found I could not easily place the loose lower pallet hole jewel over its pivot and it is hard to seat it in the pivot hole. It makes me wonder if it is the wrong size jewel which would be binding on the pallet arbor. I do have a spare 992 mainplate with that jewel intact so I will try that one out. Of course if it was a replacement arbor with the wrong pivot sizes that isn't gong to solve it either.

But lastly, documentation I could find described the original Hamilton 317 having Dennison strength 3.75, which is around 0.195mm metric (also what ofrei lists for 718040). The 718040 spring I have is marked on the envelope and measures 0.17mm. So I went ahead and ordered a stronger one at 0.19m and we'll see what difference that makes. I would be happy to gain just 20° so the verticals could stay above 190 for 24 hours.

[JohnR725]

One of the places you can lose a lot of amplitude is and I might've brought this up before if the banking pins are not where there supposed to be? Plus if the pallet stones are not where there supposed to be. It's actually amazing how much amplitude you can lose of the banking pins are not where there supposed to be. Then yes there is a procedure for adjusting all of that and typically on pocket watches people like the play with the banking pins.

Then I have a 992 lurking around here somewhere that hasn't been cleaned in a century no idea when I last cleaned it if I figure out where I put it I was going to wind it up and see what it does just because I can't remember how good or bad they really run

Then yes the pallet fork has to be extremely free to rotate otherwise yes you do lose a heck of a lot amplitude there. Which of course does bring up the problem of anything that can be rotated moved or replaced in a pocket watch becomes a subject of has someone done that before you? It's amazing that bazaar conditions that pocket watches end up in.

[RichardHarris123]

4 minutes ago, JohnR725 said:

It's amazing that bazaar conditions that pocket watches end up in.

Other than us, watch enthusiasts, no-one cares about pocket watches, so it's no wonder the condition they end up in.

[mbwatch]

11 minutes ago, JohnR725 said:

Plus if the pallet stones are not where there supposed to be. It's actually amazing how much amplitude you can lose of the banking pins are not where there supposed to be.

On these watches, the pallet stones are not really movable (I had another thread on this a while back). They are friction fit without shellac all the way to the back of the slot and the consensus was that's how they are supposed to be. They could be moved out with a lot of effort I suppose, but not in because there's nowhere to go.

But the banking pins I have been thinking about and beginning to do the research for modifying them if I can't get the amplitude anywhere else (if my 0.19mm mainspring does not help). I remember I think nickelsilver saying just a couple weeks ago on some thread that like 20-30° could be gained by opening the banking pins a tiny bit.

But I am not going to touch that until I have really good understanding of the consequences. I have a 7 jewel Junghans watch that has probably the wrong pallet fork in it or the wrong pallet stones which are too long. To make it work, someone bent both banking pins way over inward because the escapement can't unlock when they are upright. I found this out by bending them up when I first attempted to service it thinking it was damage. Before I changed the hack job, the watch could get almost 180° but afterward I have never gotten the banking pins bent back to a place where I can get better than 100° out of it. So this is why I won't dare touch the pins on my 992 until I have read every book on the subject. At least they are on adjustable eccentric screws and not bent over brass like my poor suffering Junghans.

[JohnR725]

28 minutes ago, mbwatch said:

banking pins

I'm attaching a amusement hand out on the escapement. The amusing aspect is it's actually a hole punch of handouts all assembled into one big handout. Including one of the handouts were notes for a lecture which strangely enough is on YouTube if you would like to watch it.

Banking pins magical devices that control amplitude or?

Now what makes this handout interesting is it shows the consequences of doing things but it doesn't actually say what you should or should not be doing? So the banking pins only really serve one purpose there for controlling the horn clearance it's a safety feature. But it also has consequences of affecting amplitude if they're in the wrong place. So often times people move the banking pins to do things that they're not supposed to be used for.

 

Escapement handout wostep nscc.pdf

[Neverenoughwatches]

4 hours ago, mbwatch said:

the banking pins I have been thinking about and beginning to do the research for modifying them if I can't get the amplitude anywhere else (if my 0.19mm mainspring does not help). I remember I think nickelsilver saying just a couple weeks ago on some thread that like 20-30° could be gained by opening the banking pins a tiny bit.

Closing the banking pins would reduce the stone lock having the effect of increasing the amplitude. But sacrifices guard pin and horn clearance, too much closing could cause the gaurd pin to rub on the safety roller which is going to rob amplitude.

Lock and safety clearances i should think need to be balanced. Safety clearances adjusted first and then if the lock is still too deep then adjust the stone's depth making them both equal. On another watch the back of the stones could be reduced to lessen the lock, are the stones here set so that only the clearances can be adjusted ?

If the lock had to be adjusted by moving backing pins, does that then mean the guard pin and fork horns need to be adjusted by filing them to work properly? 

[mbwatch]

I found the thread I had been thinking of and yeah I had it backwards. Suggestion was to open the banking pins to reduce amplitude on a knocking JLC.

As pictured in this old one, the stones are all the way back and friction fit. I don't plan on any changes to the escapememt on this one

 

Okay interesting progress. I took out the balance jewels to relubricate and found them dry. The lower had a small dry smudge where oil had been, the upper had nothing. I am guessing the I originally over-oiled the jewels and as this watch sat it all ran out. I first cleaned and assembled it maybe a year or more ago and was not as good at getting the right amount of oil on endstones.

I just redid them and the DD/DU differences vanished. I get 225°-230° for both with delta 2-4s, and PU is about 200 but rate only 6s off DU.  Amplitude is not yet as high as I want but might climb overnight (and I'll have a stronger spring in a couple days if needed) and then I'll bring the beat back to zero where I had it before. It's acceptable but I'd like to get it narrower. PU amplitude was not 235 as pictured. I don't know why the tg is having a hard time reporting amp changes today.

@JohnR725 I used the trick you described of sighting down the fork shaft and the escapement does seem incorrect. The exit stone is locking deeply and that's consistent with how much farther out the sight line is visually against the rim of the balance jewel. I'm not going to bother it yet but I did mark the positions of the eccentric screws so if I need to poke around later.

[JohnR725]

5 hours ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

filing them to work properly? 

Filing is really frowned upon on escapement components. Although I've seen pallet fork horns where one of them is thinner than the other one because somebody is modified it and then they catch becomes the escapement will never be perfectly symmetrical like it's supposed to be.

6 hours ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

Closing the banking pins would reduce the stone lock having the effect of increasing the amplitude. But sacrifices guard pin and horn clearance, too much closing could cause the gaurd pin to rub on the safety roller which is going to rob amplitude.

Lock and safety clearances i should think need to be balanced. Safety clearances adjusted first and then if the lock is still too deep then adjust the stone's depth making them both equal. On another watch the back of the stones could be reduced to lessen the lock, are the stones here set so that only the clearances can be adjusted ?

We end up with a interesting problem here don't we? So in a very clear rules on using the banking pins solely for horn clearance but of course not adjusted correctly will affect other things. The general rule is adjusting the safety first that's the horn clearance. Then checking the guard pin which usually isn't played with not as much as movable banking pins. Then once all of that is correct then you can look at the pallet stones and make sure they look correct. But we also have these hard and fast rules of told Locke must be this doesn't always apply if it would conflict with the safety. In addition to conceivably over time the design of the lever escapement has changed slightly. So basically everything just has to work

4 hours ago, mbwatch said:

I just redid them and the DD/DU differences vanished. I get 225°-230° for both with delta 2-4s, and PU is about 200 but rate only 6s off DU.  Amplitude is not yet as high as I want

Yes it's really quite amazing what proper lubrication will do to the balance pivots and the escapement. A lot of times I will do what I call pre-timing where I will attempt to get the watch to Run in any fashion so I can verify that the watches in beat the timing is reasonably close as I won't have to be fooling with the balance wheel after it's all nice and clean. I remember one watch that really a performance totally sucked and I was lubricating with the method that I really do not like to do but I was being lazy which is Not removing the balance from the bridge just lifting it up and dropping a little oil on the pivot. It really is better if you remove the balance wheel so it's out of the way and eventually I did do that and oil on the pivots amplitude improved considerably and everything else just basically disappeared it's one of the problems of as the amplitude drops everything gets magnified. So if you are amplitude is practically nonexistent then you shouldn't worry about really anything else until that gets up because that will affect everything.

One of the reasons I want to look at the graphical display but we can't see it in fine detail it is? Another thing to have a spectacular improvement on amplitude is proper escapement lubrication. Whereas if you had not properly lubricated your escapement in other words some of the escape wheel or the other pallet stone is not lubricated you'll actually see this in the graphical display of a line that looks rough. Often times on a freshly lubricated watch all notice that one line looks rough the other looks fine and just a little bit of lubrication on the other pallet stone the problem will go away.

Plus it's also interesting what letting the watch run overnight will do sometimes.

 

 

 

[mbwatch]

On 1/14/2025 at 12:55 AM, JohnR725 said:

We end up with a interesting problem here don't we? So in a very clear rules on using the banking pins solely for horn clearance but of course not adjusted correctly will affect other things.

I decided to give it a shot with positive results. Marked the banking screws so I could undo it, I move the outside banking pin inward a tiny bit to adjust for the visual alignment difference of the fork shaft toward the balance jewel and lessen the lock on the exit stone. That little change put the watch back in beat (yay I don't have to mess with the collet again) and amplitude jumped from 220 to 255. Exactly what I needed. Adjustment to the mean time screws brings the rates down most of the way and I still want to finish a dynamic poising to bring PU closer to the horizontals.

[fellerts]

Sorry to barge into your thread with my ignorance, but does altering the banking pins change the lift angle significantly? In my mind it should, but if we're talking hundredths of a mm then maybe it doesn't matter in most cases.

Edit: I ask because I wonder if the timegrapher needs to be adjusted to account for changes in the lift angle.

Edited January 15 by fellerts

[mbwatch]

2 hours ago, fellerts said:

but does altering the banking pins change the lift angle significantly

I did check it last night visually at 180 and it was still consistent at 48° but now you mention it, I was not feeling confident it was running as high as 255 because it looked  more like around 240. And a change to the banking could be responsible. I didn't verify where 180 landed exactly but I will do that. Realize I have to think through which way it would go; I narrowed the banking so would the LA might get smaller.

But even if the measurement is inaccurate, the balance is oscillating much more vigorously than before the banking adjustment.

[JohnR725]

 

4 hours ago, fellerts said:

but does altering the banking pins change the lift angle

So are you suggesting that by moving the banking pin you change the lift angle which then changes the amplitude and the reality is nothing is actually changed at all other than the lift angle? Which then resulted in a apparent amplitude change that doesn't really exist?

 

 

[mbwatch]

24 minutes ago, JohnR725 said:

Which then resulted in a apparent amplitude change that doesn't really exist?

I will measure with slow-mo video today. I think some amplitude gain is real but won't be surprised if 255 is a small lie...

[Neverenoughwatches]

7 minutes ago, JohnR725 said:

 

So are you suggesting that by moving the banking pin you change the lift angle which then changes the amplitude and the reality is nothing is actually changed at all other than the lift angle? Which then resulted in a apparent amplitude change that doesn't really exist?

 

 

The apparent increase in amplitude would be due to the balance spending less time and using less energy to unlock the escapement during the draw phase wouldn't it.  Not swinging further because the lift angle has changed, though now with a new different lift angle to input into our timegrapher from us ( smaller ) because the lever isn't moving as far, the timegrapher now tells us that the amplitude is lower or the same or not as much of an increase as it really is. 

4 minutes ago, mbwatch said:

I will measure with slow-mo video today. I think some amplitude gain is real but won't be surprised if 255 is a small lie...

I think...I think John is NOT referring to the real amplitude gain that has happened,  more to do with a false one that could be read by the timegrapher because of a change in the lift angle.....if you re-worked the lift angle and input it......I think ..

I also think your pocketwatch Michael has sent us down another hole .

[tomh207]

Surely if the banking pins are moved more inline with where they should be would that not bring the lift angle more towards the manufacturer design? Would it really have a big effect anyway?

 

Tom

[Neverenoughwatches]

5 minutes ago, tomh207 said:

Surely if the banking pins are moved more inline with where they should be would that not bring the lift angle more towards the manufacturer design? Would it really have a big effect anyway?

 

Tom

I guess that depends how the manufacturer adjusted them before they left the factory and the repairer knowing where they should actually be....but yes you would think so Tom in theory...and no you wouldn't expect the lift angle to change all that much.   I'm hellish to know what John meant though.

[fellerts]

1 hour ago, JohnR725 said:

 

So are you suggesting that by moving the banking pin you change the lift angle which then changes the amplitude and the reality is nothing is actually changed at all other than the lift angle? Which then resulted in a apparent amplitude change that doesn't really exist?

 

 

Yeah, I’m wondering if that’s plausible or totally outlandish. Anyway, outlandish suggestions tend to spark some interesting discussions in these threads, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

[tomh207]

3 minutes ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

I guess that depends how the manufacturer adjusted them before they left the factory and the repairer knowing where they should actually be....but yes you would think so Tom in theory...and no you wouldn't expect the lift angle to change all that much.   I'm hellish to know what John meant though.

 

2 minutes ago, fellerts said:

Yeah, I’m wondering if that’s plausible or totally outlandish. Anyway, outlandish suggestions tend to spark some interesting discussions in these threads, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

I’m around that bit in Jendritskis book right now so I might be able to add more confusion tomorrow

 

Tom

[Neverenoughwatches]

Makes you wonder how close listed lift angles actually are compared to movements that have had adjustments made to the escapements before they left a factory ?

2 minutes ago, tomh207 said:

 

I’m around that bit in Jendritskis book right now so I might be able to add more confusion tomorrow

 

Tom

More than me Tom ? Thats going to make for some interesting discussions, oh whats that !.... John saying he is going on holiday for two weeks starting tomorrow and not taking his phone or having any access to the Internet while he's away

[tomh207]

2 minutes ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

Makes you wonder how close listed lift angles actually are compared to movements that have had adjustments made to the escapements before they left a factory ?

My bit so far is Jendritski says they can be moved but pretty much as a last resort and that they should be upright and straight. For the ultimate I suppose you need to find a copy of Jendritski’s adjustment book or trawl through either Daniel’s watchmaking or the textbook the theory of Horology.

 

Tom

[Neverenoughwatches]

2 minutes ago, tomh207 said:

My bit so far is Jendritski says they can be moved but pretty much as a last resort and that they should be upright and straight. For the ultimate I suppose you need to find a copy of Jendritski’s adjustment book or trawl through either Daniel’s watchmaking or the textbook the theory of Horology.

 

Tom

I think in one of Frieds books, it shows banking pins with dog-leg bends in them to make adjusted pins parallel ( sounds tricky ) . If they are bent out or in, then its more so important to have the endshake on the lever down to an absolute minimum.  

[tomh207]

1 minute ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

I think in one of Frieds books, it shows banking pins with dog-leg bends in them to make adjusted pins parallel ( sounds tricky ) . If they are bent out or in, then its more so important to have the endshake on the lever down to an absolute minimum.  

There seems to be a bit of different thinking about some of Frieds stuff. I certainly don’t know enough to call any of his work into question. I think the dog leg part of it is somewhat like regulator pins, if you do bend them then the working edge still needs to be parallel, which would make sense.

I would love if the German company who reprinted some of Jendritski’s stuff would do his adjustments book, it seems fascinating to me.

I think I am a bit like @VWatchie , I will try to get the absolute maximum possible performance out of something and tear my beard out trying!

 

Tom