To replace a balance staff, we have to take apart the balance assembly. For essentially all watches, we’ll end up with 4 units: the balance wheel (wheel and screws) the… Read more »
The dial is what you see when you carry a pocket watch. No matter how precisely you’ve adjusted a watch, a dirty dial will deter most buyers. But cleaning watch… Read more »
Amplitude is the big thing in watch adjusting. If the balance wheel doesn’t swing at least 270 degrees dial up and down and at least 220 degrees in the vertical… Read more »
Watches with broken balance staffs are eBay gold. Many hobbyists lack the skills or equipment to replace a balance staff or have been discouraged by a few bad attempts. As… Read more »
Good things come to those who wait, which probably explains why procrastination feels so good. Fortunately, waiting around is an important step in watch adjusting. When a watch is freshly… Read more »
In watchmaking, as in life, sometimes words don’t mean what they mean. Books on watch adjusting and the posts about our example watches talk about measuring the watch’s rates at… Read more »
Magnetism is a plague. Much like syphilis, it will slowly drive a watch adjuster to a wretched state of madness if not diagnosed and treated in time. The symptoms of… Read more »
For the most part, accuracy in different positions is a matter of poise—the even distribution of weight around the balance wheel. We thus look for ways to add weight to… Read more »
When adjusting to 5 or 6 positions, the first step—adjusting the dial up (DU) and dial down (DD) positions—is usually the hardest. Kleinlein’s approach to adjusting emphasizes that these two… Read more »
When adjusting to 3 or more positions, our first goal is to get the dial up (DU) and dial down (DD) positions to agree. How close is “close enough” depends… Read more »