Regulating and Adjusting Watches Using Timing Washers
In the days before smooth balance wheels, the mass of the balance wheel was controlled using screws around the rim of the balance wheel. This approach enables relatively fine control… Read more »
Category: Books & Tools
How to Replace a Balance Staff, Part 1: Measure Twice, Staff Once
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 »
Improving Poise With Timing Screws
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 »
Dial Up, Dial Down: Rounding Balance Staff Pivots
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 »
Undercutting Balance Screws
We have a few ways to remove weight from balance screws, and one of the best is undercutting, which removes a clean ring of weight from the flat bottom of… Read more »
Adjusting Tools: The Timing Machine
Collectors of vintage watches tend to be fans of the old days and the old ways, but we’ll always take time-saving inventions when we can find them. If you don’t… Read more »
Tools for Removing Weight
In dynamic poising, we add weight to the balance wheel’s lightest spot or remove weight from the wheel’s heaviest spot. What tools work well for removing weight? The amount of… Read more »
Tools for Adding Weight
To put a balance wheel in poise, we add weight to the lightest spot or remove weight from the heaviest spot. What are good tools for adding weight? Balance Screw… Read more »
Our “Textbooks” for Adjusting Vintage Watches
You can only learn so much on the Internet. As old as it makes me sound to say this, you need to read some books—bound, physical, used-to-be-a-tree books—to get good… Read more »