The perfect oiler for clocks and watches. No more than a needle inserted into a dowel stick handle, point first. Grind the tip off the eye to leave a little fork which holds a drop of oil perfectly, and just the right amount, too. The oil can flow down into the bearing without leaving a bit outside the oilsink. Much better than an oiler with a spade tip, where it's often hard to get the drop to flow into the bearing.
This same little tool also works really well as a small-scale bender for very small items, such as a watch hand or even watch hairsprings. I sometimes use a couple of them at the same time to make bends -- holding with one and turning with the other.
A stethoscope for watches. You put the watch on top of the mike and listen to its little heart beat.
You can hear the sounds of a cased watch pretty well by holding it up to your ear, but when uncased and under scrutiny, you can't hear them very well. I've found this tool to be really useful for hearing the sounds of a hairspring rubbing on a balance arm or bridge. This sound can be so small that it's difficult to hear, even when the watch is cased.
Made with nothing more than a little 270-092 condenser mike, a LM386 amplifier chip, and a few other components, all from Radio Shack. You can find instructions for connecting the amplifier chip on the internet
You can't lay an uncased watch movement face-down on the bench when working on the back of it, because there are tiny hand-shafts which protrude and can easily be broken off. So watchmakers use support stands, as seen on the left. These come in various sizes for various-sized movements.
However, I've found that common rubber O-rings work very well as stands. These also come in many sizes. They make non-scratching, non-slip, and very stable stands. Also, there's less distance for parts to fall.
The same plastic stands are also great for supporting fragile balance wheels, when it's necessary to apply some force -- when prying off a hairspring, or unscrewing balance screws, for example. You can hold them quite firmly against the stand without danger of damaging them.
Here's a method for inserting a watch roller jewel into the hole in a roller table. The jewels are tiny and angular, and attempting to insert them with tweezers is a sure way to have them spring off, never to be found.
Take an ordinary piece of button pithwood, as shown on the left. Use the sharp point of one leg of a tweezers to make a tiny vertical hole in the wood. Now you can easily upend the jewel into the hole -- don't try to pick up the little jewel, just use the points of the tweezers to "tease" it in.
The hole should be just deep enough for the end of the jewel to protrude a little. If the hole is a little deep, and the jewel disappears into it, you can easily dig down into the soft pithwood to find it. Then make another hole.
Then it's easy to "tease" the roller table onto the jewel -- again, without picking it up and trying to set it in place. Once the jewel is in the hole in the table, I use a little heater, as shown on the right, to heat the table.
I heat the head for a minute or so in an alcohol flame, then press it to the roller table which is still in place on the pithwood button. After a few seconds, the roller will be warm enough to melt a thread of watchmakers shellac which will cement the jewel in place. When the shellac has cooled, the roller and jewel can be carefully removed from the pithwood button.
If the jewel needs straightening, you can straighten it with a pair of stainless-steel tweezers. Just heat the tips of the tweezers in an alcohol flame, grasp the jewel with the tweezers, and adjust the jewel. The warm tweezer tips have just enough heat to soften the shellac. Don't use good carbon-steel tweezers for this job, since heat will spoil them.
The heater is made from brass, with a head resembling the shape of an old-fashioned soldering iron. There is a narrow neck behind the head to limit the spread of heat to the wooden handle. A few minutes' work on a lathe.
I haven't tried it, but likely a small soldering iron (of the sort used on circuit boards) could be used as a heat source to warm the table. I wouldn't use a large iron, or an instant-heating type -- just too much heat, and too big, anyway.
I developed the method for 18-size single-roller Walthams and Elgins. I think it would work for a double roller as well, but one might have to adjust the jewel more after it's already in the hole, using the heated tweezers.
My first homemade balance staff, this one for an 18-size Elgin. No doubt it's better to buy a staff rather than make one, but they're becoming hard to find, especially for older watches. I'd made a couple of attempts to buy a staff for this watch, but without success, so I decided to learn how to make one. Thanks to George Daniels, Henry Fried and Archie Perkins for the help in their books.
Balance staffs are made of hard carbon steel, which must be cut with gravers made from hard material. The three gravers on the left are made from 10% cobalt high-speed tool steel, and the five on the right are made from tungsten carbide.
The most difficult part of the staff to cut are the little cone-shaped pivots at the ends of the staff, which are only about .004" in thickness at the cylindrical end. The most useful graver for cutting pivots has turned out to be the one on the right. It is a piece of 1/32" carbide round mounted in a brass haft. The end of the carbide is ground to an angle, as shown on the right. All of these gravers are homemade.
Watch work can be disheartening. Shortly after installing my new staff in the watch, I dropped it and broke my new staff!
These are little sliding gauges I've used in making balance staffs, among other things. They can be used to take measurements directly from the old balance staff (or from a dial micrometer) and then used to gauge while turning. They're used to gauge lengths, not diameters.
They're made with hard steel cores which slide in brass tubes. The steel part locks with a set screw at the proper depth. The two on top have a small hard disk on the end which is also sharp. This permits taking the outside measurement of a balance hub, for example, or to gauge total balance staff length. Since the little disk is sharp, it can be used to mark the balance blank while it is turning in the lathe (some layout blue on the staff blank helps.)
The upper gauge is spring-loaded. The two on the bottom can be used on either end.
These gauges are only about 2" long; the small size helps with watch parts. Using a normal-sized micrometer is like trying to use a yardstick to measure a mosquito's beak.
The Waltham 18-size pallet fork assembly is made in two parts -- the pallets and the fork -- which are joined by screws. The screw holes are oversize to permit adjustment, but woe unto anyone who loosens the screws, since that spoils the adjustment. Here's a jig I made to put it back. It does require that you have on hand a correctly-adjusted set of pallets which can act as a pattern.
First I made a tiny hole which fits the pallet arbor in a piece of brass. It's best to drill it undersize and then enlarge to a perfect fit with a little 5-sided broach. Then insert the pattern pallet arbor into the hole.
Next I made two disks whose job it it to secure the pallets and the fork. A presses on the fork horns and B presses on the pallet jewels. The disks set the exact position of the fork vis-a-vis the pallet jewels. The disks must snuggle up against the parts they are to hold. They also must be the right diameter.
When the disks are adjusted just right I used epoxy to hold them in place. Super glue bonds too fast to make minute adjustments, and it's brittle.
Once the jig is made the problem pallets can put in the jig and then the problem fork can be screwed on top in just the right place, using the disks as a guide.
Also, If you have to replace a pallet jewel, you can use this jig to adjust the jewels as well.