My First Watch Project - Princeton Pocket Watch

You have to start somewhere.  In my case, I was given a vintage Princeton Pocket watch of unknown age and history.  A few searches told me that it is not particularly valuable, but since it was complete and running it makes a suitable victim for my for first stumble into watch maintenance.  The dial says "Princeton, 17 Jewels, Shock Resistant, Swiss Made".  The base metal case has a deer hunt design on the lid and a floral motif on the back.

Princeton Pocket Watch

My work area consists of a metal table to which I have added a "fence" to the back and sides, optimistically intended to keep tiny metal parts from departing the work area.  Two work lights and what tools I have mustered complete the equipment.  It should be clear to the reader that at this point, this is a *hobby*, not a profession, though I am excited to see what I can do.

The first thing you realize is that taking decent photos of watches is harder than it looks.  These were taken with my HTC One smartphone, and actually rendered with decent detail, at least good enough for my purposes which are 1) to share with a few friends and family, and 2) to help me get the thing back together.

With the dial off the movement and in the holder, you can see this is not a fancy, decorated movement, and the main bridge is marked "Wotania LTD M6".  A little googling suggests to me that Wotania made pocket watches for multiple brands.  In fact on eBay there is a nearly identical item for sale but with a different brand name "Andre Durando".  The only other difference appears to be the pronghorn antelope on the case lid instead of deer.

Starting with the stem at 3:00 from the dial, I started removing parts and spreading them out going clockwise around the dial in the center.  The hands were next and were a little tricky without a proper hand removal tool (which is on the way).  They came off with tweezers, a pry tool, and paper to protect the dial finish.

As I unscrewed bits and set them aside, I noticed that my new/vintage fine tip Lamper tweezers are magnetized.  This is a concern because the impulse is to shake them to get the stuck part to drop, which could lead to a flinging a flea-size fastener off the table.  The photo above shows all of the parts from the watch, though I did not remove the mainspring from the barrel, nor would the center (hour?) wheel come off the plate.  Since the object here is to practice disassembling and reassembling the movement, I'm going to leave both in place and count this as a win since I did not lose or break any parts.

As a less expensive alternative than an ultrasonic, I bought a jewelry cleaner from the department store.  The smaller parts would fall through the holes, but I did soak the larger pieces for about 30 minutes. 

Parts came out mostly clean and shiny, then they were spread out on a microfiber cloth to dry.  I have not yet seen how experts dry the parts after cleaning.  Perhaps the real cleaning solution just evaporates.

Lessons learned for this project so far:

1. Take photos of both sides of the movement before taking it apart as a reference for re-assembly.
2. A hand remover tool will be very helpful.
3. Screwdrivers, movement holder, magnification goggles all work fine.
4. The Bulova school manual is great for its detailed pictures and procedures. (Thanks, Susan!)

Update: 19-May-2015

I suspended work on this watch when I ran into issues during reassembly.

I was looking at the mainspring barrel and took off the barrel cover.  I poked in the wrong way, and the mainspring flew out of the barrel, which meant the movement could not be reassembled fully until I could rewind the mainspring.  So there was a delay while I shopped for a set of mainspring winders, which can be very expensive new.  I found an old set of 3 adjustable ones on eBay, and after some work getting them to loosen up they do the job.  

After three tries I figured out how to insert the spring into the winder and turn it to properly wind the spring.  Then it was easy to push the plunger to pop it into the barrel.

Next challenge was that when assembling the watch, all four of the wheels in the gear train need to be aligned at the same time to install the main bridge.  This is something that had been mentioned by HandyDan as being a "feature" of certain movements.  I now understand what he means.  This movement has that feature, and I spent over four hours in three different sessions before I was able to get all four wheels properly aligned and nestled into their jewels.  I had thought that working on a pocket watch would mean everything is a little bit bigger and thus easier to work.  Size matters less than design.

The final fatal obstacle made it impossible to complete the reassembly.  Once I had the wheel train set, I went on to other part.  I ran into trouble installing the ratchet wheel, which you can see at about 12:00 in the 3rd photo above.  I had read (but had forgotten) that the screw that attaches the ratchet wheel (also known as the click wheel) often has a left hand thread.  Evidently, when taking it apart, I turned it to the left and stripped the thread.  This is the screw now.  You can see that the tip is rounded off too much to bite into the tapped hole, which is probably also rounded off.  

Lesson learned...  I could probably find a replacement screw, and I could get a  replacement bridge piece by buying a whole movement for parts.  Though this movement is not that common.  Or worth it.

In the end this was a good learning experience.  Messing up on a free pocket watch with little or no collector value is the way to screw up.

On to more dangerous projects!