Post by PeterW on Mar 15, 2009 7:27:04 GMT -5
Hi Scott,
You did pretty well regulating your watch to within half a minute in four days, 7.5 seconds a day, without a timing machine. Remember there 86,400 seconds in a day. With most medium grade mechanical watches in good condition 4 to 5 seconds a day, about half a minute a week, is generally considered acceptable.
Timing machines like the one your watchmaker used are basically amplifiers which count the number of ticks, or beats, per minute the watch makes. It will also show whether or not the 'ticks' are even. They should go tick-tick-tick-tick and so on. If they go tick-TICK, tick-TICK with a syncopated sound it mean the balance wheel is swinging slightly more to one side than the other and the watch is 'out of beat'. Some timing machines have a screen display, others give a paper trace print-out.
A watch which is slightly out of beat will probably still keep running but you won't be able to regulate it so accurately. The main factor governing whether or not a watch can be regulated is its consistency. If it is erratic, like gaining 10 secs one day, loosing 5 the next and so on it needs a proper service, a CLA or clean lubricate and adjust.
Not all mechanical watches have two regulating adjustments like you read. The main regulating adjustment is the one marked + and - , or S and F, or sometimes A and R for advance and retard. The second 'regulator' is a beat adjuster, often an eccentric stud where the end of the balance spring, or hairspring, fits, to get the beat of a watch absolutely even. Trying to adjust this without a watch timing amplifier, just by listening, is next-door to impossible though some people claim to be able to do it. Setting the beat of a watch without a beat rgulator means taking the end of balance spring in or out of its fixing very slightly, a very delicate nd highly skilled job.
Have a look at en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Budget_Watch_Collecting/Regulating
PeterW
You did pretty well regulating your watch to within half a minute in four days, 7.5 seconds a day, without a timing machine. Remember there 86,400 seconds in a day. With most medium grade mechanical watches in good condition 4 to 5 seconds a day, about half a minute a week, is generally considered acceptable.
Timing machines like the one your watchmaker used are basically amplifiers which count the number of ticks, or beats, per minute the watch makes. It will also show whether or not the 'ticks' are even. They should go tick-tick-tick-tick and so on. If they go tick-TICK, tick-TICK with a syncopated sound it mean the balance wheel is swinging slightly more to one side than the other and the watch is 'out of beat'. Some timing machines have a screen display, others give a paper trace print-out.
A watch which is slightly out of beat will probably still keep running but you won't be able to regulate it so accurately. The main factor governing whether or not a watch can be regulated is its consistency. If it is erratic, like gaining 10 secs one day, loosing 5 the next and so on it needs a proper service, a CLA or clean lubricate and adjust.
Not all mechanical watches have two regulating adjustments like you read. The main regulating adjustment is the one marked + and - , or S and F, or sometimes A and R for advance and retard. The second 'regulator' is a beat adjuster, often an eccentric stud where the end of the balance spring, or hairspring, fits, to get the beat of a watch absolutely even. Trying to adjust this without a watch timing amplifier, just by listening, is next-door to impossible though some people claim to be able to do it. Setting the beat of a watch without a beat rgulator means taking the end of balance spring in or out of its fixing very slightly, a very delicate nd highly skilled job.
Have a look at en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Budget_Watch_Collecting/Regulating
PeterW
