It's alive!

After I finished my first watch school course, I decided to take apart an old Bulova that I had kicking around the house (Cal. 10BT handwound with hours and minutes, and sub-seconds at 6 o'clock). It felt fully wound when I tried the crown, but it wasn't ticking. So, I took it out of the case, and proceeded to dig in and take it all apart in the hopes of finding out what was wrong with it. The answer is - a lot! It was quite dirty inside, and after a lot of work cleaning and oiling, I finished putting it back together yesterday and this is the result:

http://media.putfile.com/Bulova-movement

It's a big file, so give it some time to load - I had to wait for it and then hit play over again so the video didn't jump all over.

This was at around 4 in the afternoon yesterday, and it's still running, although the amplitude of the balance is not what it was when this was taken. The pallet stones aren't locking on the escapement teeth properly, and the only way I know of adjusting this is to heat the pallet up to melt the shellac holding the stones in, and then adjust the stones and let it cool - sounds like stuff that is way over my head at this point, but I might give a try just for fun. In addition, even with my 10X loupe I could not properly inspect the pivots on the balance in particular, but also on some other things like the excapement. So, they may be gummed up with old oil that has hardened - I scraped a lot of this kind of gunk off the jewels while doing the cleaning. I now have a 17X loupe on order........

I'll try to add some photos of the movement in various states of dis-assembly later tonight. It was interesting to try this without having any real instruction on how to put it all back together - I only had a few minor glitches, so overall I'm pretty pleased that this old movement has life in it for the first time in 20+ years, even if it is far from perfect.

Nice work Al! Its so cool that you are reaping the benefits of that TZ course. I may decide to take it later this year.

[JJ Irani]

Great work, Al. I'll give you one thing...when you take up a hobby, you go all the way and hit the bulls eye every time!!

[Uncle-AJ]

Well done Al, it's a great feeling when you achieve something like this.

[Rockrolex]

Congratulations, Al. Well done. It's got to feel very satisfying.