Rebuilding a 93250 band

[goldfixer21]

I recently picked up a "Y" serial 16610 that had an SEL 93250 band with some significant wear. I have rebuilt individual links for customers before, but I am going to do this entire band. The time it takes to do this makes it impractical to do this for customers. I have sent bands to Michael Young in the past, and frankly I would charge for a single link what he charges for an entire band. That said, I thought it would be cool to show some closeup pics of how these bands wear. Many are not aware that the end link on an SEL band is not pinned, but has a spring bar in it. Over time, the end of the spring bar wears the outside of the link into an oval shape, creating stretch. As this happens, the looseness of the link causes side to side wear. This side wear is the most difficult to repair. Fortunately, I have a laser welder that makes rebuilding this possible. For me, the most difficult part of the repair is drilling a hole through the link to re-pin it. Michael Young uses a custom made jig to pull the link apart, I don't have that luxury, so I have to drill them out. After drilling them, I install a stainless steel tube into the link. This tube fits very snugly, and has a hole through the center that is .1 mm bigger than the wire I use to re-pin it. This keeps the link from being too tight. I clean up my laser repairs, then insert the stainless pin through the holes. I then laser weld it in place, and refinish the repaired area.

[mailman]

Great work. Thanks for sharing

[WatchinMD]

Very nice!