Category Archives: Jobs

Job 6 – Patek Philippe Ladies’ Watch

Watch Model: Patek Philippe

Year Made: ~1932

Movement Model: Patek Philippe #949478, 7-70

Case Number: Ref. 3006, #697379

Mass, case+movement: 9.7g

Mass, movement alone: __g

Dimensions, case: 18.46mm diameter x 7.10mm thick

Crystal diameter:

Dimensions, movement: 11.9mm wide x ~16mm high x __mm thick

Case Number

Movement Number

Mainspring
Photos
Cannon Pinion Removal with Horotec Watch Hand Removing Press

Click Spring Screw on Quarter

Job 5 – Traffic Engineering Stopwatch #4 – Attempted

Watch Model: Jules Racine & Co. 1018672

Movement Model: Excelsior Park No 3364R

Year Made: ____

Mass: 79.96g (without string attached)

Outer diameter: 50.3mm

Crystal diameter: 42.75mm, 0.89mm thick

Shock-Resistant:

Disassembly Photos, Pre-Cleaning

Problems List

  • Shattered crystal.
  • Mainspring.
  • Fourth gear broken shaft.

Repair Summary

Not worth repair.

At full-throw of the pallet fork, the pallet stone does not clear the ratchet wheel tooth:

After mainspring replacement, the watch ticked through two or three teeth of the ratchet wheel, then get stuck. Normally, I would look into adjusting the ratchet wheel or pallet fork, but since the case was bent and the crystal shattered, I believe the entire movement was slightly warped throughout. When resassembling, the bridge holes didn’t quite line up, further indicating the whole movement is bent.

Job 3 – Plasma Cutter – Attempted

Customer brought in a plasma cutter that had popped when first powered on then did not power on after that.

I fixed the obviously-damaged arc drive lug, but the device still didn’t power on. It was not worth troubleshooting the rest of the device at the time as it is difficult to disassemble. No charge to the customer, but I probably should have checked the primary power section of the cutter first.

I didn’t take a picture of the final solder

The customer still has it. I may try troubleshooting again sometime …

Data Recovery – Attempted

A customer brought in a hard drive hoping to recover the data. The data wasn’t worth paying a laboratory so she brought it to me for an attempt.

I was not able to recover the data, but I was able to diagnose the problem so for no charge she got the peace of mind of knowing the data was gone forever. The platter was badly scratched. I called the lab and they told me they couldn’t recover the data even for $100,000! Impossible?