Service/Repair: Lemania calibre CH27c12

The good news is there is not much rust in here.

No wonder this watch is not running, we have a badly deformed hairspring.

The dial side of the movement does not look too bad.

Someone has glued the minute recorder spring back together.

If there is to be any point continuing this project I will have to address the hairspring as I will not be able to find a new one.

Ouch, someone tried hard to kill this hairspring!

4 hours of tweaking later I think I’m starting to get somewhere. It’s not a fun thought that one wrong bend and the hairspring can snap…

I’m now ready to do the final adjusting while on the balance cock.

Yes! Movement starts to tick straight away after fitting the hairspring!

After a quick inspection, the Timegrapher shows it’s possible to adjust the time. The amplitude is not too bad!

Someone has had fun scratching the surfaces of this movement.

I start by removing the chronograph layer.

Slowly does it.

The glue repair will not do and I’m lucky there is a new one available.

I now start removing the hour recorder and winding/setting mechanism.

Here you can see the winding/setting mechanism.

At last I remove the gear train.

The old mainspring.

All the parts cleaned and ready to be put back together.

I’m happy to see the balance moves freely after fitting the balance jewels.

The crown wheel is placed underneath the gear train bridge.

Gear train back together.

I fit the setting/winding mechanism and the winding mechanism.

With the winding mechanism in place and the hour recorder I can wind the watch.

I now have a running base movement.

To be honest I was expecting some serious positional variation after my hairspring reshaping, but after the service it’s actually running very well.

I’m very happy with the result as I did put a lot of time into the hairspring reshaping!

I put the rest of the hour recorder in place.

Putting the chronograph together I start facing new challenges…

The movement amplitude goes down when fitting the intermediate wheel.

A big fibre explains that and after removing it, the amplitude goes back.

A quick list of things that needed doing: The intermediate minute recorder wheel was damaged and needed replacing, the second recorder had a damaged tooth that made the watch stop intermediately when chronograph was engaged. I reshaped the tooth and it worked fine again. The minute and second recorder hammer did not align correctly which caused  the second recorder not to reset correctly as it hit the minute recorder too early. To fix this, I filed down the surface of the minute recorder and that allowed the second recorder to reset correctly. The hour recorder did not reset correctly as the lever watch not being pushed fully in. This was solved by turning down the pusher tip allowing it to be pushed further into the movement resetting the hour recorder. Now the issue with these problems is that they take time to find and sometimes you don’t notice them before having put the watch together and then having to take it partly apart again to remedy them. Hence why you charge for time and material;)

Here I’m filing down the surface of the minute recorder hammer.

Here I have placed the movement in the case to test the chronograph functions and struggling to get the hour recorder to reset.

Here I’m modifying the pusher.

The lever is not pushed in by the tip, but by the shoulder before the thread. By shortening the tip it allowed the pusher to go further into the movement, resetting the hour recorder lever all the way.

The donor dial looks very good together with the hands.

Finally movement cased, running and working like it should after 4 days attention:P

I’m very happy to have been able to bring such a nice watch back to life.