I have a roller jewel to replace. The old is broken off. I am thinking of putting the table in a heating tool. Is this a perferred way to loosen the old out of the hole?

Should I buy hairspring tweezers, to best hold the new jewel for placement?

Can the shelac be put on and sucked in, AFTER the jewel is put into a dry clean hole?

My sense says I would be unable to fit it in will shelac on the table, adjusting after the fight, and the shelac would become cool, and cause more fight.

I have several tools. What I need to do is learn how to get small sized pics to load in the thread here.

A member gave me a link to learn from. So, I will try to do pics of the tools I have as practice for getting the general idea for uploading pics, correctly.

Anything I have tried imports hugh pics and the message gets shrunk down? But, a helping hand about getting a 18s sized table to go onto a jewel that is held in some god awful manners of doing......is appreciated!

Boy , you jump in with both feet , they make a roller "tweezer" [my favorite] and a couple other tools to do it. have you tried daves watch parts. As far as the shellac this tool will hold the jewel, remember it has a flat side , set the table on top and heat it a little , then drop a piece of shellac on and reheat until it flows in , adjust the jewel straight and leave it alone for 30 mins

http://www.daveswatchparts.com/

Also , while your looking at tools a combo tool is handy

Kevin I do have a combo tool. As pictured it looks like it is safe to hold the table with the wheel and spring still attached.

I remember looking at auctions for the roller tweezers, I may have bought one. I need to go through the containers of tools I have aquired.

Your proceedure speaks of placing the jewel into the hole AFTER the shelac silver, or chip is heated and liquifies.

I have seen the method of ‘drawing a string’ with tweezers then touching it onto the heated table to be SUCKED in by capillary action.

My question is once a jewel is friction fit, will this shellac ‘string’ be an easier way? Since all the adjustments are set and the table/jewel connection just needs to get shellac to hold it.

Then no time pressure is caused to have to set and adjust BEFORE the shellac cools and goes hard.

Putting the jewel in the hole filled with shellac then there seems to be no reason to follow with a drawn string of MORE SHELLAC.

James I typically pull the hairspring before heating the table and balance wheel. It protects the hairspring from the heat and gives easier access to the top of the roller table to melt the shellac.
As far as shellac goes the beauty is if you don't have the roller jewel set exactly like you want it you can reheat and make the correction. No problem. Shellac is very easy to work with using the string method or just very fine pieces.
BTW the combo tool is excellent for this job.

Rob
www.pocketwatchrepairs.net

Hi James , there are a lot of ways to do this , I will not get heat near a hairspring , for that matter near the staff either , since too much heat could draw the temper
What I do is - the tweezers hold the jewel , and set the roller table on top of the jewel , then a little heat and shellac .
The other methods result in lost jewels {for me } let me get a picture

Lesson 13 of chicago watchmakers covers the other metod plus how to measure the jewel

Ok pictures , first one shows the tweezer jewel holder , note it is holding the jewel ,the roller is sitting on the tweezer and jewel

second is the combo tool holding just the table , get the shellac warm and set the jewel

third is the "Gaston " jewel setter , it holds the table or pallet and is headted from below , I like this one too

fourth shows a balance that looks burned - I could not get this one to run , I pulled my hair out , I am sure it had the hairspring "burned" or lost its spring from heating

second is the combo tool

third is the gaston ( ? ) tool

last is a burned balance -this is what i get for buying junk

James , I hope this helps , simply choose the correct jewel , heat up the table and shellac and it's done - remember how easy it sounds when your on your knees looking for a lost jewel ! good luck one more thing - I am not a watchmaker - Rob Carter IS , so listen to him over me , I can fix some

Nice Kevin!!! Gives James some options to pick from.

Rob

Hi James , I was wondering how you made out ?

Not done Yet. But soon. Thanks and I hope to practice getting the jewel in the hole first a few times before using shellac.

I got a feeling I’ll be needing it.

Well here is how things progressed on doing my first roller jewel with shellac.
I used the combination tool and a pin vise made to grip a roller jewel. I used a D jewel in a round Elgin 1883 18s table.

I let fly 5 jewels in my trying to get one into the holder. I replaced and adjusted three times bcuz I knocked it out a couple. Back to first base.

I just melted small flakes of shellac into the hole. After insertion added a bit more. When I was done I noticed the hair spring end of the staff had a broken pivot. Since I removed the table and dropped the balance wheel a couple times on the floor, I guess I got ‘lucky’.

After replacing the entire staff and using the doner table and jewel, I had did the job and for the first time I think pretty well.

When rivoting the balance I used the tsp 45 degrees rotation, progressing up and down with eight turns, then up again to 45 degree tap-turn-tap. When done, I had slightly bent the balance arms. I used good stump and anvil techinque. The arms went back easily and on the truing calipers spun good as new.

I got thejewel at 90 degrees to the arms and the spring/balance bridge anchor about over one balance arm. I was pleased with the results bcuz the little regulator pins lined up them selves into the hair spring as the anchor fit easily onto the balance bridge port.

Sadly I wound the watch but the mainspring arbor is slipping. When I do a complete cleaning I will inspect the trouble. Things move well but without full power the occilations could not grow.

These full plate 7 jewel Elgins in my opinion are good practice pieces.

I have been there ! the tweezer tool is the way to go (for me) you let the jewel lay flat on the bench and it picks it up and holds without fear of dropping.

When riveting on the balance , I use a round face punch first, that fits very close , 2 whacks , then a flat face 1 whack , it works for me , maybe the pros will chime in