G'day from Australia! I have a Revue Thommen Cricket manual wind alarm watch. My understanding is that the movement is the same as the Vulcain Cricket. I purchased the watch two years ago as new old stock. It has never been serviced.

Three days ago the watch began to run fast to the point of being unusable. I checked it against the stopwatch on my iPhone. My watch is 7 seconds too fast per minute (not a typo, per minute is correct).

I allowed the watch to completely run down and then checked it again. It is still running fast.

Does anyone have an idea what might be wrong? Do you think a part might be broken, or would a regular service fix it? Hopefully, it is the latter, as I suspect spare parts would be hard to find.

I assume most of the IHC 185 members are in the U.S. What would be a reasonable amount or range that I would expect to pay for a repair of this type in the U.S.? I could use that figure as a benchmark for a discussion with a watchmaker in Australia.

Thank you, in advance, for your very kind assistance!

I would demagnitize the watch and then check it again.

Apologies for the stupid question. How do I demagnetise a watch?

Back again. I just did some searching on the Internet. I found some cheap (around $8.00) electric demagnetisers from Hong Kong on e-Bay. Do I buy a gadget and then run the watch over it at different angles?

Search eBay for "watch demagnitize". What you looking for has an oval opening.
You can also google the same and get an idea of how to use it.
If you do a search on our IHC185 forum I'm sure you will come up with a lot of info also.
You may also try and find someone in your area that works on watches, they may have one in their shop and do the job for very little money.

Regards

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watch demagnitize

Thank you so much for taking the time to help me. I very, very, very much appreciate your effort.

Michael, Check and see if you have oil on the hairspring. This will cause the watch to run fast. Sometime the oil can creep from the balance jewel down the staff and onto the hairspring.

Thank the balance out and clean it.

Thanks for the suggestion. I just checked the watch against a compass. It is VERY magnetized. I am waiting for the demagnetizer to arrive before I try anything else.

I purchased the $8 demagnetizer. I figured that I would first give it a try. If it did not work, then I would go for the more expensive oval demagnetizer. The cheap one arrived two days ago from China without any instructions. Fortunately, I found a Youtube video of an almost identical device.

I had to do two passes on the top and back of the watch along with one on each side to demagnetize the watch. The whole procedure took about 5 minutes.

I wound the watch and checked the second hand against my iPhone stopwatch -- perfect. The watch has kept accurate time for the past two days.

I am grateful for all your help and the wonderful lesson on how watches work!!