Re: Tiny clock hands - advice please
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Can you solder or braze the crack?? Car guys do "dimple dies" to thicker and heavier metals. Maybe something like that would help? You? could solder/braze the hole to fill it and repair the crack, then form a correctly sized hole and dimple. Might take more than a bit of experimentation... Pretty sure I couldn't get it right the first few time I tried.
Might also try pressing in a hub, and drilling that. Not at all sure which would be easiest or fastest. If I trip over any of the horology books I have, I'll see if they have any info. You might want to look at old horology books at archive.org, too, probably faster than waiting on me to get the lead out...
Tripped over the book while cleaning around the pile that my desk is hiding under. Has a bit on making and using a tool for prying hands off a watch, but nothing about making or fitting hands that I could find. And then I lost my phone for a few hours.
Bill in OKC?
William R. Meyers, MSgt, USAF(Ret.)
Aphorisms to live by: Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.? SEMPER GUMBY!
Expect in one hand, expectorate in the other. See which one gets full first.
On Sunday, January 5, 2025 at 11:01:19 AM CST, Peter Brooks via groups.io <peter@...> wrote:
Happy New Year all ! ?I¡¯m after advice from horologists, or just those used to making tiny things!
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I¡¯m fitting a small quartz clock movement into a small, broken clock. The face is nice, but the available hands that fit the quartz movement aren¡¯t, so I wanted to use the original metal hands. The new shafts are bigger though - 1.5mm > 2mm (minute hand), 2.6mm > 3.5mm (hour hand).
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I tried to open the minute hand hole up using a spike / bradawl, tapping slowly and very gently. Of course eventually I split it. What isn¡¯t visible from the photo is a slight bush or flange effect around the back of the holes, presumably the holes have been pressed out and this helps the hand stay straight and true on the shaft. That¡¯s why I didn¡¯t just try to drill out the holes.
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Anyway, any advice on how to make new hands (and from what material)? Even gripping them for filing etc. would seem ?very tricky¡ Or is it possible to rescue the old ones? The minute hand just slops around on the new shaft now.
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Bill in OKC too