Ever wondered what happens when your watch is serviced? Well we can tell you how it’s done.
When you need your watch fixing, you must ensure that the watchmaker knows what to do. You must ensure that whoever you take your watch to is qualified to do the job! In this example, we will walk you through a service on an automatic Tag Heuer watch.
At FixMyWatch, our watchmakers are fully Tag Heuer accredited and have been specially trained to repair all Tag watches. If the watch stall or shop you take your watch to doesn’t have the correct tools, equipment or skill then think twice about giving them your valuable watch!
If you can’t trust anyone with your repair then we will collect it for you and you’ll know it’s being treated right! We’ll show you exactly what we do, but we really do suggest you don’t attempt a repair yourself.
Here’s our how-to guide for a basic Tag Heuer service:
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- First we start by removing the bracelet and case back.
- Remove the movement from the case.
- Remove the hands and dial.
- Strip down the date work and place everything in cleaning baskets.
- Remove the automatic weight, auto plate and strip the reversing wheels and the auto drive wheels for cleaning.
- Next remove the barrel bridge, stop lever and barrel.
- Remove the mainspring and barrel arbor from the barrel and place these in baskets for cleaning.
- Strip down the remainder of the components until you are left with just the base plate.
- Reattach the balance in readiness for cleaning.
Are you keeping up?
Now we’ve stripped everything down, we can clean all parts and replace any that are damaged.
- Once the parts have been cleaned, remove the balance from the base plate once again. (We use ultrasonic cleaning machines with specific formulated products to clean the parts so make sure your watchmaker does too!)
- Let’s start by putting the train bridge on and ensuring the 4 wheels are spinning freely. Be sure there is enough “end-shake” on each wheel!
- Lubricate the barrel and fit the mainspring and barrel arbor into the movement along with the stopping lever and lastly the barrel bridge.
- Fit the click for the crown wheel and lubricate the collet and then fit the crown wheel.
- Refit the ratchet wheel and turn the watch over to fit the winding mechanism.
- Next, lubricate and fit the winding pinion, clutch wheel, yolk bolt and bolt spring and insert the stem! That’s the winding complete!
- Make sure you lubricate the train jewels on both sides and give the watch a good wind and listen to it run down.
All of this has to be kept spotlessly clean so once this is done make sure the movement is running down freely and smoothly.
- Let’s now lubricate the pallet jewel and fit the pallets into the movement covered by the pallet cock.
- Wind the movement to make sure the pallets are flicking from side to side.
- Fit the balance and it should start to spin.
- Remove incabloc clips, clean and lubricate the jewel on both sides fitting them securely back to the balance.
Nearly done! We now regulate the movement on a Timergraph. This isn’t something you can just guess.
- Now we can rebuild the auto mechanism and lubricate where necessary.
- Fit the auto plate back to the movement.
- Turn the movement over and refit the date work ensuring that the posts and date jumper are lubricated correctly.
- Refit the dial and hands.
- Clean and polish the case. (That’s a whole other story!)
- Refit the movement and case ring to the case.
- Refit the automatic weight.
- Replace the gasket seals to the case and crown
- Reseal the case and test the pressure. (We use a pressure testing machine and test to manufacturers’ specs!)
- Last refit the bracelet and you’re all done!
How simple was that? Pretty simple for us, but can you trust someone else will do the whole job?
We have simplified everything here and skipped over some quick points to help you follow along, not forgetting that everything is done through an eyeglass with tiny tweezers and screwdrivers.
If you need your watch fixing professionally, why not let us collect it for free and fix your watch correctly!
