Comments on: The invisible defect

By: Max

Max — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 02:06:50 +0000

Reminds me of a cheap, Chinese movement I was working on recently. The owner of the watch had bead-blasted the watch case and dial with the movement removed from both, and upon recasing found that the movement would not stay running. It took me quite some time to find the cause, but using all of the magnification at my disposal I eventually noticed what appeared to be the faintest trace of hair or fiber bridging two teeth of the center wheel. It looked far too weak to have brought the movement to a complete halt, but when I tried to remove it I had no luck at all – like this faint fiber was made of stone. In fact, it turned out to be a tiny chunk of glass from the bead blasting. The sharp side, where it broke away from a whole glass bead, had lodged between the gears and was really dug in. The smoothed outer portion gave the illusion of being a fiber running between the gear teeth. The glass itself was so clear that the faint edge was the only giveaway.

By: wackyvorlon

wackyvorlon — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:02:13 +0000

There is an adage that Sherlock Holmes used. When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

By: J.Edwards

J.Edwards — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:02:30 +0000

What type of spring and/or model of watch was this for, J.Peter?

By: Ann

Ann — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:42:32 +0000

Thank you for a very informative post!

By: aimeri

aimeri — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:52:10 +0000

This is also true for computers sometimes. Sometimes when the computer is just not working right and we exhausted all the other logical options, we tend to blame viruses to what is going on. But even if we don’t quite know, we keep trying different things. The good thing about computers is that if all else fails, one can always do a backup and then re-format the computer.