Evening all,
The patient - A French Mantle piece clock, which has a balance not dissimilar in size to a pocket watch.
Unfortunately its been dropped and the top pivot is now in 2 pieces.
A little bit of disassembly and the fun can begin :)
You can see the shorter pivot on the balance spring end.
So what to do?
Well, break out the lathe and a piece of blued steel and get going...
Grain of rice for scale.
Around this point I got hacked off with having to hand sharpen the gravers.
Maintaining the angle and flatness on them is tricky by hand, even with my makeshift jig.
So I took a day out from making the staff to make a grave sharpener (like you do).
This is 1/8 diameter micrograin carbide. took about 2 minutes to make into an acceptable graver.
Back to it - now more like a balance staff shape.
Of course I didn't read the accepted way round (roller table innermost) to make one until after I'd got a good way along.
Undercutting the rivet took some care, as did turning the top pivot.
I found a good way to stop the loss of small parts when parting off - a tube filled with grease over the part.
Having not lost my new staff I riveted it to the balance. I think I should make a smaller hammer...
And now it needs a little touch up of the pivot sizes on the Jacot tool:
Once I figure out how to use a Jacot so the balance and staff don't jump out all the time Ill post an update.
If anyone has any tips they would be gratefully received.
Dave