Clarifying Hand Removal

[freddy333]

I hate to even ask this because I'm sure this'll be another of those newbie questions that've been answered to death (but I've been unable to find the answer).

How do you go about removing the 3 hands on the cannon pinion? I've got a Presto hand remover (from Birdman), but I can't figure out how to use it to remove the two top hands? Specifically, I know you need to remove the seconds hand first, but since it's at the top of the pinion, there's nothing for the hand puller's pads to sit on and use for leverage (I presume the pads rest on the dial (which I've protected with a small sheet of thick paper) and then you squeeze the springs on the side of the hand remover to press the hand off the pinion??? If I've got that right, what do you rest the hand remover's pads on when removing the second hand?

I have a feeling the answer's gonna be embarrassing, but for the life of me I can't figure this out.

[kingkitesurf]

No stupid question...

It depends of the type of handpuller. If you have the two handed version, which does not press on the dial then you can pull one at the time. It grabs the hand in its claw. If you have the one handed version then it presses on your dial... Be aware that you protect your dial with soft tissue (cut a opening so you can slide it on the dial underneath the hands. With this puller you better take all hands of at once because if not it could lean on the hand below and bend it. Set your clock to 24:00 before you pull the hands otherwise datechange gets messed up. Good luck

PS I have the first type of handpuller.

[freddy333]

No stupid question...

It depends of the type of handpuller. If you have the two handed version, which does not press on the dial then you can pull one at the time. It grabs the hand in its claw. If you have the one handed version then it presses on your dial... Be aware that you protect your dial with soft tissue (cut a opening so you can slide it on the dial underneath the hands. With this puller you better take all hands of at once because if not it could lean on the hand below and bend it. Set your clock to 24:00 before you pull the hands otherwise datechange gets messed up. Good luck

I'm not quite sure if, by two-handed, you mean the number of hands required to hold the hand remover tool or if that's the number of hands the tool is designed to remove?? I apologize, again, for my naivete, but I seem to keep getting tools that are recommended as "The one tool to have for this job....", only to find out that it's the wrong tool (or, at least, not the proper tool for a basic task).

To make it less confusing, here's the tool I've been struggling with to try to remove the center seconds (and minute and hour) hands on the Newman Daytona rep I'm working on:

Am I just using it incorrectly or is this in fact the wrong tool to remove the seconds hand (above the hour and minute hands) at the top of the pinion?

In perusing Ofrei's hand removers, I'm thinking that the tool you have is either the Bergeon #6 Presto Hand Remover (which looks like it's designed to remove hands w/o the need to rest on the dial) or one of the lever-type hand removers a few items below the #6 on this page (which would obviously require "two hands"): http://www.ofrei.com/page_209.html