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Watch assembly


pannie

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I posted a message last week because I planned to assemble a Marinda Militare with a Panerai Cali dial and gold hands, when this is how the build progressed...

Firstly I cleaned up the back of the dial

Dialback.jpg

Then I removed the second pin from the movement because the cali dial doesn't accommodate seconds

Movement.jpg

I attached the dial - double sided tape because the dial dots hadn't arrived yet

Dialattached.jpg

I then attached the hands (twice because I didn't align them properly the first time)

Handsattached.jpg

Next I removed the crown stem, carefully, and slotted it in the case to be attached with 2 mounting screws

Movementin-noCrownstem.jpg

Next was to cut the crown stem to size (making sure it was too long first and then trimming gradually)

Readytocutthecrownstem.jpg

After getting it to the right size I wanted to set the time and wind it and then DISASTER struck! My crown stem snapped of after a single turn.

Disaster.jpg

Crownstembroken.jpg

Now I am in trouble because part of the crown stem is still stuck in the movement!

My sad tale.

pannie

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Guest carlsbadrolex

This must be a bad week for replicas... I had the stem pull out of my SSD two days ago. I thought, WTH... Ive put stems back in before. I opened the case, pressed the retension button and pushed it all the way in and it stuck there.

Took the watch to my watchmaker (who was on vacation) and had his assistant put it back together. I had broken the movement, so when re-assembling the watch he put the hour hand on too tight and started trying to wind it... Now I have perfect circles engraved on the dial!!!

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Congrats!!! great work. It could have been much worse,,,the stem could have broke right at the crown such that you couldn't get it out. As far as the hands go,,,personally I put on the hour hand at any random time, and then set it using the crown to say,,,11 or any hour, then I put the min hand on at twelve. Seems like you might be in for some time with the keyless works...however, I bet if you take the hands and dial off,,you might be able to get the stem out.

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Nothing much to worry about. Remove the hands and the dial, then carefully dissasemble the keyless works, by undoing the crown stem screw fully, first. It's actually not that hard and it sounds you have a basic know how about 6497 mov'ts already. Just be careful with the K-W spring, don't loose that one as it can snap out of the place quite easily.

You will need a decent pair of tweezers to do the work...and a lot of coffee :)

cheers and let us know how it goes.

babola

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What method do you use to install the hands?

Hi,

I bought hand presses and a hand puller on eBay for about 6 pounds; I wouldn't suggest trying without them; then I gently held the end of the hand with tweezers and pressed down the centre when I was sure that is was aligned.

pannie

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Thanks for the encouraging words but I think I will be sending it to a modder to be fixed because it broke due the alignment of the movement and the case crown hole - so that needs to be corrected and I would like the cannon pinion fixed too.

Are there any suggestions of a modder I can use in the UK?

pannie

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Nothing much to worry about. Remove the hands and the dial, then carefully dissasemble the keyless works, by undoing the crown stem screw fully, first. It's actually not that hard and it sounds you have a basic know how about 6497 mov'ts already. Just be careful with the K-W spring, don't loose that one as it can snap out of the place quite easily.

You will need a decent pair of tweezers to do the work...and a lot of coffee :)

babola

Congratulations for your work.

I totally agree with Babola advice except the part that involves the ingestion of coffee.

You will need steady hands to disassemble the keyless works! :)

Cheers,

M.

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