Hour hand misaligned

[oirish]

I have 3 reps Im very happy with. Two of them have the hour hands well out of synch with the minute hands. The movements are 21j and a venus hand wind. Ive havnt yet opened up the cases and messed around with the internals so I'm a bit nervous about it. I want to take out the movements and physically align the hour hand.

Rather than taking off the hands is it ok to pivot the hands on the central stem? Will this action loosen the grip the hands already have or will it damage the works?

[Guest avitt]

If you want to reposition the hands, you'll need to pull them, and replace them using the proper tools. If you try to rotate a hand which is in place, you will most likely separate the hand from its tube (or worse...).

[oirish]

Thats what I was afraid of. I see lots of tutorials here on removing and replacing hands. I reckon I'd be up to the job. Think I'll try the 21j first. Thanks avitt.

[Toadtorrent]

It's finicky business replacing the hands as you need to do it a few times sometimes to align things properly with the date crossover. Good luck!!

[oirish]

Cheers Toad.

I can imagine its a finicky job. I'm looking forward to it in a strange way. I have to start somewhere and besides, this is a good excuse to get myself my first set of tools.

[RickHiC]

Sorry to threadjack, but are the bergeon hand pullers worth it? They are on ebay for around $50 per size(!), and I imagine you'd need multiples to cover the normal range of hands. Meanwhile the knockoffs are around $5-10. Yes, I know you get what you pay for, but I would definitely cover the dial with something protective and be very very careful about what the little grabbers are touching.

I dig quality and swiss-ness, but I'm all about function. For example, my $90 usd 50mm f/1.8 nikkor lens absolutely crushes any low mag. loupe out there, swiss or otherwise. Double-gauss design, 6 multi-coated elements, one of the sharpest lenses for 35mm available. Yet who thinks to look through an SLR camera lens backwards. I need to rig up a headband for it.