WatchUSeek Watch Forums banner

Can i manuallly adjust my watch speed

14K views 11 replies 4 participants last post by  HilltopMichael 
#1 ·
Guys, this my first russian watch, a 1960 Pobeda, the problem is that its running like 12 minutes per day. Can i manuaaly adjust the watch speed or regulate it myself without sending it to the watch shop. the man who sold me said that it was recently serviced, may the one who serviced is immature & puts lots of lubricant on one of its wheels.:thanks
 

Attachments

See less See more
2
#5 · (Edited)
That is a huge gain. However, lets make sure it is really running 12 minutes per day fast. Set it precisely to some time standard then compare 24 hours later to the same time standard.

If it is indeed running 12 minutes too fast then something is holding the hairspring coils together. That has the effect of shortening the spring length and causing the balance to oscillate too quickly. The cause could be a drop of oil, speck of dust or magnetism as others mentioned. IF one of those is the cause the fix should be undertaken by a watchmaker.
 
#6 ·
That is a huge gain. However, lets make sure it is really running 12 minutes per day fast. Set it precisely to some time standard then compare 24 hours later to the same time standard.
Do this first. On more than one occasion I've set the wrong time when picking up a new watch to wear... Wind the watch completely (they can run fast at the very end of their power reserve), set the time and wear the watch as you normally would. After 24 hours see how far off you are.
If it is indeed running 12 minutes too fast then something is holding the hairspring coils together. That has the effect of shortening the spring length and causing the balance to oscillate too quickly. The cause could be a drop of oil, speck of dust or magnetism as others mentioned. IF one of those is the cause the fix should be undertaken by a watchmaker.
If the hairspring is touching itself, you can often see this. It could be especially obvious when the watch is stopped. Waving a strong magnet around the watch will demagnetize it and will often get the hairspring into it's normal position. However, every time I've had a hairspring problem like this the watch ran hours fast/day, not minutes.

It may also be possible that the watch is running well, but the hands are slipping or a gear is missing a tooth. I had one watch that ran about 15 minutes fast/day, although it was exactly 18,000 bph on the timer. Took me a while to realize that a single tooth was missing on one of those gears - that was something for a watchmaker to take care of.
 
#10 ·
That's how you can fine tune the regulation. Move the regulator arm or turn a screw towards the + to make it run fasters, towards the - to make it run slower.

If there are little tick marks between the + and -, they're typically 5 seconds of adjustment. The total adjustment is perhaps +/- 20-30 seconds.

If your watch was serviced or otherwise fixed then the last step would be to make the adjustment here. However, if your watch really was running 12 minutes fast/day there's not enough adjustment with the regulator to tax care of that.

You can make adjustments yourself, but do be careful to only touch the regulator arm - don't slip and touch the balance wheel or spring. Also, before you make any adjustments, wear the watch as you normally would for a week or so and note exactly how it's running every morning. If it gains or looses the same amount daily you'll be able to adjust it accurately. If one day it's 30 seconds fast and the next day it's 15 seconds slow it's going to be difficult to get it adjusted well.

Also, a watch will often run a bit faster or slower depending on how it's set down. Often dial up runs faster and crown up runs slower. You can set the watch down at night in the appropriate position and that might be all you'd need to do.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top