My first dud

peasant

The risk you run in buying cheap, old watches from strangers on e-bay.

My horsey Vostok Amphibia is borked.
It wasn't quite right when it arrived, it ran for a few minutes and then stopped. A gentle nudge of the balance wheel got it going and so I didn't think too much of it.

But it had two issues:

- something wrong with the mainspring/winding.
You can handwind it for a very long time and hardly meet any resistance and even when it finally seems fully wound, five minutes later you can start again ...the spring seems to have unwound itself.
When you wind it with the rotor, it meets resistance pretty fast and then the rotor spins the other way and unwinds itself a bit.
When wearing it, the watch worked all day ...but as soon as you put it down, it would stop after a few hours.


- something wrong with the hairspring/balance
The few times the watch ran long enough it was about 5 mins fast per 10 hours. So I had a bit of an attempt at regulating it and it turns out that the hairspring is very much out of shape. This I found out by regulating it just that bit too much and everything went "twang" and the hairspring coil transformed itself into someting of a birds nest. It's still fixed at both ends, just severly out of shape. I tweaked it back to near enough its former shape (very gently and very carefully) but now the balance will only spin for a few seconds before it builds up enough resistance in itself and stops. That's what must have been wrong all along ...only I made it worse. (I further compounded the issue by taking the rotor off to have better access and losing the rotor screw in the process ...be careful with tweezers boys & girls )

Both issues combined go very much beyond my very limited skills as a watchmaker and my even more limited toolkit (a toothpick :rolleyes: ) ...so I guess I'm just gonna write it off as a loss and as a lesson learned ...the next watch that doesn't work properly (or as described) will go straight back to the seller without me having a poke around first.

Bullseye1

Sorry to read that. It's a risk with buying any second hand watch i guess. How long will it work before it starts giving trouble. How much would it cost to repair it? At what point do you consider it uneconomical to repair a watch?

peasant

At 20 quid purchase price (thankfully!) all these questions become somewhat philosophical and you can take it with good humour.

peasant

Naahh...for the time being I'm keeping it.
Might need it to trade for spares with a fellow Russian watch enthusiast at some point.
Amphibia parts are like cigarettes in prison ...legal tender for russki watch nuts