‘Affordable’ Bergeon Mainspring Winders! | Review + Wristwatch Repair Tutorial

watchmaking can be an expensive hobby there's  some great options for a lower cost entry-level   tools and supplies that I've featured on the  channel but as frugal as I try to be there   are some items that I've learned are worth the  extra money for instance tweezers I've lost more   parts using inexpensive tweezers because they  require too much pressure or had uneven points I've since purchased several pair of  Dumont tweezers and I am never going back   screwdrivers I still occasionally use my  first inexpensive set of screwdrivers and   screwdriver technique is very important in  doing if you blinked you would have missed it   I launched the screw bounced it off my finger  cot and landed perfectly back in the movement   but this version set is made of more durable  metal and comes Precision sharpened to give   better engagement with screw heads and today  I want to add another luxury purchase to   that list main spring winders after having  only a modicum of success hand whining mean   springs back into the barrel I realized  my need for a set of mainspring winders   I tried to do without and purchased a few movement  specific mainsprings for a couple of watches   when they arrived they were wound too large to fit  my barrel and the well-known UK vendor I purchased   them from told me I needed to rewind it myself  to make it fit back to square one but with prices   reaching more than two thousand dollars U.S for  a new full set of Swiss made Bergeron mainspring   winders and used sets costing hundreds I took  my chances on a sixty dollar set of Chinese-made   winders they were not usable for me okay so  here's the 8200 Winder I think that's an Omega the   direction of the wind was opposite what I needed  so I had to use the winding handle from the 2836   the movement specific winders were a hodgepodge  of barrel and Arbor sizes and wind directions   build quality and materials were also subpar and I   had a very hard time engaging the hook  on the arbor in the hole of the spring I've been doing watchmaking long enough  now that I know it will remain a hobby   for me well into the future so I bought this  which I consider to be an investment it's a   Bergeon five piece mainspring winder set with  left hand and right hand arbors and handles   I paid us $650 for the set but hopefully  it contains the winders I need the most   for the type of wrist watches that I like to  service and I can add additional size winders   a la carte in the future if needed I'm very  excited let's open it up and give it a try all right there we go this one's trying to escape the set contains two handles one for  right and one for left hand wound Springs   five winding drums and right-handed  and left-handed winders for each drum   the drums are Bergeon's generic winder size  numbers four through eight here is a chart that   converts these sizes to the drum outer diameter  in millimeters to fit within your spring Barrel these are really solid what I have here is a new mainspring for a  Longines watch that I'm working on you want   to find the winder that is the same diameter or  just a slightly smaller than the barrel that you   need to insert into so in this case it is this one  and Bergeon has numbered this the number six we're   going to grab the number six winder and this is  a right-handed mainspring it winds right-handed   so here we go number six okay so when you take  mainspring out of the barrel it's important to   note which direction the mainspring is wound into  the barrel so let's go ahead and get this wound okay we're going to place  the winder and by the way   let's just make sure that this fits in the barrel and this one does perfect so we know that this is going  to get inserted from underneath okay it feels like it's holding on put the arbor on the winder handle here now let's see if the hook is  gripping it's going to feed that mainspring into the barrel and lo and behold it it seems to be doing it   okay now oh okay so I just had my first  failure so in a nice controlled way let   me see if I can let this down and what  happened is I am making a mess okay okay let me see if I can let the  spring go naturally here okay so what happened there okay I'm  glad we're learning together   what happened there was I relieved  tension you need to keep downward tension   and I didn't do that and so it came out  well let's just let's just go with it lesson learned let's see if we're still engaged and we are oh boy am I going to apply downward tension now  and so we just want to help this little tab in there's these two little  ears can we poke him in there   so it's kind of like a mixed  bag here I need to relieve tension just enough to get him in there come on but I don't want to relieve tension so much that the spring flies out again  and get my brass tweezers here   so I feel like I need to wiggle the  winder up just a little bit like that get him in there get them in oh okay it's  in okay so now I'm going to relieve tension   because we want to get the the handle to release okay I can see that the  hook is disengaged and we're there we go okay so the winder is out there's the  spring and here we go here's the moment of truth you place the winder into the  barrel and with a little push it dislodges the wound spring into the barrel beautiful okay Thank you new spring winder there is our arbor and we want to lock the arbor  into the center of the spring and there's a hook on the arbor gauge let's see if we can engage  this arbor without sending it flying okay I was finally able to  get a grip on the uh the arbor   with a pin vise and it looks  like we have engagement yes so now we're going to use this little tool align the lid remember that little uh t-tab  on the back of the spring   I believe it has to engage  right there with that hole there we go that made the sound I wanted to hear we have a barrel a barrel complete if you will and let's just pause for a minute to appreciate  that beautiful snailing engraved into the uh the   bottom of the barrel well there you have it  overall I'm fantastically pleased with this   purchase of the Bergeon five piece mean spring  winder set and the quality difference between   this and the previous set that I purchased  is just night and day so with that I can now   take my barrel complete we will put it back  with the parts for this project and coming   very very soon will be the reassembly of this  I think it's a 1953 Longines Tank shaped watch   this is the first rectangular watch that I have  worked on and then we have lots more mechanical   watches coming to the channel you've seen lots  of previews well now it's about time for me to   put the pedal to the metal or put my tweezers to  the wheels and get these watches back together   and on my wrist and share them with you on the  channel thanks so much for joining me if you   like this content please give it a thumbs up  leave your comments in the space below and if   you don't want to miss my next episode please  subscribe to the channel I'm Mike the channel   is Watch With Mike be good be well and be safe  and I look forward to our next time together

Channel: WATCH with Mike

Views: 7,563

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Id: vTcvcB-aITs

Length: 13min 31sec (811 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 08 2023