A 1962 Longines Flagship with caliber 341 - what a gem!

welcome boys and girls hope you're doing well in this corona times we'll be stripping down this 1962 london flagship today and while login nowadays is a sort of entry-level luxury watch in this watch group back in the 60s they were really at the top of their game and were seen as one of the leading watch manufacturers really competing with the likes of iwc omega rolex and so forth the flagship was one of the top models together with the conquest and of course they also had the ultra crumb which was quite groundbreaking before we start the strip down let's make sure everything works as it should or not that will tell us a lot once we're going to look at the time grapher and we see the watch definitely needs a service but it looks quite okay to be honest and after taking off the lovely enameled case back we see the fabulous longine341 movement over engineered yes absolutely but a fantastic movement it has the off-center ball bearing rotor that runs along the edge of the case the bezel was really stuck so i would have to use this special press and quite a lot of gunk coming out there as well same thing with a crystal very difficult to get off it must have been probably a couple of decades worth of dna and gunk in there hey move your hands buddy i'm trying to tell people about this gunk here thank you here we can really see the off center position of the rotor the roller is also ball bearing based with five rubies rolling inside and finally we have the movement completely out i'm also gonna release the spacer from the case itself and calling it the spacer might not actually do justice because it also holds the whole movement in place including the rotor now we can finally take the hands off and of course we need to be very careful with the dial and finally take the dial itself off now what we see a lot of the time when we start working on vintage watches is that they have crystals that have followed watch for much longer than it should so what you think is maybe a bad dial very often is actually very nice underneath this very scratched crystal we're checking to see if everything works as it should and also to understand how the different wheels work together to change state and so forth it's very important to have an understanding what you're doing instead of just starting to unscrew everything taking a watch apart is not what's difficult any person with a couple of screwdrivers and a semi-steady hand or not can do that it's actually putting it together again that's the real challenge and using glue and duct tape is not really considered best practice so what we want to do now is just take enough parts off to be able to take the cannon pin enough we want to still keep the keyless works in place we're just removing some of the calendar parts and then we can turn the watch over and continue on the train side now taking the automatic works off while the watches in the case is actually often a good idea we could have done that here as well there we see the special rotor runs in this track along the edge we're just going to take off the automatic module here actually not even the whole module just one wheel basically to break the the chain of wheels in the automatic works that way we can access to the click and let the power down from the mainspring next we're going to take the balance off and the balance is of course the most delicate part of the watch so you want to be very careful with it best thing is perhaps to have a special compartment for it in your tray or even a special little box for it but turning it upside down laying it down in the tray is a good way to do it after taking the pallet fork off we can see how freely the trend rains did i say tron rates okay delete this note to self delete that part of the video see if we turn the wheels a little bit from the barrel or you can also use the crown to see how freely the train runs yes nailed it then we can take off the barrel bridge now as we will see this movement also has a quite special design when it comes to the barrel arbor and the barrel the barrel arbor is actually on this wheel that you see here and the barrel itself is a sealed unit now if you're thinking sealed units meal unit no one tells me what to do apart from my wife then you can of course open the barrel and change the spring in this case we want to see if we can just reuse it see if we can still get acceptable performance out of the watch as we take off the train bridge we see that there's a lot of wheels underneath and it's also interesting that there's only one bridge for the train it's not your typical le pin style movement so that one train bridge also has to cover all the different wheel heights another unusual feature is that the center wheel is actually riveted to a small bridge by itself see there we have to take that off from the dial side so we turn the movement over again and start taking off the rest of the calendar works and yet another unusual feature we just talked about the single train bridge on the train side there's actually a train bridge on the dial side as well and it is very unusual in order to make sure that the wheels are planted as straight as possible you typically have the wheels planted onto the main plate itself and not between two bridges like this but it does work so uh well done launching now we can take off the last piece of the automatic works and then we can take off the center wheel bridge you can see these two big screws there are actually for the center wheel the bridge and it is nice to have big screws we will shortly do a video on an omega 1000 series where we'll do a lot of cursing over the size of the screws and another quirky but really beautiful way of operating her crown is this rocker switching between the time setting and the winding honestly doesn't really achieve that much you can perhaps argue that it makes the watch movement a little bit thinner but that's not really the case either but it is a beautiful way to do it rockers by the way they did it in the olden days before the swiss i think it was le coulter came up with a sliding pinion system which is basically always used today but it's very elegant way of doing it taking off the keyless works and opening the shock setting taking out the balance and stones i'm basically preparing everything for cleaning and then the center wheel bridge came off as well and pretty much the last piece on the train side is taking off the setting lever spring yes it is on the train side just under the barrel so up is down and down is up with this movement but it really is a beautiful piece of mechanics as well as being a very high performance movement perhaps the very best launching ever made i guess the 430 will also be in contention for that last thing we want to do is put the balance back on to get ready for the cleaning machine we'll open the shock setting and take the install out on this side as well it's funny the shock settings are indeed different on the different sides of the main plate and voila all right time to put our legs up and let the cleaning machine pull its own weight just got the watch back from the cleaning machine so the first thing we're going to do now is apply oil to the end stones in the shock setting it might be easier and faster even to do this with an automatic oiler and then of course you wouldn't have to take the shock settings out in the first place but yeah depends on how you're brought up i suppose i like doing it this way it gives me full control of the amount of oil and that it comes in the right place when the shock settings are empty so there is no chat on or no end stone under the spring then the spring is a little bit more difficult to open up so instead of using the tweezers i like to use an old broken oiler for that old oilers are very useful for a lot of things the bigger sizes you can shape as a screwdriver to use in hairspring collet adjustments smaller ones can be used for probing and for getting pivots into jewel holes etc and of course real watchmakers use them as toothpicks which can be very beneficial if your diet is somewhat low on iron or steel and we saw in a stripped down that the shock setting is actually different from the dial side to the train side not sure why but that seems to be a common on this movement but then again there's a lot of unusual stuff going on in this movement it's clear there were fewer constraints on the development budget back in those days and also manufacturing because there's a lot of over engineering as we discussed a little bit in the strip down and we'll have a little bit more time to discuss that in this video and before moving on we want to make sure that the balance swings as freely as possible it's a good idea and good habit to check that the oil bubble is in the center of the end stone that hasn't floated out to the sides and so forth and with a high magnification eyeglass or microscope you can see that there's sort of a doughnut of oil around the pivot and if that doughnut is sort of contained within the diameter of the spring then you have a done a good job and when we're confident the balance runs freely that it's well oiled let's put it back safely and forming good habits is also very important when it comes to dust covers put the dust cover back on as often and as soon as you can now let's start assembling the train bridge on the dial side now assembling which can also be done in a different sequence some people like to start with the keyless works some like to start with a train you basically just want to make sure you're not doing a lot of back and forth the thing with this movement is that given that you have two train bridges one on each side if we want to start with a train then we have to first do the train bridge on the dial side then we can put in the barrel with this special barrel arbor wheel you might remember that the setting lever spring is actually underneath the barrel so you can also put that in before you start putting in the barrel i like to put in the train first just to see that everything runs well in case i have to do more cleaning etc so i will put the setting lever spring in back later the center wheel is also a bit odd as you might remember there's also this little wheel that goes uh underneath it for the automatic works the thing is that we have to screw it in from underneath but if we put too much pressure especially on the screw close to the center wheel then we're going to push the whole wheel out so we have to be careful with that and of course we always want to double check that the wheels run freely then we can start putting the rest of the train in and it's quite funny as well that the escape will is all the way at the edge of the plate i'll get a close-up of that a little bit later as well and as mentioned in the first video the train bridge is a one piece it's not your typical le pin style uh movement it's very elegant but it's also quite costly to produce and again as always double check triple check that everything runs freely before we start screwing things down good habit is to hold it down with some sort of a probe breaking pivots on these old movements is really bad getting replacement parts is not easy for these old movements now that we're happy that the train runs freely what i'm going to do is i'm going to take the barrel bridge and the barrel out again and then put the setting lever spring back in now let's talk a little bit more about the over engineering part one of the rumors or maybe stories about why lonjin designed this movement the way they did with all these kinds of crazy things going on is that they wanted to avoid patent struggles with the turner it doesn't really make a lot of sense for the rotor yes with the five ball bearings in it of course i turned a matic use that as also their logo but for the rest of the movement i'm not really sure but it is a fabulous movement to work on and certainly different so we put the setting lever spring back in under the barrel put the barrel back in screw the barrel bridge down i'll put a tiny drop of hp 1300 or similar on the jeweled bearing for that barrel and then we'll start looking at the keyless works the coolest thing about the keyless works in three four one is of course the rocker and the wheels are riveted to the rocker so we put a little bit of oil there to make sure they run freely as well and we secure a rocker with one screw and actually the screw hole is not in the main plate it's in a tube that is press fit into the main plate the tube also has a horizontal hole drilled through it for the stem to go into and if that tube is then not properly aligned the stem will not go deep enough and then you'll have a problem using the ground to set the time last thing we need to do now to make sure we can start using the crown is to then put on the click and click spring and then we can check the free running of the train with the crown and also then start winding it to put on the rest of the escapement and it's a pretty cool little thing that the click is again on the let's say wrong side of things so on the dial side rather than the train side all right let's turn the watch over we'll put in the winding pinion and the stem and again making sure everything runs freely now for the pallet fork it's a very good idea to use fixer drop that helps the oil or the grease stay on the pallet stones there's just very little force in the mechanical watch so if there's too much grease or oil on the pallet stones that could create enough friction or drag to actually slow the watch down to negatively impact the time keeping and the fixer drop helps keep the oil or the grease on the pallet stones the pivots on the pallet fork are among the smallest ones in the watch so we want to make very sure we don't tighten the screws before they can really see that the pallet fork moves freely and again a strong eyeglass or a microscope is very useful here especially until you've gained enough experience to see that the bridge falls into place with the pivots in the holes then we can put some power on with the crown and then see that the pallet fork flips nicely from side to side seems good so let's tighten the screws properly and then the moment of truth putting the balance in and the most satisfying thing in a watchmaker's life at least one that's not let's say married or has a girlfriend or boyfriend or significant other or some type of subscription or similar is to see the balance start running come to think of it that sounds a bit depressing actually but that's the biggest satisfaction anyway enough of that i think let's check on the timer how the watch runs make sure we have the beat error corrected and with a little bit tweaking we see we can get nice performance out of the watch this is with the original barrel still in place we did not change the mainspring and when we put the automatic works on we will get a bit higher amplitude as well but we're happy to see that nice straight line and zero bit there the remainder of the automatic works is basically just the transfer wheel and the bridge itself good practice to hold it down with the probe while we tighten the screws now let's have a quick look at the escape wheel we see that's right on the edge of the movement and just a little bit further along the edge of the movement we will see the automatic works this is the wheel that picks up the rotor movement what we want to make sure happens is that when this wheel is rotated in both directions the winding wheel that it meshes with the ratchet's wheel only moves in one direction all right that seems good so let's then go back to the other side of the movement again there's a lot of flipping back and forth between the sides with this movement but that's just how it is as we're getting ready to put on the calendar works and the time setting wheels let's first put a little drop of hp 1300 or similar on the different posts and the first thing we do is put the cannon pinion on as that one frequently needs to be pressed relatively hard down so if there's already a minute wheel underneath it then you might actually damage the teeth on that so better to put the can opinion on first and again always good to spend a couple of seconds here and there to check that everything runs nicely we don't want things to jam up and only find out after we assemble the whole watch hey where's this clip here who's editing this anyway of course the pivots were oiled before we did the timing anyway let's continue with the calendar works put some hp 1300 or similar on the canon pinion for the hour wheel and then intermediate setting wheels and finally the calendar or the date finger yeah runs nicely again the movement itself is in very good condition it's no problem at all with this watch there's no rust it's just a little bit of dirt and some old oil or actually not oil but there are no actual problems with the watch per se that of course is also a testament to the quality of the movement and longines really made some fantastic movements back in the day 30 l is of course very well known 1268z 19as just a lot of fantastic movements from london we also put a little bit of oil on the jumper just a tiny little bit to make sure we get that positive action and it really clicks over and we see the semi-quick set of these old watches date finger is a little bit curved so it sort of slides over the previous date and then catches the next one all right we're happy with that let's flip the movement over again put in the barrel arbor screw and then we can put on the rotor with a rotor plate on top of that and we need to make sure that the rotor teeth along the rim there engage properly with the driving wheel for the automatic works and since this is a ball bearing rotor we're going to put some a bit of v106 into the ball bearing and then we flip it again i feel like a burger chef working on this one flip flip put the dial washer underneath the dial and then we can start putting the dial on screen dial down and put the hands on before we get there we again want to make sure that the date has a positive action and we'll get this nice click and we do want to actually do this for every single date because on old watches like this it might be that one of the teeth of the data disk is damaged and then all of a sudden the date will not change for that date but that takes a little bit long to do so we're just going to do that for a couple of dates here on the date watch we do know that when the short hand points at midnight then the date should change so we're using that the other way around we're turning the crown until the date just flips and then we know that it's midnight so we can put the hour hand to point at midnight then and once we have the hour hand properly set then of course it's just a matter of doing the same thing with the minute end and again we want to test test test make sure the hour hand runs smoothly that it's uh parallel with the dial that the date flips nicely at midnight so we'll turn the hour hand 24 hours at least to make sure we're positive about this and once we are then it's time for the minute hand which we basically do exactly the same thing for now the hand setting tool might leave a few marks on the hands so we can use some switch plate though to take that off and then we basically repeat the process with a minute hand and of course lastly the second sand turn the hands through 24 hours make sure the hands are at midnight or very close when the date flips the minimum standard requirement is that the date flips between 15 minutes two and 15 minutes after midnight but we should be able to get it within five minutes and it is actually one of the first things that a customer will check when either buying a watch or having watch return from service that the date flips at midnight and if it's 15 minutes before or after that will actually be a little bit of an issue so let's stick to five all right that looks good let's now turn to something completely different the case was also quite dirty when we got it you might remember seeing the dna and the gunk coming off when we took the crystal off and the bezel we're not going to restore the case it's in a perfectly nice order and for a vintage watch it's better to have it a little bit worn and showing that it's actually not a new watch then having it restored to look like a new watch that just looks wrong and also takes a lot of value away from the watch but we can clean it and for this the best tool is the simplest the peg wood sticks now you can get this on ebay as cuticle cleaners so basically manicure stuff for 99 cents including shipping so that's not a bad price coincidentally i always thought that when my wife bought me a manicure course for my birthday i thought that was actually a gift for her but hey manicure it is of course as a happily married man whenever i think these things then my wife says these three little words that's a fuel of every marriage you're an idiot well technically i guess that's actually four words but close enough now with most of the gunk off the case and the bezel let's start looking at the crystal as well the original crystal was quite uh scratched so we're going to put a new one on and this is the difference between a old crystal and a new one and as mentioned before an old crystal can really mask a very nice dial underneath but you might not think it's nice because of that crystal so conversely a new crystal is probably the cheapest and best way to make a watch really look much better all right so we're casing the movement and there's also multiple ways to do this of course as i say there are many ways to skin a cat i'm not sure why i would want to skin a cat in the first place but i guess there are ways of doing it i mean the skin is just too small for anything useful right i mean i guess in these corona times you could potentially use it as a face mask but then if you have an allergy you're gonna go all the time and yeah so i think it's better to keep cats as pets instead of skinning them but that's you know personal preference so the last few things to do now before we can start wearing the watch is to put the crystal back on put the bezel back on and then fine adjust the timing for timing we actually want the watch to run a little bit fast per day about eight seconds fast when fully wound is the standard and the reasoning is that as the mainspring winds down when the watch runs it will start running a little bit slower with less power and it's always better to be early for something than late for something alright with a new strap on the watch it looks quite dashing on the wrist i hope you liked this video please click like and subscribe to support the channel we'll be back shortly until then tata

Channel: Vintage Watch Services

Views: 39,147

Keywords: vintage watches, watch repair, watch servicing, mechanical watch, old watch, vintage watch, horology, watchmaker, watch services, watch restoration, watchmaking, old watches, Vintage Longines, Longines Flagship, Longines caliber 341, oddly satisfying, relaxing video

Id: wNs9ERxbTLc

Length: 32min 56sec (1976 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 25 2021