Should they be used? Cheap Mainspring Winders - Full review and comparison with the Bergeon Winders

i've covered the topic of using mainspring winders in the past and regular viewers may have seen me using this tool to install the mainspring whilst i'm servicing movements on this channel i personally find these winders to be an essential tool for the watch repairer and would encourage every learner watch repairer to consider purchasing a set but the truth is these sets are really expensive and there are very few choices when it comes to sourcing a used set they do turn up from time to time but unfortunately they can still be very expensive and perhaps beyond the budget of a hobbyist or learner just starting out it's a problem so without such a set as this you're left with essentially two options in dealing with a mainspring when servicing a watch movement but with the second option being considered quite bad practice and so the only real solution is to replace the mainspring of each watch that you service with a new one new mainsprings will mostly come pre-packaged and bound with a soft metal ring that allows you to press fit the new mainspring into the barrel without the need for special tools and then there's the second option well the second option would be to manually wind the mainspring into the barrel by hand but there are a couple of reasons why this is considered bad practice and before we continue let's just address that because i've seen some discussion to the contrary now the absolute best practice when servicing a movement when you know that it hasn't been serviced for many years is to simply replace the spring with a new one and this is especially true if it's a paid job for a client you rarely see me doing this with watches on this channel as well for the most part they're my own watches and i'm fortunate that i can replace them at any time should i need to well it seems that chinese manufacturing may well have come to the rescue in this regard because we're now seeing several new options for purchasing mainspring winders and i'm seeing them being sold all over the place from places such as aliexpress to ebay and amazon and even professional horological suppliers such as cousins uk and the best thing is they seem to be excellent value for money especially when compared to the swiss offerings so there you go we have another potential option and i've purchased a set in order to see how they compare to the swiss version but back to the question of winding in mainsprings by hand and there are two main reasons why i don't personally like to do this the first and most important is that you have no way of knowing if the mainspring has been distorted or kinked once the mainspring has been successfully wound in now we shall come back to that and discuss my second reason first winding in by hand can introduce contaminants to the mainspring it's quite difficult to wind the mainspring in whilst you're wearing gloves or finger cots now the light rubber can get caught in the coils as you go along this will increase the risk of you losing grip on the spring and of course it could fly across the room or get kinked now as you can see here i'm struggling to keep the rubber cots from snagging and in fact it's even caused a split in one of the cots now winding a mainspring in by hand without gloves or cots well that should not even be an option for the same reason that no watch part should be touched by bare fingers when you're performing a final assembly but okay let's just imagine that you have successfully wound the mainspring in by hand whilst wearing gloves or cots and you're quite certain that you've not introduced any contaminants to the barrel now that brings us back to the first point in that you have no way of knowing if the mainspring has been damaged and may i just say that the risk of damage is really quite high the mainspring you're seeing me wind in here is out of a pocket watch and it's quite a strong one and as you might expect it can hold up to well at least a little bit of manual handling okay so let's now take it out of the barrel and see what we find and on first inspection well it looks kind of okay but if we look carefully you can see that the act of manually winding this mainspring into the barrel has caused some distortion it's coiled upwards and although technically this mainspring will work it may cause extra wear inside the barrel now i suppose it is possible for the mainspring to become distorted in this manner from unwinding the mainspring from the barrel but this is less likely as the mainspring is attempting to relax itself into the natural direction that it wants to go plus you do get to inspect the spring for damage once it's removed and that is key but when you're winding the spring by hand into a barrel you are effectively using more force to encourage the spring inwards and at the same time you're twisting it and you do not really have any opportunity to inspect the mainspring for distortion or damage once it's fitted but either way if we do notice this kind of distortion and if we are being purist a mainspring in this state whether from winding in or out should now be considered damaged and most certainly should be replaced especially if it's a paid job so that's it then we have four choices an expensive swiss manufactured set of mainspring winders purchasing a new mainspring for each watch that we work on manually winding the mainspring in by hand or purchasing a low-cost chinese manufactured set so let's take a look at these cheaper mainspring winders and see what you're getting for considerably less money than the swiss offerings and so the first thing i noticed is that there are several different options as provided by different suppliers but looking closely at the pictures they all seem to be comparable in design and that suggests to me that the tools themselves are leaving the same factory and are maybe being packaged differently by the distributors but this is just a guess i also noticed that all the sets contained caliber specific barrel drum and crank arbor sizes rather than the generic sizes in my swiss set although version the company that manufactures my set do make caliber specific sizes also the set i opted for contains 14 different sizes now i'll cover this in more detail shortly but let's first take a look at what you get in the box so as you can see we have a nice stand to hold the individual sizes and next we have our crank arbors and these are individually sized for different caliber watches and here we see our first issue in that the handles have broken off two of these cranks the rivets holding the handles to the cranks has failed i also noticed here the first major difference between this and the swiss set and it's a biggie i mean potentially a very big problem which will almost render this set completely useless now i'll explain and demonstrate this shortly but first let's continue to inspect all these barrels and then we shall take a closer look and give them a proper test so that's it i found two damaged cranks i suppose they could easily be fixed but it is a little bit disappointing however we can see that we have 14 cranks and barrels in total and indeed they seem to be caliber specific for movements including the valjoux 7750 series i assume the rolex 2235 etas 2824s 2750s 2892s um 283 six uh rolex 3135 i'm assuming omega 8500 the miota or citizen 8200 and i assume the shanghai 7120 so let's take a look at the individual parts that make up each winder and i will just choose one at random they all work in the same manner now first we have the crank arbor the mainspring is fitted to the arbor of this crank and i'll demonstrate this shortly now next we have the barrel drum which will act as a temporary container for the mainspring and now we have the handle which is basically an extension of the barrel drum to make it less fiddly to use and finally we have a stand which provides no real operational advantage and here we have side by side both regular cranks and a left-handed crank and you will notice that the handles for both are the same these slots cut out to accommodate the barrel drum both go in the same direction regardless of left hand or regular winding and in fact they're all designed for regular winding cranks and so this may lead to instability when you operate one of the left hand wiring cranks now let me illustrate this by showing you the handles for both regular and left winding cranks as designed by version you can notice that the slots are cut in opposite directions so that the barrel drum would technically become tighter or more stable as you operate the crank now this is not the case with the chinese manufactured set where all the handles are manufactured with the slots running in the same direction so winding a left hand crank will effectively be loosening the drum from the handle but the barrel drums all seem to be okay i cannot see any manufacturing flaws here but i do find it interesting that each crank and barrel is provided with his own handle now i will have to check in a moment to see if they're different but i don't really see why they would need to be and so it does seem to be a little bit wasteful but i will measure them up shortly and i'll let you know if i'm wrong now looking closely at the barrel drums i noticed that the barrel walls are made from brass as are the persian barrels but they are considerably thinner at just 0.3 of a millimeter compared to the 0.5 of a millimeter thickness of the virgins now i also noticed that the inner table and the pusher of the drum or plunger is made from softer brass rather than steel as is the protruding arm which interfaces with the slot in the handle now it's made from brass and it's much bigger now i have been asked whether these barrels will fit the version made handles and this does not seem to be the case the protruding arm is too thick and the diameter of the lower portion of the drum is smaller so bear in mind they do technically operate in exactly the same way as the swiss set but the most common question i have seen regarding these is whether the barrels can be used or interchanged with the swiss or specifically the version swiss set so hopefully that answers the question but the other question i see quite often regarding these chinese winders is whether they can be used with left hand wound mainsprings as well as regular wound and the answer to that is well this set as i've mentioned is a caliber specific set and so some of them have hooks for left hand wound mainsprings such as the citizen 8200 and the shanghai 7120 but interestingly and as i've already mentioned the left-hand barrels do not come with a corresponding handle all of them seem to be the same unlike these generic version set which comes with two handles to be used with left hand cranks and regular cranks now i just want to illustrate what i mean about the handles so all these handles are identical and furthermore all of these stands are also identical to each other now to me it would have made far more sense to use only two handles properly oriented for regular and left-handed windings and leave out the stands all together as the base is perfectly adequate for holding them if they were drilled out to the correct size or at least have only two of them one one for each handle for example and the cost of materials wasted in manufacturing the excess handles and the stands could have been spent on improving the more important materials used to construct the barrel drums and crank arbors yep all identical and breaking down the barrel drum we can see that it's made up of several parts the plunger and table are screwed together and the screw was quite loose now it looks like the protruding arm is also screwed into the body the steel protruding arm on the versions are friction fitted in place now if this were made from steel rather than brass i would actually like this better than the version design this was also fairly easy to unscrew and all these screw threads may well benefit from a small dose of loctite but now we have to cover the major flaw of this set and it's one that can potentially cause this set to be a complete waste of money and i'm sure many of you have already noticed this and perhaps you're shouting at the screen right now the biggest problem with these winders is the crank arbors and importantly the hooks milled into the arbors they're made from brass now this is a massive issue because well i don't need to tell you that brass is softer than steel and the main springs which are hooked onto these arbors well they're made from steel and the action of winding the mainspring into the barrel drum will cause the sharp edge of the hole in the mainspring to exert pressure against the soft brass hook do i need to go on i mean what were they thinking even if manufacturing these crank arbors from steel doubles the price of this set it would still have been a bargain as compared to the swiss offerings we'll test these properly in a moment just to see how the hooks will hold up but let's continue and break down one of the crank harbors and see how they're made up and well just like the virgins the whole assembly seems to be held together with a brass washer and the arbor being riveted over this removing the brass washer reveals that they also used some glue to add extra security and here is a shot of all the parts which make up the crank you'll also notice that the cap is made from brass rather than steel so here is the version set and i'm going to install the pocket watch mainspring back into its barrel just to demonstrate how these winders work and then we shall see how the chinese set compares this is a mainspring and barrel from a scrap watch and i'm using this as a demonstration piece now with a generic set such as this we can start by choosing a barrel drum with a slightly smaller diameter than the main spring barrel and i can hook the main spring onto the crank arbor making sure that the main spring is the correct way up the barrel drum is fitted into the handle [Music] and the crank is inserted into the barrel drum with the mainspring guided into the cutout of the drum wall and then the crank is turned causing the mainspring to be pulled into the drum and near the end i use a pair of brass tweezers to encourage the hook of the mainspring to go all the way in now it helps if there's still some tension on the spring so you may notice that i'm holding the crank and preventing it from spinning backwards now i allow any tension to be released and i can pull back on the crank to release the hook from the mainspring and at the same time carefully pulling the crank out whilst turning the crank backwards the mainspring will want to pop out as you attempt to remove the crank so care must be taken to ensure that this doesn't happen now i'm using my brass tweezers here to periodically push the mainspring back down the arbor as the arbor is being pulled away now it's tricky when you're not used to this procedure but as with all things practice is key but the crank foot but with the crank fully removed i can now transfer the mainspring into its barrel now to do this i position the barrel drum over the main spring barrel and i attempt to line up the hook of the mainspring to be away from the corresponding hook on the barrel wall now this should not be a concern with main springs for automatic watches but this is a manual wind watch now i press down on the plunger and the main spring is effectively pushed down into the barrel to be clear the chinese made set is not intended to be for generic or universal use like for example the virgin set that we have here let me take out this mainspring from its barrel and in this case we're using a mainspring from an eta 2824 movement a size which is included in the chinese set i can confirm this by measuring the crank harbor and the inner diameter of the barrel drum and compare those measurements to the inner diameter of the mainspring barrel of the actual movement and the outer diameter of the barrel arbor and they're close enough for me to say that this is usable with the eta2824 as advertised and now choosing a comparatively dimensioned barrel drum from the version set well this will give me a crank arbor with a diameter too large for this particular mainspring to fit on and in fact using a crank from one of the other barrels may well work out but it would not be stable as the barrel arbor will not fit into the hole of the correctly dimensioned barrel drum and this is why for certain watch calibers it's better to use the barrel drum and crank arbor combination that's made specifically for that caliber now as you can see here on a popular horological suppliers website those individual barrels are not cheap but if you do work with those calibers such as well the value 7750 eta2892s or the 2824s for example well they may well be a worthwhile investment and speaking of worthwhile investment let's see how well the chinese model works and i'll place the spring into a brass armor and make sure that the mainspring is interfaced with the hook and it's the correct way up and just like with the version set i place the crank into the barrel drum and locate the mainspring into the slot of the drum wall and now bearing in mind that the hook is made of brass i'm turning the crank very carefully and very slowly which is causing the mainspring to be pulled into the drum at any moment i'm actually expecting the hook to fail and the crank to turn without pulling on the mainspring but i'm being quite gentle here and we do manage to get all the way up to the bridle now whilst keeping tension on the crank with my finger i use some brass tweezers to carefully manipulate the bridle through the slot and i can continue winding the spring which now requires even more force to pull the bridle through but luckily the crank harbor hook did not fail and i managed to successfully wind the spring all the way into the drum now i removed the crank in the same way that i removed the virgin crank earlier and with the crank removed i can see that the spring looks okay and it's seated correctly waiting to be transferred into its barrel and transferring this spring into its barrel is exactly the same procedure as with the version tool place the drum over the barrel press down on the plunger and the spring will be forced down into the barrel just a quick word regarding lubrication as some people have asked why i don't always lubricate the barrel walls of each watch that i service i mean this here is just an example for a demonstration and so i've not really lubricated this but if i was then it's a barrel from an automatic movement and this would need to have a special grease applied to the barrel pool to improve the performance of the watch if this was a manual watch movement such as with the pocket watch mainspring that i demonstrated earlier lubricating the barrel wall would not technically harm the watch but on the other hand it would not provide any benefit or function to the watch either so this is why you see some mainspring barrel walls lubricated and others left dry either way the mainspring itself is usually very finely lubricated unless the manufacturer suggests otherwise but after the first use i'm interested to see how the brass hook held up so let's take a closer look and remarkably the hook is actually still intact although if we do look closely we can definitely see a little bit of swarf build up but i'm going to be honest here i don't know if that swarf was there before i started i didn't really think to look okay up to now this review may well have seemed a little bit negative and well i guess it's because i like many of you i'm pretty sure will not appreciate the brass arbors for some if the hooks do fail well i guess they could be drilled out and re-pinned with steel if you have the inclination to do so and that might make these winders great for occasional or hobbyist use i mean as long as you're okay with fixing them up when they inevitably break and for others well they may consider re-pinning the brass harbors to be polishing a turd as for me i've decided that i'll not be using these but remember my version set is the generic one and i've found it incredibly useful over the years but i do not have the caliber specific cranks and drums and so i have two options i could purchase them individually and use them with the handles in my existing set that's quite expensive but it is an option or i can attempt to make my own based off some of the dimensions as bound with this chinese set i wonder which option would be more fun okay before we wrap up this video i'll just answer some of the questions that i've already been asked regarding this set of chinese mainspring winders to be honest i would rather look for a used second hand set as made by version or knd they do pop up occasionally on ebay but rarely will these sets cover all calibers just like many trades once you go down the rabbit hole of purchasing tools it seems to never end i would say that one of the biggest issues with some of these sets that you find second hand on ebay is that they will rarely if ever come with left hand winders as may be useful for certain seikos for example but on the subject of left hand winders it may be possible to use a regular winder to wind these springs up using a regular mainspring winder set and a small hack now if i get enough interest in the comments below then i'll consider making a tutorial on this well they are worth it if you're using them occasionally and if you're willing to accept that the hooks will need to be repaired when they fail but remember this set is still quite limited [Music] and yes this is what i mean when i say the chinese sets are limited they are caliber specific and may not be useful for many watch calibers as there are just too many it goes back to what i said before you never seem to have enough tools there's always something else that's needed but to be clear for the most part this set and similar ones to it only seem to be suited to very specific calibers for example they're totally useless for the pocket watch mainspring that i installed earlier but well what do you think about these mainspring winders have you purchased and used them already what's your experience please let us know your thoughts in the comments below but that's it for this video if you like this content and you'd like to see more then please hit the like button share the video on social media if you can and if you're not already a subscriber then well please click on the subscribe button below and click the bell and you'll be informed whenever i upload new content and thanks to all my patrons who helped to make these videos possible thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next one bye bye you

Channel: Watch Repair Channel

Views: 144,827

Keywords: watch repair channel, watch repairs, watch repair lessons, watch service, mark lovick, watchrepairtalk.com, watchrepairlessons.com, mainspring winders, watchmakers tools, cheap tools for watchmaking, watch repair, watch repair kit, watch repair for beginners, watch repair tutorial, watch repair course, bergeon, bergeon mainspring winder, bergeon mainspring winder set

Id: RtO9-zIn1Go

Length: 34min 21sec (2061 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 03 2020