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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;afantiques, post: 1255482, member: 25&quot;] <ul> <li>He is charging over $100 per hour. Nice work if you can get it. If there is nothing actually wrong with it, no broken spring or broken balance staff, carry it round in a trouser pocket for a day, this warms it through and may start it running from the erratic motion..</li> <li>Pull it out of your pocket and applying a little pressure in a &#039;winding up&#039; direction to the winder, hold the watch face down with the back open (to see the results) and twist the watch in a horizontal plane&nbsp; so the balance swings. It may well tick a few times, or even keep running. It may just keep running till you take the pressure off the winder, but you will be getting there. This needs a bit of patience, you may have to keep some pressure on the winder for half an hour before it is willing to run on its own.</li> </ul><p>This sounds like old wives tale type nonsense, but there is a good reason why it often works. </p><p>The spring in its barrel is slightly oily, as are the pivots. The best watch oil in the world can dry and become sticky in decates of inaction, but if the watch can be run down just a little bit, the spring comes unstuck and starts to do its job. Letting it run down and rewinding it a few times will probably see it remaining workable for years if it gets a bit of exercise now and then. Watch and clock collectors may not have everything working all the time, but everything gets a wind up now and again for keeping things free.</p><p><br /></p><p>The reason you need to apply a little pressure to the winder is as a substitute for the pressure the spring should be exerting and is not. Your pressure is transferred all through the train to the escape wheel and balance as if there were no spring, which is why you get a period of ticking as long as you maintain the pressure. </p><p><br /></p><p>This assumes there is nothing but neglect wrong with it. Worth a try, I&#039;d say. You cannot actually harm it this way. Like all things there are tricks of the trade to make things easier. And a lot cheaper. If it works at least the old watch can have a last run before being scrapped.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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