A lot of people do not know that lubricants expire. I’m being dead serious. I’ve met several watchmakers who did not believe in replacing their oils until the bottles run out (their bottles could be older than you and me combined).

Hands should be handled by their edges, so do not grip them on the flat part of the hand. Yes, it's not always easy to handle hands only by their edges, but that is the way I do it - no one said this would be easy! There is no steadfast rule that is set in stone but there are RECOMMENDED procedures. Of course there are clearly some binary things we do and do not want to do. FIXODROP EPILAME- Although not an oil or lubricant, I couldn't talk about oils without mentioning Epilame.

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If that’s the case, how would you deal with oil accidentally touching the main plate, such as if you accidentally get some escapement grease 9415 onto the view hole in the main plate when oiling the pallet jewel? More than likely if it's a vintage quartz it will require servicing. Start a new discussion with your quartz watches with pictures the movement So they can find you servicing information. MOLYKOTE DX- Greasy paste normally used for setting systems and other high friction areas. Lots of brands for a LONG period of time have used Molykote for their setting systems because of reliability. Molykote wasn't even originally designed for watchmaking use! HP 1000 or HP 1300 - (Fun fact, HP stands for High Pressure) Heavy synthetic oils. Generally used for high pressure/torque and low speed areas. Commonly used for: Barrel arbors, center wheel, and third wheel. Some brands will also use this for the setting system and calendar mechanisms. There are differences between HP 1000 and HP 1300 (such as viscosity etc.) but we’ll go into that another time.

Brands such as Breitling and Rolex have since rejected and discontinued using Molykote. As of the late, the reasoning is because it contaminates the cleaning solutions. This also eliminates the risk of accidentally “wiping” a small bit of abrasive material that will permanently scratch your glass surface. Rodico will age in time, discontinue the use of a bar once it starts leaving a residue behind. Some watchmakers swear that a well kept bar of Rodico can stay fresh and last for more than 10 years, while others who use it religiously can easily go through a single bar within a few months time. I use Horotec F Pattern tweezers for handling hands - these are stainless steel and have large flat highly polished tips.

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It seems from what I hear, rodico is so effective that it has allowed watchmakers to cut corners at various steps. Examples are oiling; if you get a mini drop on the periphery of the jewel, careful rodico can correct it rather than cleaning up the whole jewel and reapply. Also not using the finger cots that someone mentioned here already, doable because at the end you could remove the marks with... rodico! Certain positions like in the timing machine results above for you had random dots sort of? One of things nice when you getting weird stuff from the timing machine is to listen to the sound of the watch. That's the downfall of the Chinese timing machines they don't have audio like when she typically does. When you listen to the audio and you're having rubbing bumping hitting issues a lot of times you can actually hear that. Hairspring bumping in the something can be quite musical the sound it makes for instance balance wheel a course bumping in the things you'll hear that a lot of the times the timing machine season shows you that but if you listen often times you could hear there's a problem After you fixed all the problems how does the watch look in various positions? Is amazing what defects can do to screw up timekeeping and until the watches running in good condition it's hard to tell if the balance has a problem or not from a poising error. Then this is a modern screwless balance more than likely it does not have a poising error unless somebody's modified it. The factory poised it within the specifications of the watch it may not be perfect but it still should be reasonably poised unless you're having other issues which you are having. So now how does it look in various positions that you fixed all the problems? When getting oil from the actual bottle- make sure you do not contaminate it. You have no idea how many watchmakers I’ve seen with contaminated bottles that still had 9/10 of the bottle to go. Use latex gloves to avoid adding new dirt and oils to your freshly cleaned watch parts and to prevent the Rodico from getting soiled faster.