Hi HB!
I recently bought a beautiful franken rolex date 15010 with a gen swiss eta 2824-2 from a fellow member on this forum. Everything was as advertised, except for the datewheel that was grossly misaligned, as such, I decided to take matters into my own hands and realign the datewheel. Turns out it was just a glued on wheel so it was fairly easy to detach and reattach in the correct position. I really only ran into problems when I reinstalled the hands on the dial, it caused me the most grief. On hindsight, I should've snapped a photo of the handstack before pulling it apart.
As you know, most of rolex date/datejust models have raised indices/markers and I realise the cannon pinion clearance may have been compromised due to the dial spacer used by the watchmaker who put the timepiece together. I find myself having to bend the minute hand in order to clear the height of the raised markers, but as you can imagine, i had to do the same for the second hand. It was most frustrating when I thought I had it right but discovered the next day when I was enjoying the watch on my wrist that the hands would get stuck at the 25 min mark.
I had to redo it and now everything is fine, but my question here is whether the best practice is to simply pin down the hands on the pinion as much as possible? Or is it to allow slack depending on the intricacies of the dial? If the latter, I notice my minute hand came loose quite easily when it was installed high enough on the pinion to avoid bumping into the markers and operated fine for time adjusting but would eventually fall off during usage.
Can any experts shed some light on this matter?
I know the land of franken/put together watches is quite murky and this sorts of problems are usually not found in all original parts watches, but some advice from the modders/rep community will go a long way in me honing my skills! Thanks.
I recently bought a beautiful franken rolex date 15010 with a gen swiss eta 2824-2 from a fellow member on this forum. Everything was as advertised, except for the datewheel that was grossly misaligned, as such, I decided to take matters into my own hands and realign the datewheel. Turns out it was just a glued on wheel so it was fairly easy to detach and reattach in the correct position. I really only ran into problems when I reinstalled the hands on the dial, it caused me the most grief. On hindsight, I should've snapped a photo of the handstack before pulling it apart.
As you know, most of rolex date/datejust models have raised indices/markers and I realise the cannon pinion clearance may have been compromised due to the dial spacer used by the watchmaker who put the timepiece together. I find myself having to bend the minute hand in order to clear the height of the raised markers, but as you can imagine, i had to do the same for the second hand. It was most frustrating when I thought I had it right but discovered the next day when I was enjoying the watch on my wrist that the hands would get stuck at the 25 min mark.
I had to redo it and now everything is fine, but my question here is whether the best practice is to simply pin down the hands on the pinion as much as possible? Or is it to allow slack depending on the intricacies of the dial? If the latter, I notice my minute hand came loose quite easily when it was installed high enough on the pinion to avoid bumping into the markers and operated fine for time adjusting but would eventually fall off during usage.
Can any experts shed some light on this matter?
I know the land of franken/put together watches is quite murky and this sorts of problems are usually not found in all original parts watches, but some advice from the modders/rep community will go a long way in me honing my skills! Thanks.
