Just Thought I'd Share

I received this very nice Longines chronograph from a client in California last year for a full service:



Equipped with a Cal. 30CH chronograph movement, with column wheel, horizontal coupling, and featuring Retour en vol. It's a beauftiful movement. Unfortunately they had been poking around inside the watch, and managed to bent the minute counter jumper, so it was not engaging at all with the minute counter:



Full service was done, so everything disassembled for cleaning - of course the set blued steel mainspring was replaced with an alloy one:



All the screws were extremely tight on this watch, and one snapped on disassembly while I was trying to remove it. Into the alum solution to dissolve the remants of the old screw away:



Took a while to find the replacement for this one, but Jules Borel came through, even though they didn't have it listed on their web site. Movement back together now, and checking the chronograph controls using the microscope:



I could not find another minute counter jumper, and ideally I would have liked to have one on hand before I tried to straighten the one on the watch, just in case it snapped. Since the cross section is thin like a ablance spring, I used the same techjniques as I would straightening a balance spring, and it didn't snap - phew! Took this shot of the movement for my client so they can see what it looks like without opening the case:



Also took a quick video for them, showing the watch running, the Retour en vol, reset, etc.:


Anyway, just thought you would like to see this one from when Longines was in it's heyday.

Cheers, Al

That is pretty damn cool! Beautiful piece.

Yes and so nice a sparklely after its bath 😉

Awesome! 👍 was anything done to the dial during service? is the first picture before/after?

First photo is as received. Other than light cleaning of loose debris, I did not touch the dial. Both the watch owner and I looked for a NOS dial for it, and at one point he was considering a redial, but I talked him out of it thankfully. I even contacted Swatch to see if they could offer a factory redial with original dies, and was told that I would be just as well off to have some dial refinishing company do it.

Cheers, Al