On My Bench - Seiko Stem Disassembly Tool - and other stuff

I finished inserting jewels into my 6309 plate and bridge and was about to put the jewelling tool away. I thought I'd check the rest of the jewels before I put the bits throught the cleaner again.

Dang! The third wheel jewel was chipped. Lucky I had an old parts movement with a decent jewel.

Out with the old and in with the sorta new. Old one sitting above the replaced one.



And now off to the cleaning machine to get this gunk out.

I picked up a couple of Seiko 6309s recently, they're to be used as donors to keep other 6309s alive.

A basic inspection revealed very dirty movements, a couple of missing screws but all of the jewels looked OK and should be fine as donors.

One of them had a broken balance staff pivot 🙁.

Oh well, they were very cheap and you takes your chances.

So what do you do when your balance staff upper pivot looks like this?



Why, you simply reverse the cap jewel of course so that the dome side is down into the setting, thus reducing that annoyingly excessive end shake!

Note that the the cap jewel now has a neat "pivot divot" in the centre 🙄.

I also has to clean it a bit so you can actually see it, it was a bit grungy 🤦.