IWC Cal 44 Watch Balance Staff Replacement

In this video I attempt (unsuccessfully) to replace the roller table on the new balance staff, breaking a pivot in the process. I've rewatched this video several times starting at 26:00 and I have yet to figure out exactly what broke the pivot. I think that the stake or anvil that I was using was too shallow and when I hammered the balance staff into the roller plate the pivot on the roller plate side was pressed down into the hole in the anvil and crushed against the bottom of that hole, but I still need to investigate that to know if that's what happened or not. Several viewers including Paul have left comments that I should have centered and locked my staking plate using my centering punch before hammering with workpiece in the staking tool, which is absolutely correct. But the reason I didn't do that was I knew what I was doing was a hack because I was trying not to damage the impulse jewel, which is off-center itself.

In any case, this was a lot of fun! 😂😂😂 Thanks very much to Mark Lovick for his masterful video that I referenced. This is indeed the joy of watch repairing! (18:08)!

Part I of my video is here:
https://youtu.be/3-brIrZY4G0

Mark Lovick's full video that I referred to in my video is here:

Fitting a new balance staff to a vintage 1940s cyma www military watch.

https://youtu.be/vIQvAm4GC5U

Mark Lovick refits the roller table in his video starting at 14;55 in his video (https://youtu.be/vIQvAm4GC5U?t=895). I note that he does it with the roller table on top, not on bottom, and using an appropriately-sized punch that is surely correctly centered.

I made a dumb mistake at 8:48 in my video. I didn't think that I had a small enough punch to connect with the top plate of the roller without smashing the impulse jewel. But I did have such a punch, as you can see at 08:48, I just didn't realize that punch would work. I incorrectly thought that the punch would eventually hit the impulse jewel and break it. But had I pressed down on the top plate with that punch correctly centered the entire roller would have moved down and the punch would not have contacted the roller jewel. In retrospect that is very obvious to me, but at the time I decided I should flip the balance wheel over and press from the other side. That was not the correct thing to do and everything that I did after that was wrong.

I have now received two more balance staffs and will solve this in a subsequent video!

#watchmaker #comedy #restoration #vintage #IWC