A LUC - Chopard Pocket Watch from Bulgaria Part 2

Well the watch arrived this morning. It arrived and a repeater I ordered 8 days later from 3 states away still has not. But anyway...

This watch is turning into a cautionary tale to people wanting to dip their toe in the Bulgarian waters. The watch looked good by the pictures and the description had the usual bs of being serviced. As the seller put it "cleaned and oiled".

So far the only truth in his listing besides it being a LUC was that it was running and silver. Now running is a relative term. A car is running even if it only fires on 7 of 8 cylinders. In this case a jewel was replaced with a piece of brass with a hole in it. I should have paid closer attention to the pics.  

I went through the loose hole jewels i had and pulled out 4 i thought may work. So after consulting with my father in law and finding he had no hole jewels that were not in settings I had no choice but to move forward. His suggestion was to use my staking set to punch out the offending piece and set in the new jewel. I took off the bridge and found a stake and a stump and popped the stupid piece out. I tested the jewels on the pivot and one was too snug and another was just right. I put the jewel on the back of the bridge and actually it popped right in with a snap just using the flat back side of my tweezers. Put the bridge back and oiled the pivot. The watch started in 2 turns of the crown. 

Speaking of winding, it is fully wound way too soon. After taking it apart some the mainspring barrel seemed to not show any coils in the hole where you would pry the top off.  When I went to pry it there was a pop and the sound of a mainspring unwinding.  It seems that the mainspring is catching on the barrel lid.  I oiled the spring and may see if that helps. So now I may need to find a correct mainspring for it. 

The watch also has a broken case screw. It looks like it sheered off at the plate so now I have to extract it and find another screw. The knock on for the missing screw is that the movement rattles. Fear not though as some "watchmaker" fitted it with these nifty cork bumpers.

So there you go. A bad pivot, bad mainspring, and a broken case screw. I guess I should consider myself lucky to only have those issues. As to the "cleaning", that must not have included the case. The inside of the case lids were filthy like they had not been cleaned in decades. There is also a layer of junk I have had to scrape away on the rim of the case where the covers snap down. Anyway...here are more pics of my new project. If you decide to try this road of buying from Bulgaria, be prepared for botched and bodged job watchmaking having been done. Make sure you or your watchmaker can handle it or you will pay far more than the value in the end.

The quality of the watch is actually quite nice. The build is very well thought out and it is very easy to work on. I like being able to work with each wheel on its own without having to line up 3 or more pivots at a time when putting it back together. The bridges fit nice and snug but not so snug that you have issues separating them from the plate.I also noticed a serial under the dial. This serial matches the case number so at least it is more original than I thought. I think the watch was in the hands of a creative watch maker who did repairs with whatever materials he had available. The hands are not original I don't believe because the same material that was used to replace the jewel was used to modify the hole for the minute hand. The second hand also does not seem to sit low enough. But it does show again that a watchmaker did what he could to make the hand fit. The mainspring may have just been whatever he had and it may be wrong for the watch. It seems rather thick.