In my ongoing efforts to learn watch repair, I have come upon a swiss movement that is rather abnormal, at least to the eye of someone who has been working with mostly american watches. As seen in the images, it is an uncompensated balance with no pallet fork and an abnormal looking escapement wheel. The balance staff is also wider at the bottom with a cut in slit of sorts.I was told by a watchmaker that watches like this are very difficult to repair and even more difficult to maintain long term, though our time was cut short before I got as to why. I’m guessing that it has magnets in the balance wheel (the 3 studs) which get regulated by the other 3 studs on the movement to regulate the watch, though I could be completely off there. On to repairing it, when everything was assembled, the watch would run for a few seconds when shaken, but would then stop. Its very dirty and I’m not sure how to go about cleaning a watch that seems this old and foreign to me. My questions are: how does this thing even work with no pallet fork, the abnormal escape wheel, etc.? How can I place the balance wheel and hairspring to ensure its in beat? Why are these difficult to repair? The hairspring is abnormally shaped at the end, is this a kink or is it just another abnormality with this kind of watch? And finally, are there any resources I can use to learn more about this, and how can I attempt to fix this thing up? I apologize for the number of questions, but I’m extremely curious about this watch. Please let me know if more pictures or anything are needed!







