Interesting.
Sorry for the long post, but you got me thinking. There's always a huge range of bench experience and skill running across time and on this forum.
Today, modern watchmakers have been professionally trained and certified. They have full access to watch material from the best makers, and must maximize both quality and profit by not repairing, but replacing with fedex 2-day delivery OEM parts wherever possible. It's the way of modernity: time is money, and it's not easy to make it on your own, or to make it pay. Certain old-school practices may even be prohibited if you do work under some manufacturers' official warranties. Don't know, but suspect it.
To me, this means the modern tech gets better at doing a smaller range of daily tasks, and may slowly lose the chops the old timers had from the necessity of making a hard living out in the middle of nowhere with no heat, under bad light, in a dirty corner of a room doing more with less because they freaking had to. There was no overnight delivery, material houses were in big cities far away, and watches (likely pocket watches) were everywhere, keeping the then modern world turning. You had to do what you had to do because there was no cavalry coming, the guy needs his watch back tomorrow, and the cost of a everyone's time was a lot less. So you did what you had to with tools like these to make it work.
I think we would all get good at straightening pivots if pocket watch balance wheels were bent every day, and we all had to do it many times a month, replacing only after the straightening and re-pivoting had been done, often making a new one on a lathe without a cross-slide when the parts bin was empty. Modernization changed all that, leading us to where we are today.
Many of us here are amateurs, many have no formal training, and we don't make a living out of repairs. A lot of us do this for fun. We don't have material accounts or "friends with parts" --or we work on stuff for which parts are no longer available, and the chance of finding a spare on eBay in less than a week is slim to none. In this odd way, we are more like our grandparents: up a creek without a paddle. I have (but have never used) one of those little brass repivoting lathes. Can you imagine using it several times a day? Those old guys did, and they got pretty damned good at it.
So, for me, the question is not what's the most efficient way to get it ticking again ASAP, but can I straighten it like those old timers? If it breaks (or, to Karl's point WHEN it does) can I repivot the damned thing with one of those little brass toys? No way, I put it in a wax chuck on a real lathe, because I'm a wuss! Can I cut a staff by hand? Still working on that; sometimes it works out well. That's what makes all of this fun for me, and it's what all these old tools remind me of.
Karl, do you have a Seitz/Bergeon wheel with all those jewels, and have you ever tried it? Your post made me imagine a jig for a staking tool to hold the staff steady in some cut-out (for the mounted wheel and table) v-notch support with a leather lining, with the off-center bend up at 12:00 and tapping a punch with finger force or the butt end of a pencil / small pair of tweezers. A micro hydraulic press. With some heat and light pressure would it work? I think the reason the jacot may break even unbent pivots is the small support surface --it's way too easy to put too much pressure on. Snap...But, if we were forced to use it every day, we would improve. But, we don't
John, if you do not yet have H.B. Fried's watch repairer's manual and a comfortable (even Chinese) stereo microscope with good soft lighting from above and below, and those little slot tools for spring work (though good tweezers in PERFECT condition work too) get those before straightening your next hairspring, and pick one that you don't care about. We all know about the nerves. It's WAY easier when you don't care what happens. You'll get the hang of it...
