Basic watchmaking tips – Hand removal and installation

Hand removal and installation is a topic I’ve wanted to cover for a while, and it is a task that can often cause those new to watchmaking some difficulty. It’s also a task that can be fraught with danger to the hands and dial, so it’s one that seems simple but deserves some respect when doing the task.

I’ll start with hand removal, and I’ll show the tools that I use. Tweezers are the first thing – all hands are handled with specific tweezers made for hands that have highly polished…

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The mysterious Speedmaster hour counter

I’ve been meaning to put together some information about one of the features of Speedsters that seems to generate the most questions – the hour counter. I’ve posted details of this in various places over the years, but since questions about this function keep coming up, I wanted to consolidate it all in one thread.

There are often questions about how it’s not centered, why it isn’t accurate, why it creeps when the chronograph isn’t running, so I wanted to show some details of how this…

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