# Has Anyone Investigated Getting New Coils Made?



## Who. Me? (Jan 12, 2007)

It's been bugging me a bit that the biggest downside of tuning fork watches is the availability of spares or replacements, particularly coils.

I've put an Omega f300 in for repair at the mo, and have had to sacrifice a cheaper f300 for the parts (which is what it was bought for).

Seems strange that no-one seems to have investigated getting coil-bobbins wound or re-wound to repair faulty coil modules, or has anyone tried this?

Does anyone know the specs of the coils? (Windings and gauge of wire?)


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## Silver Hawk (Dec 2, 2003)

It would be prohibitively expensive to have coils re-wound and virtually impossible without the correct, original winding gear.

Over the last 20 years, I've had many coil rewinds done for the magnetos on my vintage bikes. I've even done some rewinds myself on my lathe. The going rate for a magneto rewind today is about Â£140. Vehicle magnetos are obviously considerably bigger than accutron / esa coils but the windings of a coil and the secondary windings of a magneto are not dis-similar. The copper wire on a magneto's secondary windings are about the diameter of a human hair. The accutron coil wire is even thinner.

I cant image anyone doing this without the original equipment. Likewise, no-one is making new coils for Hamilton electric watch balances....again, virtually impossible without the correct winding gear and formers.


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## strange_too (Feb 19, 2007)

It's not easy retooling, getting the drawing and bearing the set up costs etc. Let alone finding someone who used to do it, that will do it again for you.

The guy that use to rebuild the mag's on the Bentley's I used to restore, was a retired guy and he used to work 1-2 days a week when needed.


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## Silver Hawk (Dec 2, 2003)

Here you are Who.Me?, this will get you started.









Bulova Test Rig


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## Griff (Feb 23, 2003)

Silver Hawk said:


> Here you are Who.Me?, this will get you started.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Funnily enough this is just the sort of thing you could get done in India in places like Mumbai.

They believe in fixing ANYTHING and put it into practice.

It is unbelieveable what they will fix and what later stays fixed


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## Who. Me? (Jan 12, 2007)

I'm amaze that could register current at microamperes, the components all look like they came from a hardware shop. Must have big internal losses?

Still not entirely convinced that coils that coil bobbins would be seriously expensive to manufacture, if done in a run of a couple of hundred, say.

There are a few companies that seem to specialise in short-runs and prototyping of micro-coils for recording equipment etc. One lists coil-bobbins as a product.

Can't really make a speculative enquiry without knowing the specifications though (gauge and number of turns).

Might be uneconomical whilst complete coil assemblies can still be found for less than Â£20.00, but even those will break one day.

Reliable spares might put these watches back into the limelight. People wouldn't have to be so cautious about buying them.

They're too fascinating to just let them die.


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