Accurist ETA 2409 service and repair

I will be doing a few of these posts in the coming months, they will not be very ‘wordy’ but should make a good reference for watch movement tear downs.

This beautiful Accurist Dive watch came in with a broken main spring and the instruction to relume the dial and hands. One owner from new, so a very genuine piece of horology history.

The first job was to dismantle the watch and see what the running issue was, it runs but the spring is obviously snapped. The first job is to actually get into the very tight case back, a few have tried over the years by the look of it. I opted to convert a Wittnauer opening spanner to exactly fit the case back.

 

Now it’s time to methodically take it apart.

 

Once the parts were cleaned and the new main spring had arrived from May at Northern Watch & Clock Supplies  (a great resource for old parts), it was time to start the rebuild.

 

Once I happy with the running and regulation stage one, it’s time to strip the old lume carefully and relume.

 

At this point (assembly) it became apparent that the glass had been swapped at some point and the tension ring was too small for the dial, after a quick search I was lucky enough to be able to find a perfect fit wide tension ring, but the internal measurement was wrong. So I modified the inner diameter to exactly fit the new dial.

 

Time to put the finished watch back together ready to go home, I also noticed that the date wheel was not turning properly once assembled. Close inspection showed that someone had replaced a movement holding screw at some point, it was too long, so once in place was touching the back of the date wheel, one shorter screw later we are good to go.