Month: September 2022

I have two fossil watches with dead batteries. Both have sat neglected for years. I just don’t wear watches any more.

Years ago, my oldest found them and liked the look. He asked to wear one and didn’t care that it didn’t work. But when he left to college, he left the watch.

My second oldest then took an interest in the watches, but he did care that they worked. Plus he wanted the band adjusted. Well, he kept persisting and his persistence paid off since I finally fixed both of them.

But fixing them wasn’t as easy as changing a battery. I wish.

I had forgotten that the more expensive watch had been tossed onto the bed, probably one too many times, and a tiny hand popped off. This tiny hand, eventually knocked off the other tiny watch hands, these watch hands then got jammed in the seconds hand, bent it, which then got stuck against the minute hand and the watch no longer worked

I removed the mechanism from the housing and dumped the tiny hands on the countertop. When I say tiny, I mean tiny, like smaller than a typical wood sliver, tiny. And like a wood sliver, I opted for using tweezers to try handling them.

First problem, I didn’t create a work area and was just working on the watch at the kitchen counter. Not a good idea.

First tiny hand fell off a couple times and I kept grabbing it with the tweezers. The hand is slightly triangular and sits proud due to the collar that is used to attach it to the mechanism. When I grabbed it with the tweezers one time… Poof!!!! It was gone!

I looked all around the work area, knowing not to move. But I just knew the tiny hand was gone. While I felt gutted about that fail, I pressed on.

It was time to get more serious. I asked to have things brought to me to set up a proper work area. I didn’t want to get up in case it had landed on my clothes. With the help of a light, tweezers, magnifying glass and patience, I got the tiny hands reseated properly. I bent the other hands so the movement was unrestricted. But I was bummed that the tiny hand was gone.

Annalisa offered to help look for the tiny piece along with my daughter. My daughter found it almost immediately! It was right on top of my pants in the middle of my thigh – I was right not to move. What an amazing little girl!

I got the last hand installed, installed the battery, cleaned the case and reassembled it. Did I mention how tiny those hands are? That was bad, but I sighed in relief that all I had to do with the other watch was change the battery and add some links to the watch band. The watch band is not super easy nor super hard to remove links, it just needs the proper force to remove the pins.

Finished!

My son came home later and tried on the watch. He said, it’s a little big, can you adjust it? I was laying in my bed, relaxing and said sure, I decided to see if the micro adjusters would be enough for him. They’re spring loaded, but I’d be careful. As I was adjusting, my daughter climbed up on the bed to see what her daddy was doing. The watch moved in my hand ever so slightly and…. It’s gone! The micro adjuster got free from the housing with the movement and the spring sent it flying.

It took a while, but I actually found the tiny part. It’s really hard to explain how tiny these parts are. This part was smaller than all screws in all cell phones I’ve worked on. It’s small like saw dust.

Anyway, getting that micro adjuster back together was a super high stress fix for me. The spring sent this tiny piece flying twice more, each time ratcheting up the stress and fraying my nerves. There’s probably some easy way to do it with some tool that I don’t have, but I was just using my fingernails.

Finally…. Success.

Doctors say I should be limiting my stress… 🤔

Here’s the watch that was all jammed up from the tiny hands that fell off. Tic tic tic.