Of course to explain every detail of the method of repairing the various parts of a watch would take more space than you would allow in your journal, and hence I will not attempt to go into minute detail, except perhaps some of the more important items, and the most common things found in everyday experience. Among these are broken pivots, worn pivots (sometimes requiring new ones), worn holes in plates, and at the intersection of barrel arbor, ratch and bridge of Swiss watches, etc., which, as a rule, require common sense as much as practice, and it varies in different watches, so that the common sense rule applies the best to nearly all of these, and if you have not got common mechanical sense, then you have mistaken your calling and should do something else. In any of these repairs don't go it blind, but study your case carefully and do the best thing you study out. When there is a worn pivot hole in a plate, and one side is countersunk for oil, then have a punch rounded at the point, just the shape of the countersink (and if you have not one make one, and here is where my rule, that of making a tool as the need comes for it, comes in play), and by screwing this punch into the vise, and with a smooth, flat point punch (slightly cornered of course) in one hand and holding the plate or bridge with the other, with the countersink on the punch, have a striker tap light and quick blows, and you move the punch around on the side most worn (and one side is almost invariably worn most, throwing the wheel arbor out of upright) and close up, even a little too much, and then with a round, smooth broach enlarge it, so that it will be right size, and this leaves it hard and smooth.
Broken pivots, as I have hinted, I place the arbor in a split chuck, and if true, I drill into the staff with a drill, made from a nice piece of steel wire, the old and ordinary shape of a drill, which is a trifle larger at the cutting point than it is back of the point, and I make these as I need them, and harden simply by holding the wire in a flame till red hot, and then dash into an apple, potato, soap, or pure rubber. Which is the best of these I have as yet been unable to determine, so I use either as the most handy. Take a good, tough and small pointed graver and turn a slight center in the end of arbor I am to drill, and then by giving my lathe a back and forward motion, I begin to drill, and by the sense of feeling I can tell whether my drill is cutting or not, and if not, I have a small, smooth oilstone at hand and sharpen the drill as often as it refuses to cut, and if that drill will not cut, I make another.