I recently serviced this beautiful vintage 1950's Zodiac Automatic moonphase calibre A. Schild (AS) 1402N for regular ClockSavant customer and tropical dial extraordinaire @nostalgic_principles. This watch is now running in top condition; however, getting there was a journey. Let's begin with the oddball markings of the past watchmaker. He put them on both the back of the watch where he wrote 1995, apparently thought it was another year so he scratched it out, then wrote 1995 again. He did a "C/O" (clean and oil?) and "CRY" to the movement, whatever that is. His message was scrawled not only on the case back, but also deep inside the movement. Next we see a gift of some organic matter under the center wheel. I assume this was a feeble attempt at center wheel stabilization as it wasn't allergy season based on the month of his servicing. Moving-on, we now see an extraordinarily worn center wheel bushing, the video (see ClockSavant Instagram page to see video) was taken during my inspection. This repair was complicated by the raised lip required by the bushing and close proximity of that lip to another wheel. Working within tight tolerances, a custom bushing was made to to fit a plate .196mm thick with a raised bushing lip of .120mm and a total diameter very close to the original hole footprint. Then, I needed to adjust the pivot hole to within thousandths of a mm to get the optimal side-shake and performance. Finally, the rotor was very loose and so a replacement automatic gear bushing was sourced and installed. After all of this, the watch is now performing exceptionally well once again.
