Vostok Komandirskie: How to fix a loose hand
After accidentally hitting my watch a few times, I noticed the minute hand was not always moving. And when taping on the watch it easily moved, as if it was loose. Considering the watch is not in a good shape cosmetically anyway, I thought I would try to fix it myself.
Now, I am not an expert when it comes to watches. When I started disassembling the watch, I accepted the risk. You just have to be very careful and make sure you are in a clean environment. To open the caseback you can use calipers to rotate the ring.
Before removing the mechanism or the crown, align the working hands to 12 o’clock. To make it easier to align them later.
To remove the mechanism first you have to remove the crown. The crown is the part where you wind the clock and adjust the time. To do that, you have to press on a tiny button that is highlighted on the image above. I found that the sim ejection bit from the iFixit toolkit is ideal. While pushing the button, you have to pull on the crown, and it will be released.
After that, use fine tweezers to pull the rubber grommet and the red spacer. After that, you have to remove the mechanism. This part can be tricky, you have to be very careful and gentle. Then you need to align the minute and hour hand, e.g. both at 12 o’clock. Then carefully with a good fine tweezer push lightly on the base of the loose hand until it cannot move freely. Afterwards place the mechanism back to the case. But don’t close the caseback yet.
After all that you need to readjust the accuracy of the watch, you can find more info on how to that HERE. When i first measured my watch, it was at +50. i managed to get it to ~ ±3. The beat error seemed to be acceptable.
