I'm taking a look at this one for a friend. He reported that the crown tends to slip back in when setting the hands. I'm suspecting a broken setting lever spring, but we'll see. In addition, there's a chip in the crystal. This watch was serviced by a friend of the family many years ago.

Although presented as a Waltham movement, this is in fact an ébauche on the AS 1700/1701 movement. Here is the AS1700 service manual. (source)

First hurdle: the caseback is snap-on, and the previous watchmaker snapped the lid back on such that the knife slot fell between the lugs. There's no way to get a case knife into it without marring the lugs. I grabbed a square scalpel blade and gently worked it into the caseback seam with a rubber mallet until the caseback let go.

Wow, the rotor reads "100JEWELS". Prior to 1950-ish, movement manufacturers apparently stuffed movements full of jewels to inflate the jewel count. Most of the "extra" jewels in this movement are on the automatic rotor to reduce friction as it rotates.

Anyway, the 2nd hurdle was freeing the now loose rotor from the movement ring. I wasn't sure whether the movement ring was split in two or if the assembly comes apart another way. After a lot of thinking and prying, I eventually dislodged the "upper half" of the movement ring to free the rotor.

Once the dial was off, the setting lever spring fell out. NOS replacement ordered off eBay. The rest of the disassembly was uneventful. Most of the jewels are bone dry. There are pools of still-wet oil under the bridges. Our previous watchmaker obviously oiled the pallet fork pivots as well: lack of experience, or is this an attempt to prevent knocking?

The mainspring has a slight bulge to it. Suspect it was inserted by hand. It's not enough that I'm worried, so I won't replace it.

TODO