My tiny screwdrivers and other tiny bits came this morning. This allowed me to destroy my little friend the Bulova 5AR.

Despite attempting to pry the balance cock off carefully, it'd been sitting there for 70 years and cut loose with a surprising amount of energy. This caused the balance cock to jump out of the movement and stretch the hairspring. It ain't gonna tell time no way no how without another hairspring and that there hairspring is... minute.

Hairsprings, by the way, are removed with the world's smallest crowbars.

These are Horotec, and like $30 a pair.

The thing is a delightfully well-jeweled movement. Here's a little platen with the cap jewels for the fourth, third and second wheels.

I should have had something there for scale. The largest dimension is probably like 4mm.

here's the motive power for a little movement like this.

When you pop the top you can get the mainspring out. Mainsprings are the things that tend to wear out over time. This one is, in fact, worn out. Nobody wants to work on little movements like this anymore and I can't say I blame 'em. It's frustrating to be ever so careful and then FWIP the hairspring is irrevocably bent.

In the end, here's what you're left with:

I keep the wheels, the screws, the stems and the main plates. They're mostly trophies at this point; none of it is likely to be useful again but watchmakers are hoarders.

I also did some work on some Chinese movements. Trying to figure out what they are; I think I've got two or three different fake Chinese Miyota movements but I'm not sure. One of them is a "chronograph" but the center seconds is always on, the bottom dial appears to advance hours and the start/stop and reset plungers advance the left and right wheels respectively... by like ten minutes. It's kinda weird. It's like someone put a lot of effort into taking a non-chronograph movement and putting "chronography" bits on it to put in a fake Omega Speedmaster. The thing keeps surprisingly good time, although it only lasts about twelve hours. In observation of primum non nocere I left it alone. Even made the plungers work again.

So the rabbit's features are embroidered and I've sewn the backing on. I was kind of inspired by this video to try a few things and well . . . I'm pretty conflicted. I already asked the person who I promised this to, when it's done, if I could experiment with it and they gave me the go ahead. My conflict is as follows.

On the one hand, I can quilt and have the quilt stitches be the features for the tree, bushes, and grass, which is what I wanted to give a shot. The threads will really stand out on the back because they won't blend in. Which might be okay, because the back isn't really a feature, but now that I have all of this pieced together, I kind of don't like this plan anymore.

I could undo the backing, embroider the tree, bushes, and grass, and then redo the back, but that's also a lot of work.

The rabbit is too big and doesn't resemble my drawing, which is kind of okay. The ground however, if you look closely, is floating though. I don't know how I feel about that.

Right now, I feel more negative and tired about this project than I feel positive and energized, so I'm gonna sit on it for a few days and see how I feel down the road.

Meh.

OK I finally uploaded some pics, y'all!

The scarf:

Haven't made much more progress here, not that it would show, but here you go!

The hat:

Still just a brim, but I am happy to have gotten that far and still have not decided what to do past this point. Checked out a stitch dictionary from the library for some ideas, but haven't settled on any one thing yet.

The embroidery stitch sampler:

Have two more of those flowers to do and am dreading even starting them for some reason.

Pure evil:

Full gallery in case anyone give a toot: https://imgur.com/a/5QJIzaa