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Actually the most controversial subject is should you buy Chinese made tools from China or Chinese made tools packed into made in Switzerland boxes with the price hiked ten fold. I also would not be surprised if we found out Moebious etc do not actually make the oils they sell as watch oils but buy them from an existing oil maker in bulk for a lot less than they sell them for to us fools to pay exorbitant amounts for. Hat coat door bye.

This little Ingersoll arrived in an almost indescribably filthy condition (and not running). It is far from perfect as the case has some corrosion and missing plating, but other than those slight age related blemishes, its looking and running not bad now.

„but you endup pushing the horizontal and vertical rates apart so thereare large differences.“ No, you don‘t push them apart. You will make hor and vert rates faster equally (about). Frank

if this was a Bulova then L I believe is 50 but they also use letter codes after that they were using Roman numbers and the 50 was 1950. did you ever notice for pocket watch can look like a wristwatch especially if it's tiny? Yes they did make wristwatches and at some point in time they also or? At some point in time a lot of not just American but a lot of companies become a name only on a Swiss movement so I don't consider them in discussions like this when you're looking it up her trying to find parts there's reference books like for instance E & J Swigart Company published a really nice book reprinted by a material house and no longer exists available as a PDF and variety of sources and published about 1952. interestingly enough somebody was asking about hairsprings I believe for this watch just the other day so I swiped an image out of the book so this tells us is the book was published and 52 and the watch was in the book it existed before 52. One of the problems for watch identification is the usually use material guides which are actually very poor for watch identification and lead the lots of mistakes. Fortunately most people won't care or notice the mistakes. But that does mean you have to have a parts book that covers the time span that you're looking for which is why a lot of watches when you look them up you won't find them at all because the parts books are early. so doing a quick search in my computer I really prefer PDFs over physical at least for the computer search looks like Waltham had a material guide in 1954. They also a separate book listing the serial numbers you have to go all the way to the back supplemental pages to get for instance the one that's attached you'll notice the letter L is not in reference to any date or time. so it looks like the unhelpful answer is later than the 40s and before 1952 so we narrowed it down to a 10 year span roughly. I think that's the best you going to do and yes people like to see pictures because we don't actually know what every single watch looks like and it's a watch repair discussion group at least I for one love pictures of movements went looking for a picture of the movement found a picture and may be a better description of the serial numbers https://mb.nawcc.org/threads/waltham-750b-needs-tlc-s-n-p28843.81366/

you forgot natural and yes were still using natural. then of course there's been some reference material that indicates that the natural oils were the very best who cares that they were really short shelf life. where it should be or not lubrication is probably the number one controversial subject of all time in watch repair. One of the reasons for this is proof how do you know you're doing it right. This means that people have opinions and when you have people with opinions then you can have disagreements. up until we have these modern newfangled timing machines that measure amplitude using wrong lubricants how would you know. Then we watch is sealed up how would you know if you lubrication is failed until you get around the servicing a watch and if you have a lot of watches you may never get around to servicing it again. As opposed to you put her on timing machine and think all my that looks really bad that some clue perhaps that you lubrication was wrong choices. And yes there are other groups out there at least in the past are getting a little better about it where basically lubrication discussions were forbidden because of well opinionated people. if you really want to see something weird going find a catalog of tools in the 60s and look at the price of things and then compare other things in the 60s and see how much they went up. As far as I can tell the Swiss just raise their prices they never go down ever and they probably I've never actually looked at this but the rise probably faster than anything else on the universe. Oh and the quality of tools seems to be decreasing. then you look at the Swiss tool distributors I think for the most part they do tell you or at least hand that they're just old distributors the most part they don't make their tools. Which means the Swiss will buy their tools where with her cheapest which is China right now. Then a course they put them in those pretty yellow probably made in Switzerland boxes and need to recoup the cost of printing with all that yellow ink I'm sure that yellow ink is really expensive and that's why the tools were expensive. my two cents on this you are wrong about who makes the oil. I suspect they do make the oil in little tiny batches versus trillions of gallons needed for the automobile industry which is one of the reasons is so damned expensive. then they take the tiny batches of oil and package them on really tiny little bottles which of course as the cost of everything. Although one of those tiny the bottles will last you a very long time. Unfortunately lubrication in horology has very special properties which unfortunately also seems to come in a very expensive price. So for instance if they don't make their oil who does detail at how one experiment run out to the local automotive store and buy the cheapest oil he can and lubricate all your watches with them and then see how it performs now and five years you can come back to us with the results. Until is how stupid we are for using expensive Swiss oil unless of course your watch disintegrates then well maybe it isn't that expensive after all. Oh and then there's the other minor problem with lubrication. Moebius is the preferred choice so that's basically the only one we can buy not entirely there some other brands out there. But often times there totally lacking in anything resembling specifications. Especially if you get away from some of the Swiss oils and go to horological oil on Amazon r eBay for instance it's really cheap but what exactly is it. oh if you want to save money here's a popular brand and its cheap https://www.hswalsh.com/product/oil-superfine-wrist-watches-10ml-economy-ho277

Fashion watches models do not mean anything. You need to open the caseback and identify the mov.t used there. If you're unabel to identify yourself, post a good picture here. That being said, sometime stuck quartz mov.t can be restarted with an electromagnetic impulse/

I found something you might find interesting not a joke

So, Rich, mineral oil or synthetic? I know what my 2 stroke weed wacker likes, so I think I’ll use the same on my watch.

Hi, I teach watchmaking to complete beginners at Epping Forest Horology Centre, close to Epping and this is one of the lessons on the BFG 866. I wanted to show my class a classic pin pallet (Roskopf) movement and how to service it, as many watchmakers won't touch these watches as they hold no monetary value. Turn the setting lever screw 1 to 1 and a half turns to release the winding stem A piece of watch paper or small plastic jiffy bag to protect the dial, whilst removing the hands The driving pinion is part of the friction fitted minute wheel on top of the barrel. This work in a similar way to a friction fitted canon pinion to set the watch hands Remove the keyless work: setting lever, held in place by the setting lever screw, screwed from the other side of the mainplate, then the yoke, which sits on top of the clutch (castle) and also the winding pinion. I have three other lessons on this movement that cover bringing the watch 'into beat' as well as taking apart the friction fitted minute wheel from the barrel, lubricating and staking back on to achieve the correct friction setting and finally how to remove the centre seconds wheel safely and refit using a staking set. Many people leave the friction fitted minute wheel on top of the barrel, not realising the amount of old grease that can't be cleaned out from it, as well as not removing the wheel of the centre seconds arbor and again not cleaning out the pipe which has old grease inside. Hope you enjoyed the tutorial? More to come....

Yeah, that's Dr. Tillwich. I think he was the one who recreated that sorta famous Elgin synthetic oil. You can get some of the products in the US, Cas-Ker has the LGN grease, and Perrin in Canada carries the oils. And there's always Etsy Cheers!

I too have a PDF of Swigart - I should have looked before answering ! The only Waltham wristwatches I've come across have used Swiss movements. I have a small collection of 16S Waltham pocket watches - beautifully made and great quality. I think I'll try to get a wristwatch with a Waltham movement.

While I wait for Coca Cola to hopefully free the ratchet screw on my Elgin movement, I tried my hand at servicing a 66 year old dollar pocket watch that certainly wasn’t made with being serviced as a goal. Tore down the movement, cleaned and lubricated. Rather fidily getting it put back together given the poor quality of all the parts. Thought I’d share some pictures and the result.

unfortunately from time to time other lubricants will do bad things also. I remember a long time ago seeing a story of a clock shop using D5 which does have natural lubricant in there with the mineral oils. It was going to one bottle a month and they determined that basically one bottle was bad because all the clocks of that time span were having issues. But overall purchasing a known brand lubrication I think you a better success than well mystery oils. actually it has two useful properties it has entertainment value for discussion groups were we can discuss wondering what it is. It also has an educational value for somebody who tried to save money to find that they get a painful lesson that this was not the way to do it. I wonder if there's a simple way to test whether it's all of oil? I'm still disappointed with my bottle as it's still superfluid in the Bob and it's as thin as water which makes me suspicious that mine is not all of oil is very very fluid. But seeing as how they have quality control issues maybe they just put whatever they have handy at the time or maybe they mix it seeing as how they don't actually tell us what it is. On the other hand maybe it's best we not actually know what it is it might be distressing if we knew.

That is a great site - where I first learned how to do dynamic poising. But, I don't see how changing the balance weight can make horizontal and vertical rates diverge ? Anyone?

This is a modern carriage clock. You can tell by the shape and style of the screws and the shape of the click and the click being black looking and not blued. The platform has been some what hacked about it should have four screw round hols to hold the platform (what a mess) From what I have found out it looks like A C G is the trademark of Huber (WJ)

Well, thank you one and all for the welcome advice.patience and perseverance won the day! what I learned: check all components under magnification.Take a break! also I didn’t Take into consideration the side shake and end shake engineered into the components when assembling. thanks once again all. tonyg

Running on the bench...keeping good time. BTW, it is sitting on a movement holder I printed specifically for this watch.

Fascinating reading Graham Another cool looking watch Andy . I missed on ebay a similar looking Marvin a few weeks back. Not having much luck on there at the moment but i have got something coming in line with your 70s style.

Eyup matey. I use 50:1 red lube synthetic petrol mix in my old brick cutter with an additional lead additive to stop any pre ignition . I thought just dipping the whole watch, case, dial hands everything in a jar full of the mix pop some anodes in there and connect up to the mains and bingo . One cleaned, fully lubed and lead lined watch ready to wear. Problem is i wont be able to read the dial with my superman eyes. Graham sorry mate, Gert has made me think i may have been a little hard on you. Having a shitty time at the moment my father in law passed away at the week . This is how i deal with things.

Lol sorry Graham I'm just messing with you fella. The two most controversial subjects of watch repair are cleaning solutions and lubricants. I imagine always has been and always will be. If you are feeling brave or mischievous then mention either one of them. I just thought we needed a break after last week. . I hope you found what you where looling for in previous posts

Update! Finally got the battery needed for the movement, and is running superbly. Dial has a few chips off the paint, the case is still rough, but cleaned up nicely. Crystal is not in the best of shape, but personally believe it’s original. Also found an old magazine ad that touted this model as Wylers first delve into electronic watches. Not sure if I am reading it correctly. Sold for 110 dollars in 1969. If anyone could confirm or deny Ide be greatly thankful.

Great walkthrough! I think you would have got a much better amplitude if you replaced the mainspring and a better power reserve. I know some Seiko purists like to keep original mainsprings, which is fair enough. I'd love to see some more walkthrough's in the future, as you clearly have a knack for presenting it in a clear way. Nice!

I have no idea about the market price but an idea about what is behind the dial. For me it is a Junghans with an W146 movement. These kind of watches for marine usage were still being manufactured years after WW2. If the housing is of steel instead of brass it might be an after WW2 version. The movement is quite simple.

Looks ok but I would sk to see the movement just to be sure it not been tinkered with.

Hello @AndyHull, Thank you very much for the link and resource. Very interesting history! I had no idea...but it makes sense what they did - in the period of military emergency that has existed since the end of WWII in China - to mandate that timepieces nationwide share a homologous movement, thus eliminating the need for watch repair technicians to waste time mastering more than one. Very pragmatic and very CCP. Before the Communist Party came to power, China wasn't really timepiece oriented. I dimly remember visiting the clock pavilion in the Forbidden City about 20 years ago. It was filled with ornate clocks that foreign nations had given to the (then) ruling class in the hopes of currying favorable trade terms with them. This would be gifts presented to the Empress Dowager, Cixi (1835 - 1908) and her string of chosen successors, which included the Last Emperor of China, Puyi (1906 - 1967). One of their most sacred duties was to perform planting and harvest oriented ceremonial rites in the Temple of Heaven, which was constructed in 1406 for that purpose. When I visited it, you could just walk around the place. There were no crowd and no security to speak of. Back to the Hall of Clocks in the Forbidden City. The Hall was empty, dusty and not very well lit. Some of the larger desk and mantle clocks were under simple Plexiglas barriers, others just scattered around on tables and there were also a few floor-standing models (I think). If I remember right, there were little yellowed cards that said things like "Gift from Ambassador of France, 1892" with no further details. There was nobody around. Nothing was running. There were no tour guides or tape recorded tours back then. Consequently, it was definitely a "meh" experience, but I wonder how things look (and how I'd react now that I've evolved into a "watch geek") after China has exploded economically - which usually creates the kind of prosperity that results in people having enough resources and free time to become clock and watch geeks. I bet things have changed dramatically, both in terms of setup and interest level. Looking at recent photos, it seems they've spruced up the place, but the clocks all look the same: BTW - I believe that name for this "unified" movement is also likely to have been a very clever Chinese homonym, which is one of the hallmarks of a language of only 800 sounds and tons of consequent puns, play-on-words and humor...as well as several examples of well-intentioned portmanteau-style words like the Standard Chinese sounds for "Coca-Cola" and "America", for example. The word for Comrade in Standard Chinese is, phonetically speaking, "Tong Je Men", or "Comrade Perrson", which can sometimes be reduced in common speech to the short form "Tong Je". When I was living in Beijing, it was very common for people to hail each other in this way, especially if they did not know each other that well. I remember that the older generation used the term habitually, especially if they were Communist Party members or had been participants in military action. The verbalization for the name of this watch movement is "Tong Gee" which is phonetically extremely close to "Tong Je" and it would only take a tiny change in the vocalization of these two terms to slip verbally from one to the other. I wonder if that's not an accident when you consider how important timekeeping is for a country and government that places such an emphasis on the military aspect of things, of which time management is a critical element. For instance, did you know that China has only one time zone? Everything in China runs according to Beijing time. NOTE: For those of you who may wonder about how or why the above came to be and how a Canadian boy who grew up in Quebec and who is now living in Hong Kong could write about such things...I read Chinese and Japanese history as an Undergraduate student under a Harvard-trained Sinologist who himself had been trained by a giant in the field of Far Eastern Studies, Edwin O. Reischauer. I claim no credit - I had a great teacher, and he had a great teacher.

Well done! It is an ETA-ESA 9150 Dynotron: ESA 9150

Bought this cool piece today and wearing it out

So here it is. I couldnt wait to post this as I'm over the moon with it. I've wanted one since i started collecting. Would you believe i asked the universe for it ( the right way ) two weeks ago. So a couple of weeks ago i was at n.cave e.yorks carboot talking to a guy about watches . He had a couple of non descript clocks that i wasn't interested in but i asked if he had any watches. He said no not with him but at home he had a w.w.w. ( very large clue as to what is coming )wristwatch that he had had fixed but had broke again. I asked if he wanted to sell it and if so bring it in two weeks time when i come back up this way to see my sister. He said ok. He told me it had a blackface and he thought it was an Ingersoll. I wasn't aware Ingersoll made www watches and had never seen one so i thought maybe he's mistaken. So anyway keen to go back yesterday morning, i mooched around the carboot for an hour taming my anxiety and excitement ( i dont like to rush a universal gift, its not respectful and can get taken away as quickly as its given ). In doing that i also picked up a lovely 404ish clock. Eventually i made my way over to the guy's inside stall. Now then matey how's you i said , gud he replied, I've brought you something. He searched through a carrier and i was thinking it cant be much of a watch to chuck it in a carrier bag. A minute of searching and i thought hes forgot it never mind. Ahha he says pulls it out and hands it to me ( the watch ) . I look at it and look at him. Then I look at it, and I look at it , and then I look at it some more. Oh crap its a w10 military watch. He tells me the mainspring has gone, i said no it hasn't, its just fully wound. Have a look inside he said if you want. I had taken a screwback remover a loupe and a piece of rodico with me. I undid the back and peered inside. Its a Record i said, oh at least i know what it is now he said. I had a little prod with the rodico, unfortunately one of the staff pivots had broken, the top one. I said what do you want for it, he gave me his price I'm not saying how much but it was cheap. I said no i cant give you that, so he came down a tenner. I said no i cant give you that either. He said I'm not taking any less that that for it, i said i know your not, your going the wrong way. He looked at me confused, i said take your first price and double it. He looked at me even more confused. Mate its worth more than double what you want , I've got to fix it but I'm happy with that if you are. He wouldn’t take double and we settled in the middle. I gave him his money, we chatted for 15 mins and then shook hands, before i left he said i think i have a couple of pocket watches at home, ill bring them next week, if you come again you can have them. Wow Universe what have i done to deserve your praise. So here it is. As far as i can tell up to now. Its a redialled record dirty dozen (possibly). The movement is the same as the Record DD, the dial serial number relates to the Record. I have yet to date it yet but the movement 022K according to ranfft started being manufactured in the 1920s. Anyone that has some serious knowledge on military watches, i would be so grateful for any help working out what i have here. Here it is i absolutely love ❤ it .

1970 Seiko 5606-7000 with hand made stamp dial. Running at 0 SPD and amplitude over 300 degrees at full wind.

Well, when testing the staff in the watch, I discovered that one of the pivots was a little too big, so I had to chuck it up and turn it down a tad bit. Now the balance is fully assembled and running in the watch. Have not put it on the timer because I want to enjoy this victory before taking any hits for erratic behavior. As noted earlier, the roller is not in great shape. I tweaked it as best I could. If there is an issue, I will blame it on the roller and not my staff!!!

OK, here it is. I dont think I gave enough of a depth on the HS side. I can put it back in the lathe and improve it. I did not do a single-pass mill. Instead, I flipped it to do the roller side. Never would have happened for me the other way. I have pretty good Levin collets, so it remained quite true after the flip. This has been extremely hard and took SO many hours. I have great respect for you professionals who do this regularly!! While fitting the roller, I noticed that some previous watchmaker crimped it...I guess to tighten the fit on the balance staff that was perhaps the wrong diameter. Anyway, while doing the fitting, it began to split at the crimps. Oh well. I think it will still work.

My go to dress watch 1967 seikomatic-p runs like a dream.

Just thought I would brag. Got my 2nd Meyers #58 Movement Holder off eBay, and I won it because it looked like crap. Well, with a good buffing wheel and a Dremel tool, here are the results.