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L&R #111 Ultrasonic Cleaning Solution is a cleaner and needs to be followed up with a rinse. L&R #3 Watch Rinsing Solution is a rinse and should follow a cleaning bath. Neither is an all in one cleaner and rinse combined.

That's a tough one, I have every confidence with my battery replacement reseals in cousins gaskets, and the servicing i do on mechanical watches at this stage of my career tends to be on old watches that are splash proof at best anyway, so I don't think about that much. If you're working on modern expensive modern autos that are 50m and up, and you're promising them resealed then it might just be worth the extra expense, (If its quartz it will need to be resealed with the next battery change in a couple of years anyway, so dont worry) I dont think anything would come back to you in any time frame that you could take responsibility for, but given that some of these watches go a decade without anyone looking at them, the customer might find 8 years after the service they jump into a pool and it floods, now obviously thats not really your fault or responsibility, even if it could have been theoretically prevented with an expensive gasket that would degrade more slowly, you cant promise people that their watch will be waterproof for a decade without maintenance. so it shouldn't cause you any problems, but perhaps more of an ethical consideration for the owners of the watches and what they might face way off down the line and whether that hypothetical situation would cause you to lose any sleep. To answer more directly, as chopin says they're a bit better, but not 8 times better.

This week I took delivery of a www.brunelmicroscopes.co.uk BM1 long arm microscope. Several of you where interested in this & how I got on so I thought I'd do a review. bear in mind its written after only a couple of uses, by someone who has a few years experience on quartz but only 6 months experience on mechanical watches. Image from brunelmicroscopes Cost (including post & vat at time of writing) £219.60 First impressions where pretty good, for a couple of hundred pounds you get a well made, heavy & positive feeling microscope. you get a nice cover & some additional madnifications You can adjust the eye lenses to suit your eyes & adjust the long arm in various directions. I found three faults with the microscope, the first is if you swing the arm by 90 degrees the base is not weighty enough to support it & the unit tips over this means you have to pretty much use it directly inline with the base which gives a more limited space under which to work, especially if you adjust the eyes to suit a seated position, although once I got going I didn't notice it, it was enough. The second issues was the light got pretty hot & it didn't half make me jump when I touched the back of my hand on it, which being made to jump when your talking watches isn't the greatest of news is it! but I think this is only a matter of getting used to it as a set up The third issue was the quality of the lenses as you can see they look quite cheap & Chinese nasty & I'd like to have perhaps had something to put them in to keep the dust out of them. To work with the microscope is a joy! I mean a serious joy! my hand was a lot steadier, things where more precise. changing lense is a simple case of sliding one out & sliding the next in I found with the angle i'd set the eye lenses to gave me about 10cm of work space, which was more than enough, I didn't foul with the microscope at all. the first job I did with the microscope was to change a date when on a 255.411 from the white it was supplied with to a gold one from the watch I was repairing & I have to say I have never found doing a piece of work on a watch so pleasing. the preciseness So all in all, as a user you can see & feel this is an entry level stereo longarm microscope, but its still a long, long was out in front of an eyeglass/loupe and is a sound investment for an intermediate user & I would throughly recommend one at this price I'd give it about 7.5 out of 10. Lee