Leaderboard

Looks like Cousins has it. https://www.cousinsuk.com/sku/details/eta-parts-search/eta926301404l1230

I picked up a bunch of ex retail display stands from ebay. I snagged 30 of them for six quid, which I thought was a suitable price for displaying a bunch of 404 club watches. They are a little scruffy in the sense that some of them still have sticky residue from the old price stickers, and some even had the original stickers still attached, so I thought why waste those. Here are eight mechanicals and one bizarracle, from the 404 club, for your amusement. I'll clean up the rest of the sticky mess from these and probably leave them blank, although I might print a small detail card for each one I display. Oh.. and for those of you who were wondering if I was managing to keep the new watch bench immaculately clean... well mostly, but there is a fair bit of clutter on it at the moment.

Okay. I ended up (for now) removing mean time screws, the ones not near the arms. That did it for rate. It is currently +20 s/d dial down and -20 s/d dial up. I will likely end up looking for some smaller gold balance screws to use so I can leave all four mean time screws on the balance. I could reduce weight by filing some of the bigger screws but really don’t want to since they are gold. Thank you for everyone’s help! I may have eventually stumbled upon the cause but would it would have taken substantially longer. This is an excellent example of the importance of stopping when baffled and seeking advice on this forum…what a great gift to both get help and provide it.

So you're from Switzerland where you currently located? You're probably aware that when you start off in any field like the engineering field you don't just start at the top you start at the bottom and get the basic theories down as you work your way up. So for instance an automatic watch is the manual watch with an automatic attached to it. Sometimes its integrated in all is one thing but a lot of times it's a separate attachment. So everything in Mark's course on mechanical watches still applies to the automatic watch. It just that you have to start somewhere and it's easier to start with the basic mechanical watch not having all the complications of the automatic watch.

That is the PDF I have. It is an extract from Kand D catalogue. Various sites try to sell it to people for upto £40 ! The other books are really hard to find, and not at reasonable prices Why are wTch repair books so hard to get? is it because all potential authors now use YouTube? but a good diagram sometimes is much better than a view of someone's fingers on a screen with a voice over ! but thanks for all answers

Aargh. Trying to get the lock symmetrical using the banking pins I messed up their position, and now it's overbanking. It looks like the pin on the fork is bent a bit, too, so who knows. Also, at some point it looks like one of the banking pins was replaced, they are different. One was frozen, but screw loosening fluid got it freed up. These pins have been considerably messed with over the years, I can tell from the condition of the screw slots. This is definitely not the watch to be practicing adjustment on, the list of problems is almost endless, but you do what you've got to do. Start from scratch, try again.

Ah... its called a Shifenmei Roller Watch and it is certainly one of the quirkier modern watches in the 404 club. Not that the 404 club is short of quirky watches of course. The company (Shifenmei) have a website here -> https://shifenmeiwatch.com/ I'm not sure who exactly produces the mechanism, as the only thing I needed to do when it arrived was feed it with a fresh battery, so I didn't strip it down or examine it in detail. It seems to still be in production, or at the very least some people seem to still stock it so if you want one, or something similar, or you want to see more information about it, you could try this link. https://www.adelexpress.com/product/shifenmei-full-wooden-watches-men-roller-design-business-clock-men-quartz-watch-casual-sports-male-watches-relogio-masculino/ I'm not affiliated with either of these sources, so you proceed at your own risk.

Technically you are correct (the best kind of correct), although if we are being pedantic Brevet d'invention (Fr) would be the correct French equivalent of the English word 'patent'. So Brevet is more like certificate or certified, however in this context my understanding is that '+ brevet 51482' is an abbreviation of "Swiss brevet d'invention 51482" As you say, that refers to a particular invention, function or feature of the watch that is subject to that patent, rather than the whole watch, which couldn't be subject to a single patent, (but the whole watch could be subject to some other form of design copyright or design registration certification). On a related but slightly tangential note, the patent could have been reviewed by one Albert Einstein -> https://www.ige.ch/en/about-us/the-history-of-the-ipi/einstein/einstein-at-the-patent-office This particular patent is discussed here -> https://www.vintagewatchstraps.com/fontainemelon.php This all seems to make sense in light of the Ranfft mechanism I linked to above, since the Gruen 267 is an FHF - (FHF 1144, 10.5''') and the patent is an FHF patent.

Yes they are, i was watching one on the bay last week and thought i would wait towards the end of bidding to step in. It finished at £734. Needless to say i let that one slip away.

These full plate watches are a real bear to adjust; you really have to have an escapement matching tool like the pic. Of course, they are rare, and when they come up for sale, expensive. There was a discussion here where a fellow made his own, might be of interest. With the tool, you still have to have a good grasp of the escapement function to make adjustment with a fork like that. To which section is the staff fixed?

I will be. Just now the GGF's movement gets taken apart / assembled a "thousand" times a day, so I'll wait until (hopefully) the movement runs fine. The donor (which is a younger movement) has indeed most of its polished screws in nicer condition The donor runs actually quite nice, but if I decide to use it for parts, having learned how hard it is to get / find the right timing screws, for sure those are to be kept

I think I commented up above what the problem could be? What if somebody swapped a hairspring? Hairsprings don't have serial numbers on them and as I pointed out up above somewhere if you swap a hairspring you have to match the balance wheel to that hairspring. That would be the most likely scenario as balance wheels typically do not get heavy all by themselves. Now that one screw confirmed what we suspected you can remove the opposite Screw to keep the watch poised and see how much better the timekeeping is.

If you google "V783 battery", many websites say the movement uses a 364 or SR621SW battery.

If you've never actually taken a watch apart and put it back together I would suggest purchasing a clone of a 6497 off of eBay. In other words a brand-new running watch. Then it be nice if you in a timing machine either the Chinese 1000 or 1900 works. Although the 1900 is slightly nicer. Or you could service your Rolex. The reason I always recommend purchasing a brand-new watch is for learning purposes. So in other words you are brand-new watch you wind it up you put on the timing machine you see how it's doing. Taken apart put it back together you put it back on the timing machine and who to blame? Wife kids the dog the Hootie want to blame if it's not running? Yes watch repair it looks simple but it isn't always simple depends on the individual. If you start by servicing an existing watch in unknown condition you may or may not grasp as to whether your hand eye coordination is quite as good as you think it is and maybe the reason is not running is your fault. So it helps to practice on something disposable first and work on your hand eye coordination before servicing watches. But we have had people start with a Rolex watch. I assume your Rolex watches currently running so in other words was not running afterwords and a lot of times people do better with expensive lessons like a balance complete. Otherwise I get a clone of a brand-new watch the 6497 you go to eBay their lesson $50.

Looks like you've got a runner!

Way too early to celebrate, but after working my *ss off today, GGF's movement is kinda ticking again. Replaced the two missing timing screws and brought the balance "in-time" again. Poised the balance wheel and now I've a reasonable a Dial UP and Dial Down again. Vertical positions are no good yet, but I suspect still more work has to be done on the Breguet hairspring and the messed up regulator. Amplitude could be somewhat higher too, but we may have a starting point .......

I purchased a Novoflex Castel-L from B&H Photo here in the States. Very smooth adjustment. So far I'm happy with it. It has been criticized for the way it holds the camera as well as the amount of travel per 360° turn of the adjustment knob but as I said, it's working fine for me on 1:1 macro shots.

Quite a number of makers stamped a Federal/Swiss cross on the movement. There are also a number of makers who used that cross as part of their makers mark, so as others have said, and as I suspect, the keyless work is more likely to yield a clue as to the maker. .. for example .. You may find makers marks on the hidden side of the bridges or under the balance. There is no consistent place to look unfortunately, and some movements, particularly older ones, are really difficult to place. Brevet incidentally means "Patent" so far as I am aware, and is not a particular manufacturer. For example this piece that google provided when I searched for Brevet watch

If it's spring loaded, it's just a "normal fitting" ? What I'd do, is make sure the crown is screwed on fully, and the stem pushed in. Then using callipers, measure the distance shown - you don't need the number, just leave the callipers at that setting. Then holding the stem in a pin vice, remove the crown and measure, from the end of the stem, the amount to remove using the callipers. Mark with a felt pen, then cut and file (to slightly longer at first), and try the fit. When happy with the fit, Loctite the crown. SEE CORRECTION BELOW

No need for anything sophisticated, the pliers cutting portion of will be fine. Measure and mark, remove, and cut. The below should help you.