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Hi guys, As many of you are aware Roland Ranfft passed away earlier this year which is a massive loss to the world of watchmaking. I used his database of watch movements on a weekly, sometimes a daily basis to gain info on mainspring sizes, hand pipe sizes, and the like. I've also bought a lot of watches from the auction part of the site and when I say a lot, probably close to £5000 worth of watches over the past three or four years. I found buying from the site was a lot more pleasurable and friendly than some eBay deals I've done and was never disappointed by what I received and a lot of the time absolute bargains. What I've found over the last three or four years is that chronograph watches, both hand-wound and automatics have increased in value about three-fold in that short space of time, as well as some automatics I've bought from the site, as well as from German and Swiss eBay. Some Valjoux 7750s I bought four years ago for about £150 from the Ranfft site will now fetch close to £400 to £500. Not sure why chronographs have risen in price so quickly. I bought some Landeron 51s and 248s chronograph watches in working order for £90 four years ago and now they'll fetch at least £300 to £400. What on earth has happened for them to increase by so much? Does anyone know? Watchmaking tools have gone the same way. I was buying JKA Feintaster bench micrometers from Germany and Switzerland three or four years ago for £90 and now they'll go for £400 to £500. I saw one go the other day for over £1000 from a seller called 'watchmaker-lathe' from the Czech Republic who seems to have an endless supply of quality watchmaker tools. I think he's got a magic bag he pulls them from!... lol. Worth checking out what he sells, although they go for top dollar prices. Anyway, I feel I'm rambling a bit and wanted to tell you all if you didn't already know that the Roland Ranfft website, 'Pink Pages' is available as an archive at this address: https://web.archive.org/web/20230305223353/http://www.ranfft.de/cgi-bin/bidfun-db.cgi?10&ranfft&&2uswk The search box doesn't work, but all 221 pages of watch movement details are available which is a bonus. Hopefully, someone will pick up the baton and run with it and resurrect the website, let's hope. Until then, at least the amazing work that Roland achieved hasn't been lost. Share the love and spread the news this is still available. Much love and respect to Roland Ranfft, you'll be sadly missed! RIP Roland...

New toys.

Wow! So Bergeon had the foresight to make skinny screwdrivers so that they could sell us Extra Grip drums later. Brilliant!

do you know how many cowboys exist in the state of Texas? No but they all wear 10 gallon hats on their two pint heads.

It's strange how things happen, an old professor just a few weeks ago asked if I wanted to co-author a paper on the differences in North American and European business practices, and reading over some of the comments above it is easy to spot the differences - maybe this topic/forum is fertile ground for some research? I wrote my DBA thesis on inter and intra company conflict and cooperation so seeing the cooperation and conflict between a watch part manufacturer (Swatch) and a watch part supplier (CousinsUK) and their customers (us) is home ground for me. When looking at the discussion on this topic and from my personal experience and observation it seems like the average USA person in business has a more binary attitude to business, ie the main driver is to make money, and other aspects such as CSR (corporate social responsibility) does not have as great a priority. However, European (and Canadian) businesses assign a greater emphasis on these other aspects often sacrificing profit which they may assign to 'the cost of doing business'. Just to be clear, I'm just pointing out a difference in culture, not making a judgement on which is best (whatever best means) so that the discussion above can be viewed with a different lens by someone from from a European business centric culture looking at the comments of someone from a USA business centric culture and vice versa. The customer-supplier relationship is at its core a confrontational relationship as each actor has polar opposite drivers, in very simplistic terms the supplier wants to charge as much as they can and not leak any profit, and the customer wants things as cheap as possible with as much free or cheap added value as possible (quality, free delivery, after service etc...). Therefore, both sides have to compromise and meet somewhere on the spectrum between these two extremes - and when you compromise you can never be 100.00% happy. From my initial research it seems like the USA business and customers are more skewed to the side of the business over the customer drivers ie the business should make money, but the European is more towards the other side of the spectrum where the customer drivers carry more significance, its also important to remember that the middle of the spectrum is not necessarily the right place to be. One can see this in practice when a USA business moves to Europe and they change their drivers in Europe to cater to the different culture and vice versa, for example Chase bank charge a monthly fee for a checking account in the USA, but do not in Europe. Having lived in the USA I can see that customer service in retail outlets is amazing, but one could argue this is is a mechanism to attract the customer to generate profit and not a philanthropic act such as reducing profit margins on organic food to encourage healthy eating. I'll stop there as I think I'm starting to write the paper! I just wanted to point out that the differing cultures of the users of this forum mean that your interpretation of a good business practice may be alien to someone from a different cultural norm. In the case of CousinsUK, people vote with their feet, the customer will always choose the best value option (be that price point or some other intangible value eg customer service etc). If that perceived value reduces, people will change to another supplier which offers greater value to them. Then CousinsUK has to decide if they are happy where they are, or change back to the old model to regain the business - sometimes it has to hurt to learn.

This is a misconception that many people have. The dust extractor is not expected to remove all dust particle, just the very fine ones that fly around and get into the lungs. The macro particles don't cause any trouble except getting nagged at by the wife.

I don't know if it is true, but someone once told me that the founders of McDonald's (American!) had said: "Take care of the customer and the business will take care of itself". It really rang true in my ears and I've been applying it ever since (even before that). For me, customer satisfaction has always been my number one priority, and when negotiating my price I've always tried to see it from the customer's point of view too. The reason customer satisfaction is my number one priority, rather than trying to maximise my profit, is that it gives me a feeling of contributing to a friendlier and happier world and that in turn makes me feel better about myself. I would of course never ever hurt myself to create customer satisfaction, but I never hurt or deceive a customer for profit. The above would of course make the "American culture of business" laugh their asses off.

New inventions are always expensive, i remember when video recorders came out and microwave cookers. My wife wife bought her mum one of the first ones on sale £500 the same item is now around £50 . Granted the quality is different but it does the same job, probably not for as long, sure thats the Downside of something made in country of mass produced rubbish. I think i read somewhere that its a famlly member that is recreating a new Ranfft site. I've been using it since the other one stopped functioning, its no way near as good, not as easy to navigate and the images are incomplete. I'm going back to using the old archived version, its a good idea to make up your own directory to refer to when searching for a calibre as the search function doesn't work. Write down a list of the all the brands alphabetically with the relevant page numbers alongside. A bit time consuming to knock it up but once you have it made, a search will be almost as quick as before.

world pricing of things does tend to be interesting. If you look at older catalogs even from the 60s for watch repair tools and compare the prices today they would actually be a good investment because they've gone up so much. But ever since the plague things have gone up quite a bit. I was noticing of the vintage black L&R cleaning machine has gone up how much? Used to be can practically give those away that's how I got mine because there were no jars it was considered worthless and now there $1000 on eBay. Through there aren't a lot of companies manufacturing watchmaking cleaning machines anymore.. how thinking of the outrageous prices you should calculate out what this would cost today at an equivalent price in other words take the price of 1946 in figure out what it would cost today and well some things have gone down in price haven't they. oh look what a few years does the price is already gone up different cleaning machine 1950 and what do they cost today on eBay? okay finally found the cleaning machine is looking for modern email prices seem interesting

I have 2 sets of screwdrivers, one from Korea and one from AliExpress. Both sets have extremely skinny handles. The Korean ones measure 4.65mm, while the Chinese ones are only 4.55mm. Whenever I encounter stubborn screws, it's a real pain to use such skinny handles. Bergeon has extra grip handles but they come with a Bergeon price. Imagine getting one each for the whole set of screwdrivers. So I decided to improvise. I got some brass motor couplings from AliExpress and used them for grips.

Bergeon makes anything they can think of, we pay to find out if they thought right.

Thanks Jon , i really love your sideline posts about the community. As regards to the prices, even in my short time of 2 years I've noticed a dramatic increase in both new and pre owned watch related items. We know the price tag of everything in the UK has gone through the roof, but i think that watch repairing is the new in-thing .

Hey watch peeps. Xmas has just provided the perfect watch case storage idea. I've left ya'll a chocky but you'll have to share it

I think you are right here they build them with optional bits ready- I have 3 versions of the ETA 2472 movement. 1 with 25 jewels one with 21 jewels and 1 with 17 jewels. I would have to open then again to be sure but I expect that the base plates are the same on all three watches. The 17 jewel version doesn't have the cap jewels. The 21 jewels version I think it has cap jewels and the 25 jewelled version also has some jewels in the self winding module

Sometimes manufacturers would make a base model with 15 or 17 jewels and then they would also make a model with a higher jewel count, so it made no sense to make the main plate any different from the base model. The higher jewel count version would have a cap and the jewel would be convexed (olive jewel) with no oil sink and invariably the wheel that sat in the capped jewel would be a conical pivot/arbor rather than a cylindrical pivot/arbor with an oil sink

The shape of the jewel hole would determine if the hole was designed to have a cap jewel or not. If the jewel hole is convex on the side facing the supposed cap jewel, then there should be a cap jewel. But if the jewel hole has an oil sink instead, then it means that the manufacturer decided to leave out the cap jewel in the final production.

You seem to have access to much better toy shops than I do.

If you pop out the pinion and flip the wheel over it will often increase the friction. Should get it to last a few more decades.

Everyone in the UK wanted a dog during Covid, the price of a puppy increased fourfold almost overnight, a lot of the poor little buggers ended up in a kennel when it was all over.

Fountain pens you say, here are the ones I use at work, have some nicer ones at home.

I have to confess, I also added a couple of these with different nib sizes to the AliExpress shopping cart. "PAILI Black Metal Fountain Pen Titanium Black Nib 0.38/0.5mm Matte Barrel Gift BAG Option Business Pen". They cost a whopping £1.76 each. I can't get a nib, not even a crap one, nor an ink converter here in the UK for less than a fiver. They may turn out to be trash, but they are pretty good looking trash if they are. I'll let you know my thoughts on them when/if they arrive. Edit: After a lot of back and forth with Google, I have some more info about this pen. It is a Paili 派利 model 869. Paili is a 'Wing Sung' brand, Wing Sung being, apparently one of the oldest and best quality Chinese pen manufacturers. Paili appears to mean "perry" (as in the alcoholic beverage). There are two nib options, a 0.38mm shrouded 'extra fine', and a 0.5mm 'fine'.

I think it may die down again, of course I could be wrong. Two reasons, firstly, people probably took up watch repair during lock down and will lose interest. Secondly, all commodities have ups and downs, regression towards the mean?

Read this and watch the video. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/2011/02/theres-more-to-non-newtonian-fluids-than/

You've just named my favourite day out Just a spinney thing !!!. thats exactly what it is. I now have a motorised parts washer thats also just a spinney thing.

Metal galling. Lol dont tempt me, you know I'll give it a go. Thixotropic ? Some are

It does, ive tried it. In fact there's enough barrels here to try every experiment that anyone can imagine up. Or to look at it another way. It lubricates in a way that reduces resistance to slippage depending what its applied to and compared to a grease that doesn't reduce resistance as much.

I've never had a problem with Cousins, and I take my modest business to them as often as possible. I've had a couple of incidents but they were well taken care of. A bad idea as a hobbyist/independent buyer would be to demand cousins refund you. I've never done that. Instead, I have provided pictures, a concise and humble description of my predicament, and asked (rather than demanded) for help, and each time they came to my rescue without being obliged to do so. You never know, but so far I have only praise for Cousins.

Hi I am a newbie that is trying to get a 1260 movement going and although it seems to work face up it stops face down. Can someone tell me if there an escape upper jewel cap missing from the photo or doesn’t this movement have one?

You've got it licked

Yes, I wonder too, if we're curious about the same thing. That is, how do you remove (pop out) and reattach (pop in) the cannon pinion from the wheel?

Hi there is a possibility that the tester has gone awol, test the tester on a known working watch to verify that it’s ok. Once that’s proven we can move on.post some pictures o& the movement as it helps our cause, thanks. Hi no manual for 963-116 but the attached may be of some use 938_Eta 963.114, 963.124.pdf

I favour the idea that i have a dollar and with it i can buy the ingredients to make a 100 loaves and sell them for 2 dimes each. If i come visit i will bring a pooper scooper and a bag of doggie treats.

I've got a Heuer 1000 with an ESA 563.121 movement that is doing the same. I've just got it on the bench tomorrow so haven't worked on it yet, but after I've electrically tested it I'm going to strip it and find the problem. The very fact that the second hand is jumping back and forth by a quarter of a second indicates power is getting through the coil and PCB. I'm guessing it is a problem with the rotor, as the gear train feels pretty free to me and turns easily. I use Moebius 9030 to oil quartz movements, but anything with a low viscosity will work. if you only have 9010 that'll work, but 'ghost oil' the train. So, this is barely oiling the gear train jewel with the littlest amount of oil possible. Cartier doesn't even oil the train at all, as there is so little torque they feel it is needed, which in some respects is true.

I sometimes work with Christopher Ward Watches. They gave me some of their in-house movements to pull apart and work out how they work with the view to create a service manual and train their watchmakers in the future; specifically, their SH21 movement in their C60 Abyss (https://www.christopherward.com/c60-abyss-sh21/C60-42APR3-SGKK0-BG.html) which retails for just over two grand, which in my opinion is a damn good price for a watch that is made in-house. Anyway, that watch has three iterations. One is a sweep second, with the fourth wheel in the centre powering the second's hand, another is a subsidiary second's hand at six O'clock, and one with a power reserve indicator. They all use a base model on all three iterations to keep costs at a minimum, which is what most manufacturers do. It's unusual, as it is an automatic watch with twin mainsprings that have a five-day power reserve. Why you would want a five-day power reserve on an automatic is beyond me, but hey. Still, a great watch movement in my opinion. To get a perspective, you can buy a Breitling Heritage or an IWC Portofino for 5 grand that has an ETA movement inside, all be it slightly tweaked to call it their own, which in the real world would cost £300 to £500 for the actual movement. That's like buying an Aston Martin DB11 and finding a VW engine inside in my opinion!

yes the interesting generation of people who lived through all this newfangled technology some of which is no longer with us like the video recorder. The modern generation that would have a total failure to grasp the evolution of technology as they have their smart phones and probably can't grasp anything beyond that. Then yes I do remember my first video recorder slightly used beta recorder. yes the problem pricing well what would a dollar bill by 20 years ago versus today the calculators will do that. But you throw in labor costs and things get really interesting and don't make a lot of sense necessarily at all for instance one of my friends at his grandfather's notebook of all the watch repair jobs and how much he charged. This was at a watch and clock collectors meeting he was talking about his grandfather gave a lecture. All the people marveled at how inexpensive watch repair was back then versus today except? The problem was I took the price and back then watches were serviced on a yearly basis because the cases were not sealed up tight and they were using organic oils. So to multiply that early servicing times five to correspond to the modern servicing well the watchmaker was doing really really well because the modern servicing price I'd think was way more than what it would cost to get a Rolex wrist. So as soon as you throw in wages to things get way more interesting and of course technology changes a lot of stuff. The timing machine for instance even when I started watch repair there wasn't any of that newfangled digital stuff and the cost of a brand-new timing machine was astronomically expensive. I remember seeing one in a material house and asked if the price was a joke because it just seems so expensive I knows more than $1000 but I might've been several thousand dollars and it seemed really expensive on the other hand that particular machine the B200 has an incredibly long life and what a ran it least 30 some years before you need to replace some of the electrical components. So yes technology is changed a lot of things so yes it makes a really hard to compare things other then the price of everything is gone up and the price of used horological stuff on eBay seems to have gone up by quite a bit.

@RichardHarris123, @nevenbekriev, @CYCLOPS Thank you - sorry just saw these responses. my push notifications must have been turned off. I'm pretty sure the case might be stainless. I ordered a reagent testing liquid to confirm.

Shiner Bock 4.4% ABV. Over we call that cats p*ss. I don't drink much these days but when I do it has to be 5% or over. My favorite used to be Carlsberg Special Brew when it was 9%. They stopped brewing it at 9% now it is something like 7% and it is horrid.

I gravitate to them from time to time but if I am going to hang out on the back porch in the Spring, yeah...prolly a Shiner.

Not 2ft, but sometime in snow . I walked alone about 1.5 mile to the junior school at the other side of town (from when I was about 6-10). Children cannot do that these days as everyone is afraid of the bogey man, and I think that modern children must dissolve if they get wet.

Actually I don't know if they did that or not. But coming from my other hobby, electronics, I see a lot of pcbs with empty holes where components were designed to be. Somewhere down the line, the people on top decided to override the engineers and save a few pennies here and there.

Looks like my printer resolution is not high enough to print the decals as I hoped. My laser printer does 600dpi Here is a zoomed in shot of a print at the right size on paper - I don't expect a decal to look any better! It all looked OK as a PNG file

Part of the problem is not comparing like for like. People buy cheap items and then say that the old stuff was better, no they just bought rubbish. An old mentor of mine advised "always buy the best you can afford, that way you won't be disappointed ", I have already followed his advice.

How does that work? Not questioning your advice but curious to the mechanics behind it

Hi. The rotor or step motor receives pulses from the bloc as a square wave form , posative and negative. This causes the rotor to turn for each pulse received at one per second intervals. So as the rotor part steps would lead me to think there is a blockage within the train, so clean/ service the movement lubricate and re try. Unless you have or have access to a scope or a meter to be able to monitor the pulses it will be dificult to diagnose other than changing parts. Ie. Coil and bloc. With a meter on the coil contacts . Be careful of the thin wires. You should see the meter needle deflect for each pulse. There are cheap devices# on eBay that will do this as well as a few other things. But first service the watch to eliminate dirt and oil problems then there will be a need to dig deeper.

Looks like I have a new project for the weekend, going to try the locking tweezers and chamois leather method - as usual great advice from the group and very much appreciated

Actually, it is even more complicated. It lubricates because it forms a film on the metal surfaces, preventing metal-to-metal contact. But the "braking" effect is due to the viscosity of the grease. The friction between the molecules of the grease gives resistance to slippage. An easier to understand example would be the focusing ring on a camera lens. If the parts were dry, the metal would rub against each other and could actually squeal and make your hair stand. If normal grease was applied, the focusing ring would turn so easily that it wouldn't feel right. So, a special type of grease, similar to braking grease, is used. But in photography, it's called a damping grease, adding even more confusion. So is braking grease = damping grease? Probably not. Or else why would we be paying for Kluber Chronogrease? Hmmm....

The problem with the Chinese made ST36 is that the incabloc spring will hinge back and always pop out of the setting, never to be seen again. Most of the Swiss made movements do not seem to have this problem. I place a tiny ball of rodico and hinge the spring onto it to hold it in place.

more than likely its chrome or some sort of plated, sometimes stainless is called base metal, it can be silver soldered though and replated, brass doesn't laser as well as precious metals but can be done, good luck...Happy New Year

My advice is to find jeweier that is more advanced than the others. I have seen ones, that even didn't know that brass can be soldered with silver solder, this kind of jewelers will not help. As I see, the lug has been soldered to the case in the factory, this means the material of the case can be soldered. Base metal means only that it is not gold, this is not helpfull at all. The lug can be fixed to the case by laser as a preparation for the soldering

Soldering will work, most solders will do but for the best results it's important to know which metals are being joined. Is base metal, steel ?