Mr Gerald M Rudy

[Gerald]

Hello, Nice to meet you all.  I'm a dyslexic, ADD suffering husband of 52 years, to the same wife mind you, plus a 76YO fuzzy grandpa who just loves my four grandkids; two boys and two girls.  Yeah, I also have two wonderful grown kids, a boy and a girl.  I'm a believer and disciple of Jesus, interested in airplanes, particularly WWII warbirds and aviation history, WWII history and also Bible based ancient middle eastern history. But, I've also been interested in electromechanical things of all stripes since I was very young, ions ago.   I'm fairly computer literate, love to read up on astronomy and other stuff way out of this world and I like to tinker with electronics items, keeping myself involved in personal projects staying busy these days to keep myself out of trouble.  All in all though, time pieces seemed to interest me most.  Going back to my younger years, I used to find old and sometimes not so old watches and take them apart using broken up razor blades for screw drivers.  Then I'd put them back together to see if I could get them to run, all with limited success.  My first serious time piece however was an old 8 day Seth Thomas mantle clock that somebody threw out.  I found it on the community dump when I was still in elementary school.  It was beat up, wound too tightly, parts missing; hands, pendulum, no key, case broken, otherwise intact.  I managed to let the springs down, oil it some wind it up again with pliers from my dad's toolbox, fixed the case as best I could, leveled it up and hung an old pocket watch from the suspension staff and it ran perfectly.  Imagine that!!!  I was hooked!  Through the years, I became pretty proficient at figuring out and fixing all kinds of mechanical stuff particularly clocks, watches.  I wanted to make a career of my hobby and applied for instrument repair when I entered naval service.  I even took all the correspondence courses I could get my hands on to prepare myself ahead of time only to find out after all that work and effort that instrument repair was a closed rate to all applicants.  So, I settled for radar operation instead and went to school to learn basic electronics.  My interest was still in watch and clock service and repair, but chose to be an electrician, eventually moving into communications installation and repair.  After 20 years of running my own telecom business, I retired as a telecommunications specialist, still enjoying my hobby as a clock mechanic, eventually ending up with a collection of antique clocks hanging all over my house.  These days my hands and fingers do not do well with small parts, so I don't do much with watches anymore.  But, I do occasionally get hooked into it as with the Seiko watch my son gave to me needing a crystal.  That's another story.  I hope to get acquainted with many of you folks interested in the same things I am.  Have to go now.  God bless and happy new years.

[watchweasol]

Hi and welcome to the forum always room for another enthusiast here

[Nucejoe]

Welcome to the forum.

[oldhippy]

Thank you for your introduction and welcome to this friendly forum.

Happy New Year

[Johnnie]

Hi and welcome to the asylum

[vinn3]

   welcome and hapy new year !     vin