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Now that my ever growing watch collection has begun to encompass several different brands and types of pre-quartz and quartz regulated electromecanical  watches, I have some concerns about what I can do to preserve the longevity of these, in some cases, nearly 60 year old watches. As a rule of thumb, I wear all the watches I own on a rotation. No specific order, just not the same watch twice in the same week. This leaves many of my watches sitting unused for weeks at a time. Normally this isn't an issue with my mechanical and automatic watches as they run down and quit. The electromechanical watches however don't get that luxury and tick away into eternity. I know that most, if not nearly all of these watches feature some form of hacking when the crown is pulled. My thought and question is this, would it be logical to pull the crowns on these watches and essentially place them in a "stasis" mode until I'm ready to wear them again? This would effectively stop the motion of the mechanical parts and thus eliminating any wear on these mechanical parts. The draw back to this is resetting the time and especially the date as many of them don't have quickset date features. I'd like for everyone to please weigh in on this and give their opinions and experiences with this subject. Thank you.

Below are just a few examples from my collection to illustrate.
268354877_s-l1600(1).thumb.jpg.41b328559605af2881ed3e2d060f08ad.jpg20200213_114907.thumb.jpg.59a6b8b2a82145623246956c8849bd91.jpg20200216_172125.thumb.jpg.c99ac875ae92db33aeeca8184eb5965e.jpg20200221_171029.thumb.jpg.17e09139ff89a56370792ab210c7bce1.jpg20200224_063435.thumb.jpg.7adae1cc892f1a5902c1796fa7c92147.jpg20200227_054752.thumb.jpg.d9d6ace94ddbee46da958a3052c84731.jpg
20200311_055145.thumb.jpg.44c9382249621c3b53ac6bc0871a0c0c.jpg20200317_054931-01.thumb.jpeg.0102255087eb04422f18fa7433afd4e8.jpeg

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    • Hello Tom and welcome to the forum.
    • Hah! Well, California will have to do. Lived in TX for a brief period back in the early 70s, though, so maybe that counts. 🙂 Funny you should mention making vacuum tubes- I've actually tinkered with that! It's REALLY tough to do, and I've never made one more complicated than a simple diode that barely worked, but I have played around at it. But there's just no infrastructure for vacuum tube fabrication. I can get a lathe and learn how to use it to make complex parts, and while it might take a while to learn- and money to get the equipment, of course- it is possible to do more or less "off the shelf". But vacuum tubes, not so much. There are a few folks out there doing some crazy cool work with bespoke tubes, but they have setups that are far beyond what I can manage in my environment and it's mostly stuff they built by hand. I also have been playing with making piezoelectric Rochelle Salt crystals to replace ancient vacuum tube turntable needles- nobody's made those commercially for probably 60 years. I'm a sucker for learning how to do weird things no one does any more so I can make things no one uses work again. (I think this is drifting off the topic of lathes, lol).
    • You shoulda been born in Texas. Tough to make a vacuum tube though. You can substitute with a MOSFET eq ckt I guess. I was playing around making a pinion the other day. More to it than meets the eye.
    • Well, turns out it was a fake bezel! The crystal is domed mineral glass and I was able to find a cheap replacement that should be here in two days.  I used my crappy little press to pop out the cracked crystal, Ill give the case a good cleaning in the meantime and do a once over on the movement.     
    • Early ‘90s Debenhams in Oxford Street at InTime Watch Repairs. The older guy was one of my mentors Mr John Campfield, fantastic ex-Omega watchmaker. Good times - black hair gone now! 😄
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