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Hello All

I’ve just joined and am a complete beginner. Being “locked-down” means I can’t pursue my other hobbies so I thought I’d look at some watch repairing videos on Youtube. The “Watch Repair Channel” videos are brilliant and have inspired me to give it a go. It’s something which has always fascinated me so I’ve ordered some basic tools and bought a couple of cheap mechanical watches of eBay to experiment on.

I’ll be needing lots of help so hopefully there’ll be some sympathetic souls out there able to offer advice – once they’ve stopped laughing at the latest cock-up anyway.

Joe

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Hi Joe.

Keep a recorder going while you're working so you can share the words you'll say when you send your first screw or spring flying across the room to that place where tiny watch parts and missing socks go. ;)  Personally I think there's a colony of ants building an ETA 2824-2 from the parts they've taken off my floor. :D

Good luck and remember we've all made the same mistakes, so there will be no laughing, except, maybe, from your wife.

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Well here are the two "experimental" watches. The one on the left is branded "LEWA" which I assume is a generic brand name and had what looks like a fairly basic mass produced movement (not jeweled). The stop/start/reset buttons are a bit of a puzzle but I won't post those pictures here in case there is a more appropriate section I haven't found yet. The other one is branded "KANDER Marines"; it has a "BREVETS" automatic movement with 25 jewels and seems to be a much better quality movement than one than the the LEWA. Amazingly both run although with the KANDAR someone has taken the "Marines" part too literally and water has got into the case causing a bit of (hopefully) surface staining on some of the parts and is probably why the calendar isn't working. There's also a bit of staining on the dial. Otherwise the stainless steel case and bracelet are in good condition.

I've wound both and will leave them to see if they will run down and what sort of time they keep.

Both have plenty of fluff and other particles inside and will need a thorough clean. I'm going to need help on stripping both and in particular how to make sense of the telemeter part of the movement on the LEWA.

What is the best part of the Forum to post on for that?

Many thanks.

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