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Watchmaker's Bench


SparkyLB

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Can anyone comment on the quality of the Watchmaker's Bench from Otto Frei?  (FB-4003).  I'm considering getting it.  Ebay and Amazon both seem to sell a lot of, well. . . I can't tell the quality from the pictures the sellers post.    bench.jpg.d83516aa63960a6801c0b82edb02b3bc.jpg

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casually it looks identical to the classic watchmakers bench. Considering the price it seems like they should give more pictures

http://www.ofrei.com/page241.html

then the description is somewhat amusing?you will note that says the top is made out of solid wood that means almost everything else will be plywood. Although plywood is just fine because other than the choice of word in the color casually it appears to be almost identical to the bench I have.

 

 

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pricing is interesting for the benches and there is a another one that slightly different found that the first link. Casually they all look similar but they aren't. This first one that's more expensive is definitely slightly different. The real thing is whether any of the differences would matter at all? Then the second plank is the Amazon one equivalent to the others you are looking at it's interesting to look at the reviews though. Most people are very happy a little bit of DIY's required to put the bench together.

then because I found the fronts of the benches interesting the tops all looked basically the same. Minds made out of mahogany not solid mahogany sort of? The side pieces the outer side in the inside for the drawers looks like solid mahogany but is not its plywood. Doesn't really matter it looks nice anyway. As far as I tell everything else is solid mmahogany it might be really thin like that some of the drawer pieces the back is a really thin piece of probably plywood but it's really thin. The other interesting differences are the number of drawers.

other places of strange differences might have those two little shelves on the inside they might be support braces but I consider them little shelves so I normally put something on them. Then the very bottom notice how minds cut out to give the impression I guess of feet or something? Visually it gives a nice look at the problem as parts will go bouncing under their and that I have to pull the drawers out to see if part is under their.

then I was lucky with my bench it was purchased locally no shipping and slightly damaged so I got a discount. If you look really careful one of the drawer fronts doesn't look right because it was replaced. There was supposed to be some other problem and I never did find it? I always wondered if the material house person said that there was a problem just to give me a discount that may or may not have been there.

 

http://www.julesborel.com/products/tools-benches-watchmakers-benches

https://www.amazon.com/Grobet-13-073-Watchmakers-Workbench/dp/B01M72PV3I

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Thank you for taking the time, John.  Otto Frei told me today what shipping would be to Florida from their California warehouse.  I decided to employ my "cry once" mentality and just buy it.  I'll have a good bench, and will not wind up spending that amount anyway on two or more lesser-quality benches and end up with the same thing. 

That really did hurt, and I AGAIN forgot to order that .27mm small seconds hand for my ETA 9764.1!

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it's probably too late to suggest this but I wonder if there were any East Coast material dealers that had a bench? On the other hand watch material dealers tend to be secretive isn't quite the right word. A lot of them do not list that they exist and definitely are not online.

Then in addition to your bench you need to find a good chair. That's one of the minor complaints that I sometimes had was sometimes one of the legs will bump into the edge of the bench. My current complaints is I got used to the bench at work which has a nifty button to go up and down just like magic and really nice chair I also can go up and down versus my chair at home that seems to be broken from the up-and-down feature. So getting back used the bench at home is being irritating. So you need to think about nice chair of some kind. This way you'll sit at the proper height.

When you're using your watch bench ideally you're supposed to look into the work. I once gave a lecture on how to sit under watch bench because I observed a classroom situation where people were sitting at the in the proper tall height staring down at their watch unable to see what they were doing because it was not the right field of view. Then I went online and found a whole bunch of examples of almost nobody sitting at their bench properly.

 

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oh man, you guys...I hope to get a bench someday. until then I had to make do with what I had laying around the house: two old closet doors stacked on old plastic tubs the wife had laying around...with one of the kitchen stools as my bench chair! Rome wasn't built in a day, right?

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