Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Posted

Okay I really need one of you to start a company where I can just call you up and tell you all the watch parts I need and you run around like an idiot and try to find them. Let me know when your new company is up and running please.  I have a long list.

  • Like 2
  • Haha 1
Posted

What you are looking for is an Amazon for watch parts ?  The problem is with the great diversity of models and makers couple that with the SWATCH policy of restricted practice it would be a brave man who under took that.

Posted
43 minutes ago, markr said:

Okay I really need one of you to start a company where I can just call you up and tell you all the watch parts I need and you run around like an idiot and try to find them. Let me know when your new company is up and running please.  I have a long list.

isn't that what we call a watch material house?

 

  • Like 1
Posted
54 minutes ago, markr said:

Okay I really need one of you to start a company where I can just call you up and tell you all the watch parts I need and you run around like an idiot and try to find them. Let me know when your new company is up and running please.  I have a long list.

ERM, Like CousinsUK ?

Posted

Supply houses might have a couple of parts you need then you go to another and get one or two things then a search of eBay and a call or two to friends and you still need a couple of things you can't find.  You are spending hours looking up parts numbers.  What I need is a professional parts shopper.  

Posted

nope Bob at ofrei has got that job locked down. he's no idiot by any stretch of the imagination and is a good guy but he does the running all over the place looking for stuff for us customers. but yeah I absolutely get your point. well if you had the scratch and could afford a pro parts person, you'd still have to put in the time waiting for the actual part to get to your hands and into the watch. so ya might as well forgo the parts person and occupy your time looking for parts lol

my worn circular path of travel is between Esslinger, Ofrei, Ebay, a few odd stops at Cousins and AE, then back to the start.

  • Thanks 1
Posted

I use ofrei quite a bit. Other than my latest experience, they have been good, and competitive on price. 
 

I also use StarTime, who seem less popular here but their service is good and website easier to navigate. Slightly more expensive that ofrei, and only “new” stuff. Ofrei is where you find old stock. He has a bunch of JB Champion bracelets in stock at the moment...

  • Thanks 1
Posted

I've been thinking about something like this for a while.  My other hobby is building Lego, anyone seen Bricklink?

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/main.page

Basically, any seller can list all the parts they want to sell, and any buyer can search those parts.  Now think of this for watch parts, especially with a database of compatible parts.

For my real job I write computer games, currently working with backend servers, databases and occasionally web pages so this would be very easy for me to do.  The problem with sites like this is that it's a legal nightmare, there are so many things you have to get in place to protect the sellers/buyers.

 

 

Posted
1 hour ago, AshF said:

Basically, any seller can list all the parts they want to sell, and any buyer can search those parts.  Now think of this for watch parts, especially with a database of compatible parts.

Have a look at this site run by Christian Dannemann "The Watch Guy". I believe that it is available for anyone to use.

  • Like 2
Posted
23 hours ago, markr said:

That's what I need is Bob.  I never tried Ofrei.  I'll have to give them a try. Thanks for the tip.

 

On 11/18/2020 at 10:46 PM, markr said:

That's what I need is Bob.  I never tried Ofrei.  I'll have to give them a try. Thanks for the tip.

long long family lineage in horology history. Ever see their um...warehouse? it reminds me of the end credits of the old Indiana Jones movie of the cavernous government warehouse of secret artifacts... if I ever wanted to get lost someplace, that would be it. it's huge. and over the years they've acquired the inventories of other companies and long established material houses that have long ago vanished. I could spend hours just rummaging thru their stuff just to look at the lost treasures in their inventory. as with everybody, they too, struggle during these weird times but still mange to find hard-to-find stuff. word to the wise-if you do call or email them regarding parts, it's wise to know exactly what you're looking for. otherwise they'll remind ya lol good luck. 

Posted
17 hours ago, Tudor said:

I use ofrei quite a bit. Other than my latest experience, they have been good, and competitive on price. 
 

I also use StarTime, who seem less popular here but their service is good and website easier to navigate. Slightly more expensive that ofrei, and only “new” stuff. Ofrei is where you find old stock. He has a bunch of JB Champion bracelets in stock at the moment...

hmmm. have to check them out. thanks for the tip. yep you're right-I should have mentioned Ofrei kinda specializes in old stock. have a less than pleasant one with Ofrei? I did have one incident, I'll call it-I ordered a bunch of stuff, charged for it only to receive an email 4 days later listing all the stuff they didn't have. turned into a small mess but they fixed it with little suffering on my part. I can think of 100 bigger world problems than that...but yeah, they don't list if it's out-of-stock or not. I suppose with such a huge inventory such as theirs, that is a bit difficult to do. True, their prices are very competitive.  

Posted
17 hours ago, AshF said:

I've been thinking about something like this for a while.  My other hobby is building Lego, anyone seen Bricklink?

I love Legos! well, I used to anyway as a kid..

  • Like 1
Posted
2 hours ago, MechanicMike said:

Ever see their um...warehouse? it reminds me of the end credits of the old Indiana Jones movie of the cavernous government warehouse of secret artifacts... if I ever wanted to get lost someplace, that would be it. it's huge. and over the years they've acquired the inventories of other companies and long established material houses that have long ago vanished.

the material house business is an interesting business. My understanding is that when companies like this require other material houses that there placed in a separate location in their warehouse. They do not necessarily attempt to integrate it all into their system for several reasons. The individual cost of components isn't worth taking the time to inventory them. Then did you know there is more than one system? in other words different material houses had different systems makes it impossible to integrate the systems together without spending a heck of a lot of time and effort.
 

2 hours ago, MechanicMike said:

word to the wise-if you do call or email them regarding parts, it's wise to know exactly what you're looking for. otherwise they'll remind ya lol good luck. 

if you could physically walk into a material house in the old days it was a little bit different. A amusing observation was made and pointed out to me. Sure enough once I was paying attention when I would go into the material house to purchase things others did something a little bit different. Rather than having a list with those numbers that would help them out they would bring the physical job. All the various places that were buying parts would send somebody to the material house usually not the watchmaker. Physical watches in the job envelopes placed across the counter sometimes covering the entire calendar. usually notes on each of the jobs of what was needed sometimes they had to call home to see what it was that was needed other times that say things like I'm sure you know what it is when you look at it.

my personal observation was that ideally if you'd like to get what you desire you need to give them as much information as possible. Otherwise they just not going to waste their time looking for your part.

 

 

  • Like 1

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.



  • Recently Browsing

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Topics

  • Posts

    • Thinking of best fit did we ever look at fingerprinting this movement? Then identification of watches? This actually comes up a lot on this group of people especially with older watches thinking they're going to identify some vintage no name whatever and know they're not going to. But even more important books like bestfit only exist to supply spare parts. This means the movement had to have been made in sufficient quantities and exported out of Japan for a company like bestfit to supply spare parts. So simplistic rule would be unless parts were readily available cross reference books to identify it for finding parts will not exist. One of things I was curious about I went back to the first page and part of the problem is your watches so much older than the one that launched this discussion if you look at the original posting picture it's a screwless balance with a shock protected system yours is much much older. Then of course older also brings up the problem of parts identification books because they were really only made in specific time spans and do not cover an infinite quantity of years unfortunately although bestfit Did have some older books but if I remember right I don't think Seiko shows up even until basically the last of their books because it comes back to they weren't exported out of Japan insufficient quantities for anyone to care about spare parts unfortunately    
    • I'm working on a 602 that has date. Well the bridge has Cal 602 on it. That was a complete pig. I ended up laying mine in place and hoping for the best! I didn't want to hav e you keep going over those darn pivots - painful. Well it all seems to have worked so....... perhaps I was lucky?   And thanks so much for that photo. After disassembling I found my footage completely out of ficus. Lesson to myself (and anyone else) don't use a GoPro less than 30cm (at which distance the watch is in the distance anyway).
    • Job done. After a lot of fiddling and testing  I used this method . I purchased the correct size glass from eBay. To drill the hole I used a diamond core drill bit . I have a small pillar  drill press and submerged the glass in water inside of a jar lid with a cork mat underneath the glass. I drilled very slowly and it was successful but it did chip a bit but it’s not visible. A very happy customer..          
    • I've not bought a replacement mainspring before. According to my digital calipers the broken spring in my Lancashire Watch Co. Pocket Watch is 2.4mm wide & 2.0mm thick & the barrel is 16mm diameter.  The nearest Cousins has to this (GR6573) only differs in the barrel width - it's 15.5mm . Is this difference significant? Also, the old spring has a pin across the outer end to secure it in the barrel but the Cousins info implies it's "a normal bridle" (whatever that means) rather than a "T" (which I assume is how my old spring is categorised). Help, please!
    • Another option is to an old piece of clock mainspring, if you have some thick enough.
×
×
  • Create New...