Jump to content

New to watch repair from New York


Recommended Posts

Hello everyone.  I am retired (from being in the software business for 40 years) and started to study watch repair in the past few months as a hobby.  I found it both relaxing and focusing.  I have traditionally also been a woodworker and general do-it-all but watch repair and restoration is sooooo much cleaner and does not require a huge space, big machinery, or overalls 🙂 I started with 2 pocket watches that belonged to my grandfather.  Neither worked.  So lots to do on those.  

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

We all look forward to your contributions and continued involvement. 

As you progress buying tools and material you will find you never have enough space . 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, oldhippy said:

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

We all look forward to your contributions and continued involvement. 

As you progress buying tools and material you will find you never have enough space . 

Yes, I thought space wouldn't be a problem, but it has started to become one already.  I naively thought small tools, small space, 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the intro, welcome to the WRT forum! I'm also relatively new and I'm in the middle of my first service of an Elgin Grade 313 movement.

I'm also retired and was also in the CAD/CAM s/w business for 20+ years.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

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

    • Thats a good record Michael,  i always do a quick scan through sone of the  feedback comments to make sure there are a good few of them relating to sales and not just purchaese.  Feedback can be faked but you can usually spot the dodgy sellers. I have heard that before about lots of orphan watches in Australia 🤔. How far overseas are you going with buying ? There are lots of good sellers here in the UK, shipping is a bit prohibitive though. Main reason for seeing non cased vintages watches would have been the scrapage of the precious metal cases. I think we decide early on what we want from the hobby, whether that is to repair for the fun, enjoyment and sheer challenge of learning something obscure.  To collect watches and have that ability to maintain them, to gain financially from re-sale or a mixture of those. Its also important to remain aware of how deep the rabbit hole goes and how much money it takes to continue the descent. 
    • No, trus me, this is totally wrong. Firs of all, there is theoretical lenght for a fixed other parameters (spring thickness, barrel internal diameter and arbour diameter), which will give maximal power reserve. This is written in all text books, but I have never seen in  the text books mathematical expression (formula) of the relation lenght/power reserve. I am to lazy to generate that expression now, but will draw for You the graphical representation of it. As You can see, there is a maximum in the middle, but the slope near the maximum is really small, so even change of the lenght of let say +/- 30% doesn't lead to significant change of the power reserve. More to that, sometimes movement designers put much longer springs in the barrels than the theoretical lenght for maximm reserve.  This is ecpecially in high grade movements. You will sometimes see that the spring covers not the half, but actually 2/3 of the barrel free space. The designers compensate this loss of power reserve by usage of bigger barrels. This way they achieve much smaller difference in full wind / end of power reserve torque. In such case, reducing the spring lenght leads to increasing of power reserve...
    • Hi you can get parts/ tech sheets from cousins uk on therir down lost page, also print rest has some scattered about, cas ker, Esslingers, my retro watches, watch guy there is a few to trawl
    • I only buy mechanical personally, as it's all that interests me. There are a few electronic movements I find interesting, but they're not the sort I tend to see very often at all, and wouldn't come up in any of my searches. I have been given a few quartz watches over the years, but they all just sit in a bag in a drawer. Once I hit some critical mass, I'll hopefully get enough motivation to either sell or donate them.
×
×
  • Create New...