Hallo from Texas

[centerwheel]

I enjoyed the Watch Repair Courses 1 and 2 and I've just joined the forums. Until now I have been exclusively interested in American Vintage pocket watches. I have quite a few (will later post photos with my collection), the most recent are Hamilton 992 and an Illinois Bunn Special. Both are Railroad type and are amazingly accurate.

I am currently working on making (fitting) a stem for my 16s Waltham Royal pocket watch. It's a fun project using my lathe, some filing, and making threads, and some metallurgy. Hope it will work :). That's the usual problem with vintage watches - can't find parts, so, one is almost forced to learn watchmaking to make parts that might be otherwise not available the easy way.

Being retired, I recently decided that it's time to enjoy my collect/repair hobby with modern, mechanical wrist watches. So, I got my Chinese knockoff of ETA 6467 ($42) to practice, and will soon get a 2801 to practice, and also plan to build one later for my daily use based on ETA 2924-2 (Chronometer Grade).

I love mechanical watches and am always amazed at the engineering involved in cramming  all parts into a smaller and smaller space, how they've been made to work reliably, and how beautiful they are!

[clockboy]

Welome to this friendly forum.  You have already been bitten by the bug and trust me it can become very additive. Enjoy

[ecodec]

Hello and welcome centrewheel.  You are doing extremely well and making component parts is becoming more and more essential as spares are difficult to obtain. Some manufacturers will not supply anything to amateurs and employees of at least one major company have been threatened with the loss of their jobs if they take on any outside work. The watch Swiss companies need not worry though as the Chinese will not be satisfied until they get almost all of the wrist watch business. I have used one ETA 2824 clone and it was "spot on". There will be a few talented people like yourself keeping the originals working but that will be about it. Of course the way a mechanical watch works especially the balance and escapement when one gets into the finer points of it`s operation is most interesting. This interest in the watch mechanism,  history and theory is what keeps us all going in the watch direction. The very best wishes for your success in watchmaking. With kind regards, Mike. PS. many years ago I was given a watchmakers lathe with tooling and also a Vibrograf (I think it was) timer.  Paper tape those days. A friends young boy had started work with an instrument making company and was very interested in watches so I sold the lot to him for a fiver !. Later I heard that he went to Australia.

Edited November 22, 2017 by ecodec
Correction