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Post by alexkerhead on Mar 5, 2009 9:39:25 GMT -5
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mickeyobe
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Post by mickeyobe on Mar 5, 2009 10:35:49 GMT -5
Alex,
Very attractive, indeed. But no Mickey Mouse watch?
You are surely the renaissance man of collectors. - Cameras. Telephones. Typewriters. Watches. What else?
I would like to spend time going through the alexerhead museum. It must be fascinating.
Mickey
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2009 11:21:29 GMT -5
"Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?"
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Mar 5, 2009 16:35:33 GMT -5
Hi Alex, Nice collection. So now it's also watches - just another facet of the wide-ranging Alex Collection! I'm quite envious.  . I used to collect watches, and clocks but, like my cameras, I was interested only in the 1930s, 1920s and Victorian eras. And, also like my cameras, I went for the ones that didn't work, because they were cheap, and I taught myself how to repair them. Nearly always it was either balance staff pivots or mainsprings. I had a lot of failures, but gradually the proportion got less as I learned more and got more experience. This was back in the days when you could pick up a Victorian, or sometimes even 18th century, watch or clock almost for pennies if it wasn't working. Non-working watches from the 1930s and 1920s were usually a pound or two a dozen in wholesalers' 'bundles'. I was lucky in getting an introduction to trade wholesalers of parts and non-working watches through a friend who was a watchmaker and also a camera collector. No watches at all were imported into the UK between 1940 and 1946, so when they again became available the demand was huge. If a customer bought a new watch they were given a 'part-exchange' price on any watch, working or not, usually far beyond its value, instead of a discount. Profit margins on watches were very high in those days (and possibly still are) - shades of the retail car business! Unfortunately, unless you were lucky in a wholesaler's 'bundle', this led to a lot of quite rare watches by today's reckoning being scrapped. Somewhere I've still got a couple of German and Swiss wholesalers' catalogues with pages on how to identify any 1920/1930 movement made by the Swiss mass producers of movements, no matter what name it had on the dial, watches and small fold-up travelling alarm clocks. When my eyesight was no longer sharp enough, nor my fingers prehensile enough, to deal with watches I sold them to buy collectable cameras. I was both suprised and delighted with the prices they made on ebay, including bundles of non-working movements 'for spares only'. It seems that wholesalers no longer keep parts for 'wind-up' watches except the very top quality ones. Well, you can't collect everything - at least I can't! The experience, and the tools I accumulated, came in very handy for repairing old cameras. After a complicated Swiss chronograph wrist watch or a Grande Sonnerie repeater travelling clock, a Compur shutter seemed easy! Now, even those are getting a bit of a trial for my fingers.  . I usually do just a flush-out clean and leave it at that. It works 90% of the time.  . PeterW |
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Post by Randy on Mar 5, 2009 19:32:19 GMT -5
Alex, you got it all!!!
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Post by John Parry on Mar 5, 2009 23:48:39 GMT -5
Alex
I was left a gold watch by my great-grandfather. It was a wrist-watch, and certainly not the gold half-hunter that he promised me. As I was around 11 at the time, I never contested the will. However as far as I was concerned, like the grandfather clock in the song, "It stopped, dead, never to go again, when the old man died".
My wife could wear it, no problem, and it kept good time on her - but as soon as I put it on it stopped. Ever hear of that happening to anyone else? That's the only thing I've ever thought was 'a bit spooky' !
Regards - John
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Post by alexkerhead on Mar 6, 2009 1:36:10 GMT -5
Thanks everyone! Peter, awesome information. I am still learning to repair watches, and luckily for me, I have a cigar box full of dead watches that would never be presentable again. I like to try and get them running as practice! Alex, Very attractive, indeed. But no Mickey Mouse watch? You are surely the renaissance man of collectors. - Cameras. Telephones. Typewriters. Watches. What else? I would like to spend time going through the alexerhead museum. It must be fascinating. Mickey Hehe, I love collecting! On top of the aforementioned, I also collect/restore vintage/antique electric fans(will make a thread on those ONE day), vintage computers(25yo+ portable computers, like kaypro, compaq portables, and osbornes), lighters(I have hundreds of lighters), pocket and belt knives, marbles(old, handmade, and just misc), vintage and antique radios(transistor and vacuum tube), stereo equipment, pens and flashlights. All of the listed I own 20 or more of. I also have 10 or so 1930s-1950s electric clocks. EEEEEKKKK! I never realized until I read this post, that I am a crazy son of a gun! And where am I getting my money? I do not know.  One day, I am going to go all out and make a thread containing everything I have collected. |
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Mar 6, 2009 7:49:34 GMT -5
Alex,
Good luck with learning to repair old mechanical watches. One of the best books on this I found is Practical Watch Repairing by Donald de Carle. It was originally written in the 1940s and has stayed in print ever since. I believe you can get a paperback edition for around $10.
PeterW
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Mar 6, 2009 8:01:14 GMT -5
John,
Yes I've heard of this before. Common folk-lore has all sorts of theories including 'personal magnetism'. I once asked a very experienced watchmaker friend who pooh-poohed folk-lore ideas and said in his experience it was nearly always due to what the wearer did while wearing the watch.
He used to test the watch in various positions - pendant up, pendant left, pendant down, pendant right (for pendant read winding button). He also tried it dial up and dial down. He usually found that in one or other of the positions the watch stopped, and this gave him a clue about what was happening inside, usually a worn or damaged part in the escapement.
PeterW
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mickeyobe
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Post by mickeyobe on Mar 6, 2009 10:21:34 GMT -5
John,
I have heard of this before.
Covering the back of the watch with adhesive tape is supposed to eliminate the problem.
Mickey
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mickeyobe
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Post by mickeyobe on Mar 6, 2009 10:23:45 GMT -5
"Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?" I am not sure. But I do know that as of midnight Saturday a number of clocks in my house are once again going to show the correct time. MIckey |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2009 12:04:33 GMT -5
My mate always has had a problem with mechanical watches. They simply stop after a few days or weeks. A watch repair man once told me some people apparently have a magnatism. She never has had problems with electronic watches, however.
BTW: I have a quartz watch promoting Nikon stell in its original packaging.
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scott
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Post by scott on Mar 13, 2009 14:08:32 GMT -5
I am trying to find some basic info on adjusting/regulating automatic (self-winding) mechanical watches. Can any of you suggest an on-line primer with good diagrams or photos?
I'm NOT a watch collector (at least not yet), but I have a fairly-new Seiko automatic watch, just out of warranty, that loses a few minutes each week, so I need tips of regulating the movement. Sure, I could take it to the watch repair man again, but (as with cameras, cars and bicycles) I kind of like to see if I can handle it myself. If I had paid a lot of money for it, then I wouldn't dare to open it up myself, of course.
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Post by alexkerhead on Mar 13, 2009 18:42:55 GMT -5
It is electric kinetic or mechanical? If it is a newer electrical type, then you need a technician to fool with it. If it is a full-mechanical, than where the pendulum wheel will have an adjustment you can ever-so-slightly adjust to fast. Here is a pic I made for you showing you what it might look like if the watch is mechanical and where to adjust it. Nearly all automatic movements look identical. Minus some off-beat types and hammer designs. -Note, not my watch or photo. I just added the red.  |
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scott
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Post by scott on Mar 15, 2009 1:29:20 GMT -5
Thanks for posting the photo, Alex-- it looks pretty much identical to the inside of my Seiko.
I took off the back (a lens spanner works well) and saw the little scale with the engraved plus and minus symbols, and a little tab (or lever) which I assumed was the thing which should be moved to slow down or speed up the watch. I moved it a bit towards plus, then put the cover back on. THEN, I read on a blog that you have to be careful because there are TWO regulating tabs, but I only saw one. Anyway, I must have had beginner's luck, because now it is running quite a bit more accurately than before-- only losing about half a minute in the last four days. I'd better not mess with it again!
How accurately can one expect these automatic mecanical watches to run, anyway? I read somewhere that getting one tuned to within a couple of minutes a week is doing pretty good, because it can even depend on which position the watch sits at night.
The orignal problem was the the watch went through a complete cycle in the washing machine, in the pocket of my jeans. Maybe the centrifuge cycle did it in! I took it to a small watch repair shop here in Taipei, and the repairman put it into a sort of vise, which was connected to an LCD readout with a wire. I was surprised to see such a high-tech device in such an old and cluttered shop! Do you know what that sort of analyzer is called? He showed me the descending diagonal patterns on the screen made by the ticking of the watch, and said they were uneven and that that was a sign of some serious problems. So I figured I might as well see if I could regulate it myself.
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.
. I usually do just a flush-out clean and leave it at that. It works 90% of the time. 
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