Anyone into horology?

[mattius]

I recently started getting into horology.

I'm very basic at the moment buying movements and bits and assembling them all together with a lot of swearing and shouting, mainly due to my failing eye sight and the tiny components.

But I've now built a fair few watches of various calibres.

This is my latest pilots watch

Edited November 4, 2024 by mattius

[RogerH]

According to my computer it is not 08.18 and you watch says 10.45 - doh

 

Very nice

 

Roger

[Nick Jones]

Nice . Assembling MS ECUs is about my limit though when it comes to small and fiddly….

[Hamish]

Not sure I have the eyesight for this but love watches etc ever since meeting George Daniels at a vintage race meeting on the Isle of Man. Turns out he was a great mate of my dads. 
 

oh and I don’t think I have a small enough adjustable spanner or hammer to work on them. 

[mattius]

I had to buy a microscope lol

[Nick Jones]

That sorts the vision side….. what about my monkey paws….?

[mattius]

Monkey paws are definitely a challenge, I get the Mrs to help sometimes, the steady hand of a nurse is much better than my hamfisted attempts.

Finally got this one working to a standard Im happy with

Skeleton titanium watch.

After a wee bit of tweaking it yeilds surprising results of accuracy. +1sec a day, that's nuts for a Japanese movement.

[mattius]

Not one of my own builds, but a new toy and  thought you guys would appreciate this.

A Damascus steel divers watch, the metallurgy is amazing.

[RogerH]

That is very nice. Hmmmmmm

 

Roger

[mattius]

I built one for the Mrs for Christmas, mens watches are hard, women's are just silly, it's a teeny automatic movement 

[Steve 13-60]

Just finished building my Xmas pressie.

It keeps stopping tho, there's a 'high' spot or something similar, could be a sticky tooth, gotta persevere and keep polishing bits. Runs for approx 5 mins then stops, just too much friction. But not bad for being made from wood.

[mattius]

My old boy made a similar wooden clock a few years back. I fixed it this Christmas after a lot of red wine. There is too much friction on the wood gears and the pivot points. Try a little bit of olive oil, that worked with me.

[Nick Jones]

Wow, looks so good, working is almost irrelevant…….

[Steve 13-60]

After polishing up all the gear teeth and pivots it ran non-stop overnight. But to do that I had had to disconnect the balloon on the right. It is supposed to drop over an hour then raise up again. But it seems to put too much friction in and only runs for 10 mins...but I'm making progress, which can't be said for the Herald as the new drive shafts haven't arrived yet.....fingers crossed for tomorrow.

[mattius]

At it again, most expensive movement yet to this is an ETA 2824, 28,000 beats per hour, mega accurate.

Work in progress, I've learnt to walk away and come back, rushing ends up with tiny components flying around the room.

[Hamish]

Impressed with your fine motor skills and eyesight !! 🤓

Edited January 18 by Hamish

[thebrookster]

Like Hamish, I'm impressed! Albeit mostly with your patience, I don't think I could match it.

Out of interest, are you now gaining a huge collection of watches? Or do you sell them after completion?

Does remind me that I do at some point need to find someone to overhaul some old pocket watches for me.

[mattius]

Slowly building a large collection, none of them are worth that much to bother selling.

But it's fascinating to me all the different movements and their different quirks.

I've rebuilt one movement from scratch, it didn't go well, it's together, but not running well if at all. I went in at the deep end and did an automatic movement, which is not the best starting point. I certainly wouldn't do it yet on anything I liked or wanted to work again

I've started buying broken pocket watches, movement is much bigger ( 40mm movement is huge in watch terms )  and manual wind, so that's gonna be my next attempt at building one from the ground up. 

My man cave is a mess of broken watches and clocks

That's the reason all this started, I'm too tight to pay the £300 I got quoted to put a hand back on that had fallen off a watch.

Edited January 18 by mattius

[rogerguzzi]

Hello All

              I like watches and Clocks and have a few (not worth much but owed for years !

Some I managed to get working some are on the to look a pile again!!

I must get my Vienna weight driven wall clock going again which we have owned for about 50 years! and bought in Broken ! plus the Anniversary clock which is a solid weight one not the four balls type!

plus a few others and an old pocket watch with the fusey? (chain drive )movement and gold cased!

Roger

ps plus loads of watches from years gone and cheap type clocks

pps My Grandfather I never knew(killed in the air raids on Birmingham who was a silver smith and I have his every day watch) nothing special but nice?)

ppps we have so much stuff from our late folks and not Shure when the Grim Reaper calls what the kids will do with it all (bin it?)

[Hamish]

My old man had an ancient water clock

water vessel with a drip hole with a float connected to a chain that worked as single “hour hand”

as the water level reduced the float lowered on the chain working the hour hand. 
 

not that accurate and an annoying drip drip drip

[mattius]

This one turned into a bit of a mission.

The Chinese case machining isn't exactly the most reliable and accurate.

That screw is 0.8mm thread btw, and shouldn't be at that angle 

The language barrier doesn't help.

I essentially ended up with two cases that didn't fit, luckily that meant I had a spare...

I also own a lathe... So 30 thou later... I have another working watch.

I'm starting to run out of affordable movements to use, next one might try a mega quartz movement, or go down the old pocket watch route.

I swear the screws get smaller the more expensive the movement...

Edited January 29 by mattius

[mattius]

I'm calling this one the miracle franken-watch.

Why a miracle, because it's the first movement I have fully rebuilt, combination of two broken movements. Which it turns out, now both work after a few weeks or meticulous disassembly and re-assembly.

Housed in a nice titanium case. I'm chuffed

[Hamish]

That’s a nice clear military style watch well done. 
there are some clever watch repairers on youtube. Which are worth a look. 

[mattius]

Yeah wristwatch revival ( marshal ) has been one of the key reasons I actually got into this, great videos that show the whole process.

Nekkid Watchmaker is another good one.