Horology

I’ve played,stripped and rebuilt all sorts of engines, in my life, but I’ve never been into clockwork stuff, until recently, when I was given a load of old watches.
Bought a few watchmakers tools from flea bay, and stripped a few down into their single components. Quite interesting, like ‘little gearboxes’.
Passes the time, I suppose...
Anyone else inti this sort of thing?

 

@Barry Haynes used to "dismantle" the gas meter, I believe.

 

I had a go, still got the tools if I need to fix anything, but since I've been wearing an apple watch my analogue movements have been sitting in a draw unused. Been thinking about getting them out again... got a nice Seiko 5.

 

And we weren't alone

 

Old Ch

Old Smiths, Chelmsford, made in Great Britain, watches are getting collectible now. I can’t resist a good one of these on eBay.

Also picked up a mint solid gold Rotary 1960s for less than 200£. Got some nice 50s military ones too. All serviced and working

 

I quite like trying to work on tiny surface mount circuit boards. Bits and pieces go down to about 0.5 mm across, soldered pins about 0.5mm apart.
I managed to buy an old PZO MST131 binocular microscope on eBay a few years back . It cost £100 - a university biology dept. was selling off 1973 vintage kit, one microscope a week.
They are now £400 on eBay with all the kit that came with it. Replaced the filament bulb in it with a 3 watt LED.
It has magnification from X4 to X100, in 8 steps, and what is best, it focusses at a point 100mm below the objective lens. Making it easy to fix my Casio digital watches when the buttons wear away the edge of the PCB.

 

I gave up on watches a few years ago as I always broke them.

I have taken a few apart but my eyes, hands plus my patience have given up.

 

Yeah. I like the look of the new Seiko 5’s.

 

Yeah but they killed off the SKX for them, the SK5's are nice, but they aren't a proper dive watch like the SKX used to be, they're pretend dive watches

Not that I'll ever use an ISO certified dive watch properly


Edit there was loads of wailing and gnashing of teeth in the watch world when Seiko introduced the new 5's, giving everyone almost what they wanted except a dive rating. Seiko kept the same price and thus made the proper dive watches the next rung up and thus more expensive.

 

I got one of those binocular scopes from work, they chucked a load of them in the recycling skip... muppets. Goes well with my nice hot air workstation

 

The Prospex?

 

Yep, Prospex, but they are twice the price, or more, of an SKX. Basically, the fuss was all about Seiko pushing those buyers who desire a diver's watch up a tier in their price hierarchy. While the SKX successors became non diver's for the same price as the SKX.

 

Tickety Tockerty

 

I don't have time

 

I sometimes appear naked in John Lewis. Is that wrong ?

 

Never knowingly overdressed?

 

The shop, or the man?

 

Nice. I’ve only heard of the Rotary.

 

I’m not sure how many I have now. The earliest one I bought, was in 1988. I still have the receipt for it.

 

Horology ! Love it, go on I am Aquarius