Posted on 01/03/2015 1:53:58 PM PST by ImJustAnotherOkie
If you like taking things apart, this will mesmerize you.
Don't try this at home. Do marvel at the level of precision on display.
(Excerpt) Read more at roadandtrack.com ...
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FYI...I collect antique clocks,love the mechanics,wood work,glass and engineering.As time goes on and at each show I attend clock repair,not watch, people are at a premium.If you are good you can do OK but the old works need an understanding of those works usually obtained by years of hands on.Its not as simple as it appears.
I have, and I’ve been tempted many times; but everything I’ve found is the old wind-up type. I’m hoping they get back to that style in the modern sort of battery-watch. It was ladylike and elegant. (My retro only goes so far ;-)
For many years I had one of those cheap old wind-up Timex “railroad” pocket watches - you could buy them for about $12 in the 1980s...practically a kid’s toy, but it was a good, reliable watch.
-JT
My Patek was supposed to cost $850 years ago. Never ever had it cleaned.
ping
I replaced the heater core in an old Cadillac once, and had about half a coffee can filled with leftover screws. I had to remove most of the dash to get to the connections, and it was impossible to line up many of the screw holes that went through 2 or 3 piece of plastic to reassemble. It worked, and didn’t leak, so I was happy, but I will stay away from watches. Putting in a new battery and setting the time and date taxes my watch repair skills to the limit.
What you spent to have it serviced is about what he paid for it, adjusted for inflation. Pretty extravagant purchase at the time, over a month's salary depending on his rank. Sounds like he got his money's worth of use out of it though.
Have looked, will keep looking.
This thread reminds me of a photo I once saw of Queen Elizabeth. She was wearing a dainty gold watch with a case that, at least in the picture, seemed to be so thin as to be impossible. It looked so elegant I’ve never forgotten it, and I kept wondering how such a lovely thing would feel in one’s hands, and on one’s wrist; what would the sound be, if it clinked against a crystal goblet... etc.
I tried looking up “thin watch cases” and the like, to figure out if what I had appeared to see was even possible, but couldn’t find anything that fit.
It may have been some artifact of the photo; but how thin can they build a watch case to be, these days?
-JT
When I was a kid my Stevens 22 semiautomatic quit extracting. My dad and I took it apart and found the broken extractor. Didn’t have a source for a new one so we cleaned everything and reassembled it and kept the broken part for later. Turns out, it worked great without it so we forgot about the part.
I looked under Vintage women’s watch on ebay and saw a number of small feminine watches.
Queen Elizabeth wears custom everything.
For the Okie and any other interested person, there is also a watchmaking program at Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology in Okmulgee OK. Here’s an article with details on the history and capabilities of the program:
http://go.osuit.edu/communications/news/content/cowboy-clock-work
I could not do this. I tried to install a mini Sandisk card in my tablet it took a hop out of my fingers never to be seen again.
I have my tiny gold seiko ladies watch I bought years ago. Black face too. they look so feminine .
Want it back together? Not so much. I do like the cool Jigs he uses.
And Mental!
Back in my early days, I used to service photocopier machines and I'd have about a hundred or so parts out of the machine at a time. And I'd usually have to do this at a customer site in a crowded hallway with poor lighting and with a bunch of people constantly walking past me making snide comments. Yet I was always able to get it all put back together again and most of the time the machine would actually work the first time!
It is said you can master just about anything with 10,000 hours of practice. That's roughly five years of 40-hour workweeks.
have you seen some those kluged up network nightmares that some sys admins put together over years and never clean out?
just got done last month do a hotels network replacing all the network access and distro switches.. moving the core, and isp connection and cleaning up the server room..(got to love a site that was using milk crates to rack some of the servers)
I paid $800 to have my submariner serviced last year. The first time since my wife bought it for me 25 years ago. She paid $1800 and now the same watch is $8800. I wear it every day and had it serviced once and it kept its value. tops in my book.You did a great thing with your dads with it will last at least another 50 years with acouple more services.
Back in the 1980s I was young, single, and renting part of a friend’s house. She was a Grandma, and the little grandkids would come over routinely.
One day the VCR broke down. (The VCR was essential for kid cartoon-watching, and there would be misery if we couldn’t get it fixed.)
I had never fixed much of anything; I’m not really mechanically inclined. (I was amazed at the age of 12, when I found out what a radiator key was, and learned to use it: “Oh, THAT’s why my Granny’s radiators don’t work!”)
But, I digress.
I wasn’t mechanical, but I knew Sewing Machines! from many years of having to fiddle with my own old ones.
I figured, How much more complicated can a VCR be, than a Sewing Machine? So, while my friend was out, I opened the gizmo up, and checked out its insides. I didn’t think I could fix it, I just thought I’d have a ‘look-see’.
After a while, I found a lonesome, very tiny spring, laying on the bottom, divorced from any connection it may have had before. I looked to find something like it somewhere; and I found another spring attached on the roundy part on the opposite side from where the lonesome spring was found. So, I stuck the spring back on where it appeared to belong.
The VCR worked for a couple of years longer.
Most things that you think you can’t do, just require that you START.
-JT
I’ve got a self-winding “Marathon” I was issued in Afghanistan about ten years ago. It quit working a few months ago. The face is marked “US Government” and it has a military stock number on the back of the case.
I’d like to find a local place that could fix it.
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