RWG Technical

See, that's where my honest brain comes in...I never would have thought of doing that... I guess some didn't think of it either since their photo's are always black. Now look what you have done, given them idea's... I guess with photoshop, you can do anything anyway. The only real way to know about a lumed dial, is to have one in your hand to inspect and play with, that way you will know how it looks in person. RG

He did already, I answered that I did not have any openings until after March 15th, and he decided to go somewhere else. I responded right away, but couldn't meet his time-line. Such is life... RG

The other part of that discussion, is the daylight (or lack of) shot. You can lume a dial with a shovel, take a "glow" shot, and it will look nice. Daylight shows the quality of the work. Exposure can be your friend for lume shots though, I have brought this up before, here is some further info I had posted along the lines of your discovery a while back. Lume and exposure time It can be very deceiving, the simple answer is, if the background is BLACK, your being deceived...if you can see around the watch, it's more like reality. RG

Wonderful thank you. It's not the fact it was negative, it was what was said and by who. Our discussion here is not a positive, meaning we don't all agree on everything, but at least we are discussing and sharing our different points of view, and expertise, and experience, which helps everyone who reads the post. And that is what a forum should be about. @repaustria I missed the earlier comment on the tilting pinion. Interesting facts, maybe one day I'll have to buy a machine that does the amplitude as well, I just have a hard time letting go of the old Vibrograph, the "toc toc toc" of the hammer marking the paper always brings me back to my days sitting with my late uncle...memories take priority over certain things sometimes... Although I have to say I can tell quite good with my eyes the aproximate amplitude. RG

Well, I just signed on to RWI and had a read of the post...sigh...why even bother with that place. Now I know why I never wanted or will bother to post on that board. Can you do me a favor please, and edit and delete my post from RWI, I thought it would prove somewhat useful, but when I see Phil (Klink) (who I have known for over 4 years), up to his old tricks, and Watchbuff up to his, I really have no interest in offering anything to these people. So if you can simply edit and delete my post, I would appreciate it. These people don't like me, and that's perfectly fine by me, I don't like them either. If the post was credited to anyone but me, it would not get any of the responses from these folks, you should have said RBJ was the author... Thank you. RG EDIT to add. On RWG we don't always agree, and that is normal and needed. But the difference between RWG and what I have read on RWI is simple, we are like adults here (most of the time, me included) and discus things in detail for everyone's benefit, but RWI seems to have a childish attitude about it, no doubt mainly due to the fact I wrote the topic. Best to leave them to their own experts like RBJ and Watchbuff...

@ lanikai Thanks for the kind words. I am curious to know how accurate the watch is running, I am lucky if I can get + - 20 or more seconds per day, even after the service on a A7750. Some are better, but most are in the 20 seconds area. Glad to be of service as always. RG

L&R 111 in the cleaner beaker, and L&R # 003 in the first and second rinse beakers. RG

I would if I was a member...but I am not, sorry. Did you want to cut and past it, and credit me for the info, that's ok with me. RG

Yes I agree, if you don't move around a lot, it can be a problem getting a full good wind. The biggest issue with the Asian 7750's is that the click wheels can and are sticky and prone to causing friction and drag. I have tried to eliminate this problem when I service the A7750's by cleaning the click wheel in the Ultrasonic machine and then I soak it in One-Dip for half an hour or more. This seems to get it cleaned and free and so far after this treatment, I have not had any reported problems. If you pay attention to the movement and have a "feel" for what is normal and abnormal resistance while hand-winding, all of these problems can be avoided. I hand wind my own 25 or so turns, but I know that the click is freewheeling as I do it, I know the movement is serviced and the click wheel is clean. If I start to feel even the slightest resistance, I also know to find out what the problem is, before damage happens. @ repaustria I agree that the drag from the minute gear can stop the movement, but only when the power is almost all gone, under normal operations it's not a problem. If I monitor the movement on the analyzer, I don't even notice any difference in the printout with the chrono ON, even when it ticks the minute over, there is no difference noted. You know as well as I do, how fast the click wheel spins when you handwind, this is never a good thing, so I am not sure why they recommend handwinding, certainly it serves a purpose to handwind when needed, but there is always a real risk of damage, especially if your not paying attention to what the movement is telling you. I have also seen some stripped and damaged stuff, that I could only do with pliers, not my bare hands...maybe Quartz does have a place in the watchworld... RG

Very true, but the resistance is only for about 2 seconds as the center wheel moves the 30 minute gear to the next notch. It's not a constant drag on the movement.

I would wind the watch a few turns, nice and slow, give it a swirl to get the balance in motion, set the time, and put the watch on. Asian or Swiss, the same mechanical principles apply, handwind at your own risk, it makes no difference to me personally what anyone does, but I see the damage that is caused by handwinding quite often. The movement in question was freshly serviced a while back, clean, oiled, etc...it's not the fact it's Asian that is the problem, it's hand winding. Due to the gear up effect from the crown to the rotor, any slight resistance in the click wheel will cause enough back pressure to be felt on the gears that they can be damaged by handwinding. The gears are only made of Brass, which is not much harder than lead... RG

The state of wind does not affect the chrono functions. As far as I am concerned, chrono ON or OFF, makes no difference to the movement, in other words engaging the chrono simply tilts the tilting pinion into the center seconds gear, which has no resistance, and disengages the 12 hour wheel, which unloads the mainspring somewhat. RG

Handwinding an automatic has been discussed in detail. Short version, it's damaging to the movement unless you wind very slowly, and only just enough to give the movement a bit of a charge. All movements are prone to damage, some more than others. The 7750 is at risk and here's what happens... To recap, on a 7750 if it's not running, give it a couple of turns with the crown, nice and slow, swirl the watch in your palm to get it running, put it on and leave it alone and let the autowinder do it's job. IF you note any resistance or find it hard to handwind, STOP, or your going to damage the movement. This type of damage is not covered by my warranty. The rotor can't cause this type of damage, it doesn't turn fast enough, or with enough force to cause this damage. Note the missing teeth. Another view, you can see all the teeth that have been ground down. What happens to the grinding gear...it makes a mess all over... New gear compared to the old damaged one. I cleaned up the mess, the watch was reassembled, and is working fine. Handwind with CAUTION and at your own risk. RG

I use a metal watch oiler, the red coloured one, you can't paint it on, it's like trying to paint snot, you have to apply it one drop at a time. Total time for only luming the bezel, including the small numerals - 1.5 hours. Total time I reduce my lifetime due to the stress of luming these bezels - 1 month. @ dluddy Thought you would like the results. Thanks for the kind words. RG

This is the first Aquatimer I have done the lume on. I have done a number of Cousteau models, this one is slightly different, but the same overall. I have been trying to improve my lume application on the bezel, as well as improve on the Gloss finish so it looks nicer. Getting better, not perfect by any means, but practice does allow one to learn and improve. I hope you like the results. First up, new ETA 7750 install...as I went to install the hands, I noted that the 30 minute counter post was broken off, so I had to replace the 30 minute gear, not a big deal and not unusual for used movements to have defects. Now on to the lume shots, since you can't see the movement once the case is closed up anyway... I am not big on Glow shots, as they can be deceiving. This is a 1 second shot in daylight, the lume is C1 so your not going to get the same glow as you do with C3 which is the brightest. But it looks good. Only thing missing is the Chieftang AR coated crystal, but in reality it's not going to look much different than it does now, given that the new AR makes the crystal invisible. Thanks for looking. RG

Looks great, nice job. RG

Sounds like the brake lever is not working on the subdial, or the hand is loose. Try this, start the chrono, then Stop it - DON"T reset, only stop, see what the hand does. In the Stopped position the brake lever should be holding the gear fixed and it shouldn't move. Let me know what you see. If it's the brake lever that is defective, you have to take the dial and hands off, and the top bridge off to access the chrono levers and brake. RG

Glad you like the results. Wear it well with those "big guns" of yours RG

I don't buy the "joke" line, sorry. The post that showed a completely assembled watch, with the saussage lume at the 4 o'clock position having a big gouge in it, was clearly not a joke. To fix that problem would require complete disassembly of the watch, scraping off of the bad lume, and applying new lume. Why would someone who is so "pressed" for time, want to re-do his work over again, all in the name of a joke? Same for the mark at the "10" position, fixing this after the watch has been shown completely assembled, requires teardown, and splitting the sandwich dial...again a lot of work, all in the name of a "Joke". Pressed for time, but has time to re-do a job, in the name of a joke, posts watches to show the quality of the workmanship, then deletes them when people note problems...I guess V and I are the only ones who have a hard time believing any of this. No one has yet to explain how these disappearing posts got deleted, it's one thing to edit your own post, but when others have commented about the poor workmanship, and their comments are not visible to the members, who are we protecting? RG

The movement is indeed a Seagull 2892 COPY. Markings or no markings under the balance, the easiest way to tell, check out the hairspring stud and regulator arm and pins. ETA's all have removable stud and regulator arms installed into a forked slot. Seagull regulator arms are two brass pins sticking up above the arm, and the stud is a screw down one. Is anyone surprised by this...I am not, at least not anymore... RG

Should be a crown gasket. Unless you removed a pusher, the o'ring is captured in the case. Have a look at the stem with the crown and stem removed, you should find a spot for it. RG

Camera is an Olympus E500 with a 50mm macro lens...works great. RG

This watch was sent in, as received from a dealer...after a look, I re-assembled it and returned it to the owner untouched. Why, well have a look and you'll see why... Far too many things wrong and not worth trying to fix. First up, keyless works...a bit of grinding going on here...how does a brand new unworn watch get in this condition? More metal fillings on the dial and damage on the dial from assembly. Crap in the screw slot. Figured I may as well have a look at the dial, so I split the sandwich dial only to find that the upper half of the dial was missing it's alignment pins, they were ground off...and the bottom half was flat and not able to be lumed. Normal dials have a slight recess on them, and actual numeral outlines. The recess gives you a place to apply the lume, hard to do on this one with neither the recess or the outline of the numbers to follow... More metal fillings. Bit of an alignment issue with the CG? Seems like someone is missing a bit of arm hair after inserting the CG pin... Got the caseback re-installed only to find it was machined crooked...fully tightened, check out the gap and no gap from one side to the other... Don't think I would swim with this baby... Keep in mind, this is a BRAND new watch...the owner can speak up with more details if he chooses. I would keep a look out for similar ones, normally things like this don't happen in isolation. Lets hope this is not a new trend. Thanks for looking. RG