fraggle42

I appreciate everyone saying "stick to the TD's" but, frankly, half of them are either down due to litigation or don't actually have the watches they advertize in stock (just checked this with one of your "Trusted Dealers" - I could have paid for the watch , it would have allowed me to do that, but on further investigation, turns out they have none.   Only about three of your TD's actually have sites which are running and out of those three, none do the watches I'm searching for, all just do bog standard replicas.

 

I'm no fan of James and his inexorable pushing of the two sites he's either linked with or paid by (!), but to be honest, it's exactly the same here!  You trash all the others, and point people to your own five dealers - at least three of whom are no longer operational!  

 

Great.

Whilst I understand your frustration you have to understand the bigger picture.

The dealers have a website (or two) and that website has a link to it, the URL.

The gen manufacturers get these links to the sites blocked all the time (as much as three times a year), but it is JUST the link that is "taken down". The website is still alive (and even if it's not it can be restored from a backup in half an hour), they just need a new URL to point to the website so people can access it again.

So the dealers and their websites are still there, just they are forced to create a new link every now and then. This is why a few of them have the year in their link.

As to "stock levels", well, basically NO dealers actually carry any stock. (* There are a couple who do, and they advertise the actual stock they have - which is usually very limited and runs to their own taste in watches)

The dealers are essentially a one ~ three person operation. When an order comes in someone either goes down to the watch market area and hunts for what you want OR they get in touch with the factories directly and ask them if they have any stock of that particular watch.

There is no fancy stock taking mechanism, so they don't really know if they can get it. All they can do is a best guess, they found one last time so they'll say "yes", or they haven't been able to find one for a few months so they say "no".

And of course the factories will only make what they can sell, which are the popular watches.

Of course of you go to the watch market area you can most likely find anything you want, BUT 99% of what you can find is very poor quality. The good stuff is hidden out of site and you need to know where to look or know the shop owners to even get to see the good stuff.

This is where the dealers come in - they DO know where to look and who to ask to get the best reps, and they do.

So always ask if they have got it in stock, and get an agreement about how YOU want to proceed if it is NOT available, either another watch or a refund, and as to the URLs being clobbered every now and then, yes, it's annoying, I'm in the process of making a tool that will list all the correct links to help people. Just ask in these forums if you have any doubt about a link that you have, or if you cannot find it altogether.

Bud I empathize with you as it was a few months I was stuck in plaster and a boot with that Ruptured Achilles Heal!

 

You'll be back soon and looking FAB I'm sure :-)

AJ

Ouch! Didn't realise that you had to have a pot and boot on!

Never done that myself so don't know what they need to immobilize to get it to heal, I did have a broken toe once where they put a plaster on, it fell to bits (they told me I could walk on it) so they then took it off and just said "It'll heal eventually!"

Fraggle

 

Looking good but we need to wheel you in the sunshine to get a bit of colour :-)

Best regards and hope recovery is going well.

AJ

LOL I know, been sat on the sofa nearly all day for 2 weeks is very boring!

Just had the staples removed (25 of them) and can remove the long plaster tomorrow morning for good.

And going under a sunbed when you've got healing wounds or scars is bad for you, they say! Not fair

My 382 had no auto wind it needed a full service which revealed four separate broken or damaged parts

Slow boat to China or not, that'd be going right back to the dealer for an exchange!

Please guys note I'm not really saying "they are worse" (even if that's what I think), I'm just trying to find out.

A part of me is wondering if someone rather cynical has decided to cut down on the minimal QC and divert that budget to making them look better, as they know that most of us will get any problems fixed locally, so all said cynical person would care about is selling them in the first place which relies on their looks and having minimal flaws. And if that is the case, the TDs better wake up to the fact or they'll lose TD status on the forums.

I discovered today that my ZF Pam 389 has stopped running for some unknown reason, yet to be determined when it's serviced.

There's a thread over on RWG.bz about a foreign body jamming up a Bronzo and damaging the hairspring, and one of our own members here has had a loose screw do a similar thing.

I know reps have more than their fair share of problems, and "it's all part of the game", but they're charging a premium for these new watches IMO and the quality and cleanliness conditions in the watch assembly places seem to be worse than ever.

Have you had a problem with a ZFac watch?

Old trusty Omega franken for today

PP dispute?

STONE HIM!!!!!

And the rest.

Dial feet will have to be rewelded on the right places and the dial refinished (or you can do the cheesy way and use dial dots), custom made hands, custom stem, custom crown, custom made movement holder, custom made movement spacer as movement is thinner and it'll need spacing so the stem hole is at the right height for the case.

$30 for the movment, $100 for a service and, what, $250 for the rest of the work?

Not what I'd call a bargain my friend!

Has anyone dismantled one of these?

My 389 just stopped working whilst on the winder and refuses to be bought back to life with a couple of medium slaps.

Pulled the back off to look for errant screws, etc, and was confronted by the Panerai P9000 look-alike plates:-

There's a fake plate over the balance plate, and I think they're created an autowinder plate that completely covers the 7750.

I would like to just remove the fake plates to look for loose screws, etc, without actually removing any of the movements actual plates.

The fake plate over the balance is easy, but can anyone point out the screws I need to remove to get the autowind plate off?

Thanks!

By the way, that is a silly little fake escapement wheel that's not connected to anything

You ain't ever going to get a brick and mortar outlet for illegal goods, it'd be shut down before the paint was dry.

It is frustrating that most of us cannot try various reps on and get the feel of how good they car, but that's the way it is.

The M2M section is the answer for me, if something tempts me and I'm not happy buying new, I'll keep an eye on the M2M sales until a nice one comes up and try to buy it for a decent price. I'm no wheeler dealer so I'll never make money on anything, but I won't lose a lot either if I don't like it and resell.

Alternatively get yourself along to one of the GTGs and try on a load of other members watches.

That's the puppy, here's a link to it

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/390609659971

It was on Youtube but I couldn't help you more than that. Just one of loads of videos I've watches on there.

Black (Bay) Friday?

It's fine to leave your feedback about TDs, whether it be good, bad or indifferent, but please leave it in the forums that have been created for us to leave our feedback.

If you consider someone who is investigating a TD, they can either go to the feedback forum or post a question asking for peoples opinion.

If they looked in the feedback forums (and previous customers have left feedback) they can read lots and lots of them and get an average, considered, overall feedback for that TD.

If they ask for opinions, they will get individual members giving their opinion, and usually those who bother to provide input are those with great positive or terrible negative opinions, so the OP gets a very distorted, polarised opinion given by just a few members with strong opinions of that TD. It's not a true, average feedback opinion and I think is almost worthless unless taken alongside lots of other individual feedback to arrive at an average, considered, overall feedback.

I would go so far as to say we could do with a system whereby customers can rate the TD in the crucial areas:-

* presales communications

* sales communications

* post sales communications

* stock level knowledge

* QC pics (Y/N)

* QC pic quality

* waterproof testing (Y/N)

* timeograph testing(Y/N)

* packaging quality

* postal service choice

* payment methods choice

* website ease of use

* website content uptodate (i.e. are old, unavailable watches removed quickly)

* forum participation

* TD staff knowledge

* TD helpfulness (some are just content shifters, some are real enthusiasts).

Which makes it an absolute doddle to present an average 'score' in all areas for each TD.

You could then have TD of the year with runner up, etc, etc.

Incentives for the TDs, helps out all customers.

I've seen videos of a guy removing the hands using a pair of hand levers and he used a plain, ordinary thin plastic bag to put loosely over the hands as a dial protector.

He just showed how to remove & refit hands though, no DW swapping.

I've got the same winder, they are good

Kernow have you found that if you put thick watches on the bottom row of winders that they touch the perpex frint window in a couple of places as they rotate?

I have on mine, just had to shuffle them around a bit so no thick watches are at the bottom.

And as the front window is perspex and not glass it hasn't marked the watches at all.

Expand the hobby.

Buy watch servicing tools and you can wait in anticipation for them to arrive!

This big one has three ultrasonic transducers, the small one has one, so there's three times the US power in there for a start.

It obviously all depends on what you intend to do with it, I've got a few old clocks here (wall & grandmother) that have a lot of decorative brass fittings that have a lot of tarnish, wax, varnish and god knows what else that makes them almost black, plus the movements themselves are made the 1800's way with large brass plates and gears, all tarnished to heck.

I want to completely refurbish them and that includes getting all the metal work like new, and the small cleaner doesn't have a hope in hell of doing it but this big one, 20 minutes and the stuff is coming out like new.

If you want it to just remove very light dirt and oils from relatively very clean watch movements you're servicing then the small one may be fine, but you know as I do, you get what you pay for and I wonder how long the small one will last. Maybe for years of you're only doing a few movements a year.

So this big cleaner can clean watch movements well and it also gives me the option of easily cleaning a lot larger components and a lot dirtier components.

I couldn't find any reviews of how the small cleaners compare to these big cleaners before I bought it, and now I've written one so people can make an educated decision based on what they want to clean!

And so have you Legend, twice!

Do you take Paypal?

Very very nice! Hopefully you'll get to meet him someday if he asks for some more straps!

One of the few advantages of recovering from an op, you don't care if the weather is horrible and wet outside as you know you're not going out in it

Bigger and Hotter is definitely better.

I bought one of the tiny plastic ultrasonic cleaners a couple of months ago and tried it on a few things. The maximum cleaning time it could do was 3 minutes and it's capacity was about 0.5 lt or less, you know the kind of thing. Fancy push button control, clear Perspex lid with a blue LED light in it, little white plastic tray to fit inside it.

It did clean things, to a very small extent. Just about everything I tried needed 5 cycles or more, and I found out that pouring almost boiling hot water in it (plus a bit of cleaning solution) worked a lot better, but it still required lots and lots of cycles and even then it could only shift light contamination.

I should say that the items I am cleaning varied from coins to brass parts from a wall clock to gold plated lighters.

After getting fed up of the small one I ordered a slightly bigger one.

6.5lt capacity. 300W heater that can heat the solution upto 80 degrees C, 3 ultrasonic transducers for a total of 180W power.

Received it the other day and tried it today.

The heater works quite well. It's no where as quick as a kettle (but at 1/10th the power I didn't expect it to be), taking approx 20-30 mins to heat 6.5lt from 20deg C to 80.

The basket provided is quite coarse and small things can fall through it easily, so I've got a couple of very fine mesh baskets on order that have a handle on one side that I will bend so they clip onto the sides of the big basket.

Putting the brass parts in (decorative pillars and figures and weights from the wall clock) and setting it running for 20 minutes.

At the end all the tarnishing and other crud that had built up over the years was gone. Very, very good.

Some of the figures had intricate details on them and after drying for a while some residue dried in these crevices, but nothing a quick blast of the satin polishing wheel won't shift.

(This dirt was stuff the little cleaner didn't even begin to lift)

One thing I learned, never, ever mix metals when cleaning them.

I put in one soft steel threaded rod in with the brass parts and that has turned black and discoloured everything that was touching and near it. A second go with those parts has removed half of this, but I'll have to polish the rest away. It almost looks like it's stripped the coating off the threaded rod and electroplated the surrounding parts with it!

Which leads me onto another theory for this new toy, electroplating. Having a large container with a heater that can maintain the heat to within 1 degree should be great for plating stuff

Anyway, as it nearly always the case, avoid buying the cheap tools, they are junk and you, like me, will completely waste your money.

(The cheap crap one was £20, the good one was about £125)

Hehe, I know it's all subjective. This looks more 'barn find' than vintigized to me, but this whole game is not one I understand. I suppose it's like those who find a 'barn find' vehicle that's covered with rust, but no structural damage, and they spray the rust with Matt lacquer to preserve it

I love trying to find out why we have such different subjective views, what the cause(s) are, but this one has me beat