fraggle42

Totally agree with all of that. When I said "100 watches" in the other thread that figure was picked out of thin air, the repair business I worked in was upto a dozen items max with the customers always dropping the items off and picking them up (truckers and other CBers). They're all so tight there was never a worry someone would not pick something back up (there was one guy who bought an expensive mike, which was tested at sale, and then bought it back a couple of weeks later after it has "just stopped working" - there was nothing inside it. How he expected to get a refund I've no idea!)

And doing exactly that will take the time. You're in your workshop. You have say 100 watches (or cases, movements, whatever) in the line for whatever work they require. To be able to spend a few seconds per reply as you indicate means that Mike has to remember EXACTLY who sent each watch, exactly what they wanted doing, how much has been paid, how much there is to pay, the exact status of the work to date, what parts have been ordered, what parts have arrived, what parts are still to be ordered, what timeframe he gave the person, when it arrived, which order it is within the 100 watches. Just from looking at the watch. Even if it's got a tag on it with a name, doesn't help with all the other essential information. And that's just if he starts one watch, completely finishes it, and then starts the next one, which no one does. Anyone has a dozen or two items on the go at once, as you wait for parts to arrive, or calibration to be tested over a day or two, or the final thing to be tested over a week or so. I couldn't remember that lot for ONE person, never mind 100. Could you? So, it's either kept electronically or on paper, with lots of logging when the watch comes in, parts come in, when any work is done, etc, etc, etc. So to make any meaningful message to each customer he has to dig all that information out, for each watch, assess it and work out where in the repair process it is, if it's waiting on parts, re-estimate the time remaining (just for doing that one watch assuming working 100% on it), and then take into account the other 99 jobs to arrive at an estimated time of being returned to the customer. I've worked in a place where I had maybe (just) a dozen jobs on the go. With only a dozen I could keep timescales in memory and organise it, but if I had to take a unexpected break, it all gets knocked out of your memory double quick. It's a nightmare when someone turns up out of the blue and just asks you, there's no way you can just pull a figure out of the air. It's meaningless. I'm not getting at you, I'm just saying it may seem a simple task, and if he only had one watch to repair it would be. Scale it up by 100, all needing different things doing, and all at different stages, and it's not simple.

Clean up the metal surfaces that the epoxy is on and use liquid metal. Should hold them for a good while.

That "no show" will be someone across the road from the agreed jewellers looking for someone going in and then coming back out, looking around, going back in, coming back out and heading off. And whilst they're walking back to the car, whacked over the back of the head and wake up short of $2,500 and a set of car keys... plus the car.

To those that say "He should have taken an hour and answered everyones emails and messages", you have absolutely NO idea how long it can take to do that. Even if he's got only 100 customers, emailing them all with an individual update about their own watches, money and estimated completion date will take easy 15 minutes PER PERSON. 1500 minutes, 25 hours non stop. For just 100 customers. He hasn't got his own section which would have made it so much easier to post a status update once every couple of days with a very brief status that everyone knew where it was, and could check it. And I don't care what anyone thinks, family does always come first, ahead of anything that's non family. That's not to say MD shouldn't have posted an update every few days, he did. Don't blame Mike that he hasn't got his own section where people can find his updates, and that an easilt findable sticky thread wasn't created that he could post updates too. As to how long this may go on for, my sister had to become the executor of my mums finances and take them over when mum was going down hill, and that took months to get sorted out in the first place, and it took months to finalise it all when mum passed on. It's NOT a quick process, so honestly do not expect Mike to be back to working 100% speed, I really cannot see that happening. If you must have instant communications from your watch repairer, buy a gen, sod off to the AD and pay 5 times the price for the work.

This is exactly what's happened to me. Never mind, gen hands, dial and crystal arrived today and hopefully it'll soon be on its way to RolexMan for a pampering session

Forget about getting a "good" expensive camera, if you haven't had lots and lots of practise in photography the pictures from a $10,000 camera will still be poor. Buy a second hand P&S camera, you can get a good one from the last generation of P&S cameras cheaply and then practise, practise, practise. Carry it around with you everywhere (so having a small camera is beneficial here) and take pics of anything that catches your eye. The pictures will look boring and "holiday snap"ish at first but as you get more practise and read more and see others photos you'll learn what makes a good photo and what to avoid. Lighting is the second most important thing, even at night. Again, just play around with the time of day, the lighting, indoors, outdoors, people, landscapes, macro, anything and everything. As others have said you can produce absolutely stunning photos using very cheap cameras.

Hack mechanism - stops the seconds hand moving when you're setting the time. I haven't looked to see where it is or how it works yet so someone else will have to tell you where it is and what it looks like

I likey

That sounds like a heavy day Cats, hope all went well and you're not feeling too bad.

I read this in the Metro last night and thought "Wow! Titanium balls or what?" Didn't know it was our Sixx - well done my friend, absolutely fantastic acheivement!

Ah. I always thought you removed them one at a time for some reason. I was wondering how you avoided marking the tops of the minute & hour hands as you remove the one above it. Every day is a school day! Even for old dogs

Done. LOL I wouldn't even begin to dream of imagining entertaining the thought that I might have "mastered" keyless works! I've mastered breaking them...

Ingy, Ingy, Ingy! Can't go wrong with one http://www.ttw888.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=30_192&products_id=9477

The place I ordered my tools from threw in a couple of dial protectors for free so I use them.

No idea what the difference is between 2836 and 7750? Hand wind position is when the castle wheel is in as far as it will go with the spring finger correctly in its shoulder, so pushing the stem in doesn't dislocate the spring finger? The spring finger popping out of the castle wheel shoulder? I've always had a very logical mind so understanding how things work I find easy so long as they dont spring apart into hundreds of pieces before I work it out! (understanding women I find beyond impossible...) It's removing and putting hands back on I need to practise. Moronic newbie question alert!... When removing the fingers, do you usually take them all off at once, or one at a time? I've got a presto style puller but the fingers are 0.5mm depth (yellow handle on it?) which I find far too fat to fit between say the seconds and minute hands. Looking in Offrei I see ones as small as 0.15mm (or 0.2mm for sensibly priced ones)

Thanks all. I can dismantle the KW and put it back together again but forgot to check it was all back together properly before putting dial & hands back on. Doh. Plus I really need a decent hand remover tool, the one I've got sucks, and then do lots of practise on old dead watches Double Plus I think one of those microscopes would make life a hell of a lot easier, almost 50 and my eyes just don't work as well as they used too. What I think I'll do is take a dead movement + dial + hands, take all decorations off the dial, sand it back, paint white enamel, bake that hard, then paint with black emulsion. That will scratch very easily and show me how good / bad I am, and the black emulsion is easy to repaint for another practise. Anyone got such a dead movement with dial + matching hands they could donate? Movement can be just enough to hold the hands and dial, don't care about escapement, main spring, etc. Dial can be as tatty as can be but not bent. A basic 3 hands will be good until I get reasonable at changing those hands, then I'll try the same thing with the small 7750 hands.

Bloody things. Just pulled the back off to see if the display back would fit. Which needed a different ring, so had to remove the crown & stem. Of course ring didn't fit & display back too shallow & stopped auto winder rotating. And keyless works went wrong putting stem back in. And my hand remover is totally useless with Omega PO hands. Second hand trashed and other two marked. And after reassembling the KW the date doesn't change. I hate it. I hate them all! Damned lucky I didn't make final calibrations with a sledgehammer. So. That's a new set of gen hands, wait for the TC 2824 to arrive and send the lot off to get sorted by someone who knows what they're doing. Anyone wanna buy some watch tinkering tools? I've no doubt when not in my hands they'll work just fine.

WatchIdiots.com? WatchImpossible.com? WatchInvisible.com? (when you get it ) WatchIToldYouNotToOrderFromThisSite.com?

The dealers have no way of getting a refund or exchange from the factories, so if Josh sent you a new movement he would have to buy that out of his own pocket. Ditto for an exchanged watch, and a refund would leave Josh with a dead watch that he's paid for. So all three options you have suggested will cost josh money. Sending it back to him means he can get someone to look at it and fix it, which is a lot cheaper. So from his point of view, sending it back to him is really the only viable option. I'm sure you now this, but ETA movements will never be new (NOS ones go for loads of money), they are all old movements with new Asian parts in to repair them, and they're not cleaned or serviced sadly. And from what I've read, once a watch had been opened and someone else has been inside it, usually the dealers will then simply refuse to do anything with it, as they have no idea if someone is trying to pull a fast one and have swapped the working movement with a dead one - please note that I'm not saying this is the case here, I'm just presenting the situation from the dealers point of view.

Sorry to be blunt but you're talking about illegal counterfeit goods and expecting AD customer support. Ain't gonna happen. Get the watch smith to drop in an Asian movement, you can get them for $50 and he should have them in stock, so it'll be a very quick turnaround. Or go to the AD and drop $5000 on one. I know which I'd rather do.

The seller has offered a refund, might see if they'll exchange it for a different batch.

Another crappy iPhone picture of my latest aquisition bought from M2M over at RWI.

To my eyes it does not look like the same watch (from the engraving). In the QC pics it's bang on, in your pics it's not. Also in your pic the 12 marker on the dial is aligned with the 12 marker on the bezel so I don't think the dial has moved. C&R.

I put mine in my winder and it basically doesn't wind it (well, it does a little) There is too much resistance somewhere and the weight isn't enough to pull itself around on the winder. Even put in backwards so its just supposedly spinning freely, it still won't rotate fully. Works when watch is vertical mind, just something rather unoiled or stiff. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk 2