New watch - maintenance?

[sebvad]

So, new breitling avenger from Toro arrived, beautiful watch.  I can sometimes hear the movement inside of it, and i've noticed a few of you have said you've had your watch 'serviced' or commenting that it's rare for a watch to arrive from Noob factory in appropriate internal condition.  Should i be taking this to someone to do something - and what would that something be?  Is there servicing that i should be doing on my own, or is it really something that needs to be done by a watch professional?

 

[miagi]

hehehe if you have to ask, its not something you can do yourself. seek out one of the modders here, or try a local non-AD watch-smith.

 

cheers 

[sebvad]

So... should i be taking it in for maintenance, and if so, what is the maintenance (ie would would i be asking the watch smith to do) and with what frequency should i do it?  once? once a year? 

[danhobson17]

If its working ok and keeps good time, leave it as it is for now. Wear it and enjoy it for 6-8 months. If after this time you decide its a keeper, think about getting it serviced.

 

If you have the movement serviced, a good watch smith should strip out the movement, check and clean all parts then reassemble with correct grade and amount of oil. I think a serviced watch should be good for at least 5 years but you never know.

 

Please consider that this is my opinion and i am fairly new to this too. There are many people on here with far more experience who may be able to give you more detailed advice

[txcollector]

" I can sometimes hear the movement inside of it" - Not sure what you hear but if you mean the rotor spinning that's very common and most likely service won't fix it.

" few of you have said you've had your watch 'serviced' ... commenting that it's rare for a watch to arrive from Noob factory in appropriate internal condition" - Watch movements are very delicate mechanical machines that need to be clean of all dust and debris and properly oiled so not to damage the internal parts and function correctly. The most common issue with non serviced movement is poor power reserve (how long the watch runs after it's off your wrist). A properly maintained watch with an A7750 movement (which I guess is what you have) can run for up to 40 hours after is fully charged and off your wrist.

One misconception that people have is that cleaning and oiling a movement is the same as regulating the watch (for proper timing accuracy). Although a watchsmith would do both during service, one can regulate a watch without fully servicing it. A watch running slow or fast for a few seconds a day is normal.

In proper watch factories watches are assembled in clean rooms and the movement is fully serviced before being mounted on a watch. In Chinese rep factories the conditions are not even close to a Swiss counterpart so the expectation is that the movement would not be oiled and probably dirty (not always though).

"Should i be taking this to someone to do something" - In the beginning I serviced all my 7750's and that was very expensive. Today I only do it if (1) I really want to keep it or (2) the movement is giving me problems. I'd wait until you're sure you want to keep it.

"Is there servicing that i should be doing on my own" - Absolutely not. It takes several years and a lot of broken movements for you to learn how to properly do that. Besides the cost of the oils alone would make this effort more expensive than sending to a proper watchsmith. The issue that you will have is that outside the forums very few watchsmiths are willing to work on Asian copies and there are very few of those watchsmiths in the forum too. The wait time will be long.

"what frequency should i do it? once? once a year?" - The norm is once every 5-7 years.

[sebvad]

fantastic. thanks folks.