Valjoux 7750 are not all created equal.....or are they?

I recently had a conversation with a friend about how various watch makers use the Valjoux 7750 and that sparked the idea for this post. For the uninitiated the 7750 is an automatic chronograph movement designed by Edmond Capt for Valjoux and released July 1, 1974 only to be discontinued shortly after its release due to the watch industry's quartz crisis. When the watch industry stabilized the movement was revived and put back into production in the 80's and various models of it exist today that offer GMT, moon phase, power reserve indicator, tricompax layout, etc.

Chronograph movements aren't exactly a new concept with the very first one invented by Louis Moinet in 1816 to solve the issue with tracking astronomical objects against an accurate time plot. The first automatic chronograph was introduce by Zenith with the El Primo on March 1, 1969 that still incorporated a column wheel design. The 7750 came five years later and solved a design hurdle which was a movement that can be manufactured easier, cheaper, and faster. Initially designed as a workhorse movement and still referred as such by watch makers the 7750's initial intention was not to be a high end movement, but an affordable chronograph ebauche.

What made the 7750 easier to manufacture was the use of a cam and lever known as the coulisse lever system to replace the column wheel. The column wheel is a very precisely created piece and took tens of hours by a single person to finish and polish by hand elsewhere the coulisse lever system required far less precision in manufacturing yet maintained high accuracy. Not only was it easier to manufacture it is far more rugged than the column wheel and is the only type of mechanical chronograph to pass military standards. A draw back to the coulisse lever was that it wouldn't consistently reset the chronograph hands back to zero and Capt solved this by utilizing an existing patent from Henri Jacot-Guyot who filed his patent in 1940 that of a heart shaped cam now ubiquitous to the 7750 that accurately resets the hands to zero.

Despite its humble start the 7750 has become synonymous with a high grade movement and the workhorse gained popularity among manufactures and watch enthusiasts alike for reliability and accuracy. While column wheel chronographs remain to be the highest echelon of chronograph movements the 7750 in various incarnations and modifications has found its way into many high grade watches. This is where the distinction begins within the 7750. Because it is a common ebauche you often hear advice from collectors to thosee interested in an automatic chronograph to purchase a 7750 based watch at the best price point, or that how IWC calibres 790x,791x, and 792x are just 7750s and no need to spend that kind of money. This is a common and unfortunate misconception and it is making the same statement when buying car that all V-8 engines are the same and it doesn't matter which one you buy, or when selecting a mobile phone that all smart phones are identical and that it makes no difference if you purchase an iPhone or an Android.

To be fair there are many custom options that can be ordered directly from ETA ranging from Geneva stripes to blued screws and that there are many watches with stock 7750s and its variants dropped straight in. I wanted to mention this because depending on the watch it is just a 7750 and you are quite possibly paying for the branding. An example of this is the Swatch Group to whom I often compare them as the Pepsi Co of the watch world due to the number of brands it owns. As of this writing Swatch Group owns Breguet, Harry Winston, Blancpain, Glashutte Original, Jaquet Droz, Leon Hatot, Omega, Longines, Rado, Union Glashutte, Tissot, Balmain, Certina, Mido, Hamilton, Calvin Klein Watches & Jewelry, Swatch, and Flik Flak along with several movement manufactures namely ETA. For this writing I am looking very specifically at those watch makers who does modify the movement and worthy of assigning their own in-house calibre name.

IWC is one of those companies that uses ebauches form ETA and modifies them in house with their 792xx calibres fitted with the Trovis regulator among other changes. Sinn is another manufacture with modifications to the 7750 that sets it apart from a stock ETA offering by using a proprietary blend of materials that allows the escapement to never need lubrication. Back to the column wheel discussion Longines overhauled the 7750 through ETA (both owned by Swatch Group) as the Longines L.688.2 or ETA model code A08.231 with the major change being the retrofit of a column wheel to replace the coulisse lever system and market it as an entry column wheel automatic chronograph.

Helmut Sinn made the prediction that the market will be flooded with too many 'luxury' watches and this is the precipice we are seeing and where many draw the incorrect conclusion of 7750 based watches. ETA currently offers 7750 with and without day/date, 7751 moon phase, 7753 tricompax, and 7754 ETACHRON regulator along with additional component variation at the factory in an attempt to distinguish one 7750 from another. The quartz crisis forced many brands to go under and those that survived did so because they cut costs by ceasing R&D and production of in-house calibres in favor of using ebauches from ETA. In retrospect without the quartz crisis the proliferation of the 7750 wouldn't have been possible. Omega was one of those companies when facing bankruptcy in the 80's began using ETA ebauches to cut costs and in recent years returned to in-house movements when the market was favorable and profitable again. With growing sales of mechanical watches companies are less timid of taking financial risks in developing their own in-house caliber and this coupled with the desire to stand out in the market we are seeing for the first time in many years the development and production of in-house calibres. Breitling who is known for chronograph watches and practically made the style fashionable finally replaced the B13 which is a 7750 for their in-house movement the B01.

Another factor to using the 7750 is a simple supply and demand issue where companies that are either getting back into or are getting into manufacturing in-house movements and does not have the production capacity. Tag Heuer has been struggling to cease use of Calibre 16 which is a 7750. They began by acquiring rights to existing movements and one of the acquisitions was the Seiko 6S78 which Tag Heuer modified and produce in Switzerland as the Calibre 1887. Tag Heuer didn't anticipate the growth well and went back to using Calibre 16 in some of their watches to keep up with demand. Conversely another strategy that took advantage of the supply issue was Panerai who purposely stunted production that essentially created a limited run. Panerai began developing their own in-house movements in 2002 and rapidly developed a replacement for every ebauche they were using from ETA all at their own pace with the exception of a 7750 reference design which it removes the chronograph functions and maintains a subdial seconds at 9'o clock as the OP III. Even ETA couldn't keep up with the demand and outsourced some of their manufacturing to other companies. To qualify as Swiss made movements the companies it outsourced to had to be in Switzerland such as Sellita.

The venerable 7750 will be seen less due to ETA's decision to no longer sell ebauches but complete movements only to new clients beginning in 2011. They have also been cutting back on 7750 production because the Swatch Group no longer wants to support their competition when they have a number of their own brands to support. Timing however couldn't be better when it was discovered that several patents expired under ETA and that some of the affected patents were for the ETA 2824 and 7750. Sellita being an outsourcing vendor for ETA already had manufacturing capabilities for those movements and began producing exact clones of those movements under their own brand name and calibres as SW-200 and SW-500 respectively. Sellita SW-500 has already been showing up in watches that formerly used 7750s such as the Sinn 356.

Can you find stock 7750s in various brands? Yes you can, but you can also find interestingly modified movements where the 7750 is a reference design. With the watch industry changing towards in-house movements and ETA withdrawing from the ebauche business, we may soon find the 7750 to be an in-house movement to Swatch Group companies only. Now to track down a Lemania 5100 next.....

Update;

I came across this amazing article on the 7750 and it's worth a read

Anstead Oceanis

Kickstarter has become my other bad habit where I peruse for campaigns I may want to fund that range from 'yesses! I needz this' to 'dear god what have you done?'. Among the projects I came across is the Anstead Oceanis. The designer Tom Anstead explains on his campaign page that his designs were inspired by his experience while he served in the Navy aboard the USS Independence. My curiosity was peaked for a watch designed around function while keeping aesthetics in mind.

Where many entry dive watches start between 50m to 100m, the Oceanis is designed to withstand a max depth of 990ft/300m which at 33ft per scuba ATM is an impressive 28 atmospheres. Greater depth requirement means a bigger case or a stronger case material along with a screw down crown to withstand the pressure. The brushed surgical steel case measures 44.3mm wide by 6.9mm, but add the case back, bezel, and sapphire crystal and the overall thickness comes out to 14.36mm making for a sizable watch. Anstead watch mitigates the additional material and R&D cost to survive the intended 300m depth and keeps a low retail cost of $399 after the campaign ended. The price point is a huge win for Anstead watches as you will be hard pressed to find a mechanical watch that can withstand 300m in that price range.

The Oceanis continues with the large aesthetics with a 4mm thick brown leather strap attached to 24mm lugs. The strap has the Anstead name impressed on the inside of the strap as well as it etched on the buckle and is a good quality strap but could stand to be manufactured with wearability in mind. Conventional strap making techniques thin the leather as it extends down from the watch that creates a taper. Sometimes this taper is obvious and other times it is hardly noticed. There are straps that do not have this thinning done but those straps typically start with very thin stock and doesn't have much room to thin any further. The Oceanis' strap remains the same thickness across the entire length and as a result creates an uncomfortable 8mm lump of leather where the strap overlay in the stays. If the leather was softer I maybe able to tolerate the thickness but this isn't the case here. The lack of strap color choice is another issue for me as I am personally not a fan of the color and between the two I have ordered a replacement strap. You can see in the following photos the new strap as well a side by side of the old and new. Even with a deployment clasp on the new strap it feels thinner and far more comfortable to wear.

The non reflective flat black surface of the 32mm wide dial is easy to read in daylight and the luminescent hands and markers make it just as easy to read in low to no light. The dial is protected by a thick sapphire crystal seated against an O-ring and is surrounded by a 120 click bezel that only turns counter clock-wise as it should. The bezel requires firm tension to turn which is a relief to find with positive clicks that can be heard and felt. For those wondering why the bezel isn't easier to turn and isn't unidirectional need to consider the application. The bezel gives a diver the oxygen supplies's remaining time by turning the index of the bezel to where the minute hand is from the moment when the oxygen is used. From that point the minute hand travel will indicate elapsed time against the bezel and tells the diver how long they have been under for and how much time they have left. If the bezel were to accidentally move it should only move counterclockwise wise so that you lose dive time versus if it were unidirectional you risk adding time and possibly running out of air. For reasons above the bezel shouldn't move too easily to prevent accidental moves to begin with.

The watch is powered by the Seiko NH36a which improved on it's predecessor the 7S26 through the more jeweled pivots and a hacking lever. A hacking watch means that when the crown is pulled the second hand stops for the purpose of synchronizing watches for accuracy. I like Seiko movements as they are reliable and durable while remaining affordable. It is the use of this movement versus Swiss movements like the ETA 2836 with a stop lever that helps keeps the cost down on the Oceanis. Watches with hacking ETA calibres capable of a 300m depth start at $850 and only go up from there. The only question that remains of a new movement is longevity but considering Seiko's track record I feel confident in it's ability to last.

The packaging leaves something to be desired, but considering the cost of the watch I shouldn't be complaining. If I were to pay $1k or higher I would expect a certain level of sophistication and experience in the packaging but I digress. The packaging is minimal and nothing special to note. It is a black box with a white top with the Anstead logo pressed into the lid which is printed in black. The watch is strapped on a miniature velveteen pillow and the color manual sits below the pillow. I suppose at the very least the minimalist design is tasteful.

I like the overall aesthetic of the watch but there are some flaws along with rooms for improvement, which I have emailed Tom and he was very receptive to. The day/date window of the dial is slightly misaligned to the left and crowds the day/date display. The case back threads aren't indexed so the etched case back will be randomly oriented (as you can see in the photo above, mine points to the right). The aforementioned strap thickness interfering with long term wearability. The bezel's quarter hours should have been lumed to aid in the use of the bezel in low to no light. I personally prefer screw in strap versus the ever so flimsy pins. When I changed out my strap I noticed that the pins were significantly bent and matched the contour of the case indicating that there is insufficient clearance between strap and case (to be fair this is the strap's thickness at fault). I do want to note that none of the above points detracts from the value and construction of the watch and hope to see the above list addressed in future releases from Anstead.

I have been wearing the watch daily since it's arrival and the watch has proven to be accurate and durable. I look forward to see what Anstead watches offer next, I personally would sacrifice submersible depth for a display back and a nice looking movement (maybe some Geneva stripes on the NH36a's rotar? perhaps some jeweling on the bridges? Could be sharp with some blued screws...). If you find your self looking for a well functioning dive watch under $400 or just a good looking reliable watch, you certainly found it in the Anstead Oceanis.

Few Watch finally arrives, less than stellar impression

After waiting longer than I had to, the watch arrived this morning. Before getting into the watch, there was a delay in production and no communication from Few regarding this delay until I contacted them. Even after contacting them, responses were extremely slow and when Few finally admitted to missing the committed production time, they at least offered me a free additional strap for taking so long. I have to say that I am less than thrilled with Few's communication and hope to see it corrected in the future.

The watch arrived in a nondescript cardboard box which was well packed, inside I found a black leather case, extra strap, watch link tool, and a lanyard adorning Few's logo.

The black PVD finish is pretty even across the watch but is not a particularly durable finish as I already see a spot wearing through.

I am not certain what printing method Few is using but it calls for improvement as fine details are lost and prior to printing, Few needs to either fix a current process if there is one or employ a color matching process as the design I submitted and the dial that is printed are two separate tones of grey. You can compare against my original design in an earlier post, notice that the barrel on the M4 isn't even printed on the final production watch, thanks for SBR'ing it.

Few needs to pay attention to simple things that are so basic I have to wonder if the people who assemble them are even qualified to begin with such as the bracelet width being wider than the lug width and as a result the links next to the lugs do not lie flat and are torqued away. Another disappointing detail is the bezel as well, I chose the black bezel with white markers and what I received is a black bezel with steel markers, the website shows as clear as day that the markers are white as you can compare it against the steel color bezel they have on their design site and can see a definite difference between the white and the steel; all of this feels like simple inattention to detail and could have been avoided had they a better quality standard and a quality assurance process, if one exists at all.

You can see in the pictures below where the bracelet is too wide against the lug and as a result is torquing the bracelet away and creating a gap and bad fit.

The watch so far is keeping time but only been wearing it for a handful of hours and will have to wait a couple of days before concluding on it's time keeping capabilities. Overall I am disappointed, the slow communication and production time may have biased me but the bad fit and finish on top of the less than quality print of the dial, I contacted Few regarding all of my issues and will see what they have to say about it and what may be done about it. If they decide to try to make it right, I think I would be able to maintain a positive opinion on the company but if not than Few just maybe another company in a long line of retailers of sub-par quality goods.

Update 9/14/2012:

I've decided to keep the watch since I like most of the parts of the watch and is hard to find a suitable replacement in the price range and besides, I do work on watches and will likely get to re-working the dial myself later versus waiting on Few to get their act together. As for my opinion of Few watches, do not get the steel bracelets as they do not fit their cases; I am not certain if the case is OEM'ed by FEW, outsourced for production, or use an existing case design from a supplier but they need to learn a thing or two on how to test these things out on CAD and then onto rapid prototyping before charging people money for something as simple as a band not fitting which should have been discovered during prototyping if not quality assurance. If FEW is the designer of the case, they are simply terrible at industrial design to let an out of spec lug or bracelet slip by. I would avoid their PVD as well as it is not a good quality PVD and I wouldn't bother with a custom dial unless it is really simple since they screen print and would of been nice to know what resolution screens they use to minimize design detail getting lost. So if you are in the market for a dive style watch where you can swap out some features, it's a good pick but for true customization, leave it to craftsmen who understands what quality is. I also tried contacting FEW to see if I can get a partial refund on the bracelet and the botched dial, I am still waiting to hear back.

update 9/28/2012:

After waiting several weeks for a reply, Few has agreed to refund me $46 USD which is the cost of the bracelet that does not fit and the custom dial that was not executed well. The email process did take a long time but I am glad in the end of them refunding me for the less than stellar quality parts. The partial refund at least does show that Few as a company wishes to make things right with the customer.

Few Watches

Update 9/14/2012-------------

Before reading this article, check out my impression on finally receiving the watch after several production delays and hardly any communication. I can't in good conscience recommend their custom dials as they are a disappointment, and their steel bracelets are a waste of money as they do not fit the lugs.

I came across a rather nontraditional European watch company in a sense that they are located in Sweden and assemble watches there but they use Miyota movements which are manufactured by Citizen who is a Japanese watch maker. What sets Few apart is that they offer a selection of cases between two Citizen Miyota movements; the 8205 which is an automatic movement capable of a 40hr power reserve and the OS20 which is a quartz chronograph. I personally do not care for quartz watches and it is the automatic movement that caught my attention. The 8205 is a 21 Jewel movement that beats at the modern 21.6k BPH with a centered hour, minute, and second hand with a day/date window. The crown can be used to wind in it's neutral position and pulls out two clicks where the first click position is used to set day or date depending on the direction it is turned and the last and outer click will set the time.

8205 technical drawing

8205 exploded view from the front

8205 exploded view from the back

At first glance Few makes good looking watches with a lot of choices at a competitive price and as you poke around the website, you realize that there are various levels of customization offered with many of those options at no additional cost which is just simply awesome. I'm not talking just a simple change of the wristband here but as granular as picking the hands, color of the second hand, crown shape, case lid, even a custom dial. Naturally I had to take the watch customization for a spin and lost myself for hours configuring variation upon variation which lead me to designing a custom dial as I was close to the feel of what I wanted with the stock dials but wasn't quite there yet. What started out as a simple curiosity has now turned into an order and I haven't been this giddy for a watch of my own since building one back in January.

The watch customization is stepped so that anyone can make a watch and I highly recommend creating an account before starting (it's free) for two reasons, 1). You will have access to dial customization, and 2). You can save your dials and watch configurations. Once I narrowed down the case to the Black PVC coated case with the dive style bezel, I picked the Rolex Submariner style hands with a red second hand, the crown is a modern tall crown and next came the dial. This is where the website kind of sucks, the website's dial design tool is barely adequate and is really clunky to say the least. I found myself creating the dial in Photoshop and Illustrator and uploading GIF images (to keep the transparency) to the website and building the dial that way. I spent countless hours designing dials for my SWC watches and this is no different; I tend to design dials that appeals to my aesthetic taste while keeping general wearability in mind where I want to design a timeless timepiece and where each dial speaks to me differently. This time around however, I was designing something specifically for myself and I wanted to create a dial that makes the statement of, yes that's me; that there is no mistake that the watch belongs to me. After about four hours or so of trying various iterations I have arrived on a design that is most certainly me.

The close up detail, I went with a grey dial color with white numerals and the cross wrench and M4, yup that's me for sure. I kept the Few logo as I wanted to maintain their brand as advertisement for them.

Filled with the grey for better visual representation

Mock up with all the parts I picked out, this is what the final production watch should look like. The chapter ring I believe will be installed as in either a chrome or lume insert.

Assuming that Few can execute my design well, it just may become my everyday beater at $224 shipped.

UPDATE: I forgot to include this on the original post and this is purely an observation when I bought my watch. I recommend using Paypal as the CC method does not change to a secure protocol, meaning it remains on HTTP and that would be unencrypted CC info being transmitted.

I look forward to my watch's arrival, I just received an email this morning stating my watch is, "In Production" with the email showing a simple diagram of it's order process which goes like this: In pre-production > In production > Preparing shipment > Shipped. As soon as I receive my watch and have some time wearing it, I will write a full review hopefully in the very near future.

Resurrecting a Doxa movement Part 1

I came across a Doxa pocket watch movement recently and originally I thought it was some what working but have come to find that there were more serious issues with it. The movement would run than stop and there are a number of reasons why this may happen and onto complete disassembly to service the movement.

Late one night over Memorial day weekend I finally had a chance to take the movement apart and it was as dirty as I suspected that it would be; after all, this movement was commonly used by soldiers during the second war (is that the great war? 'are't they all?'). The first problem that can be seen is something binding in the winding and setting assembly and it turned out to be Rodicao, likely from the last person working on it to prevent the clutch spring and other pieces from being lost.

I remove the balance to find some writing and initially thought it maybe a serial number but a closer look revealed that it was the caliber designation, as seen in the photo it is a 17 20/12 Caliber 10 movement.

I move on to taking everything else apart to be cleaned as it is a rather dirty movement and in dire need of a cleaning. As I was taking it all apart I discovered that the staff was straight and that the hairspring was ever so slightly bent out of true which I believe has been causing the balance to oscillate at an unpredictable rate. I unfortunately I do not have truing calipers. In the spirit of learning and impatience, eyeballing it it is with tools on hand! Onward with what is likely a bad idea.

I came across an article http://mb.nawcc.org that talks about how it is possible to bend the hairspring dog legged around the out of true portion and it should still oscillate at the correct frequency as the overall dimension/weight does not change. With the article I read as hope of a fix, I plow forward and remove the hairspring from the balance and after hours of trial and error and constant worry of making it worse, I manage to bend the hairspring while keeping it on my steel block which has a trued surface to aid in keeping the shape of it as true to it's self as possible.

The watch runs a bit better but it will now need either a new mainspring or a hairspring, or both as it will run for a few hours than stop after many times of experiencing pucker factor 5 while trying to true the spring without the proper tools. It was an interesting experience to use every tool I have at my disposal and even modifying some to work better for this specific use in the name of Horology. Hurray for a mostly working Doxa for now and onto hunting for a mainspring that will fit it.

Oh Hamilton 917s

I am back on the watch making and decided to revisit some movements that I have had in my inventory with various ailments that I finally got around to fixing. The Hamilton 917 movement is turning into my favorite movement (until I get my hands on a 921, 923, or 945 that is) and I got a few movements backup and running. One was missing the roller jewel (or impulse pin, depending on who you ask), another with a broken mainspring, and the last was a purchase off of ebay as a broken movement but otherwise looked like it had all of it's parts.

The first issue with the roller jewel was solved when I finally located and purchase a tool specifically designed to holder the roller table and to apply heat radially from the tool. The tool is called the combination tool because well, it is a combination of various jewel application to a watch as can be seen in a vintage manual for the tool;

The combination tool is setup so that the slots at the jaw will hold the roller table securely while I heat the tail end with an oil lamp (or in my case, a butane mini torch is what I had on hand) and heat the roller table through the tool until it is hot enough to melt a small flake of shellac that will hold the roller jewel.

I would have loved to of taken pictures during the process but it was a rather annoyingly two handed process where I nearly lost a roller jewel (for a 10 size Hamilton, they are .39mm wide and needless to say tiny.) The reason I nearly lost the first jewel was that I was not aware that I should not of have tried picking it up with tweezers...well not directly. The jewel is not only tiny but is slippery and a shaped like the letter 'D', and if I were to pick it up with the tweezers with too much tension, it goes flying...(lay down a ton of white paper on your desk, it is how I was able to locate it the first time I launched it). The trick is to lick the tip of the tweezers and the jewel will appear to just stick to it like ferrous alloy to a magnet. Once you have that going, heat the combination tool's long arm and drop a flake of shellac on the 'D' shaped receiving hole on the roller table, wait for the shellac to melt a bit and lay the jewel in and take the heat away. You have maybe twenty seconds before the shellac sets to where you can still re-position the jewel for a good fit and after that, this process all over again. For those that are wondering, no, I did not get it right on the first try.

With the first of the three Hamilton 917s fixed, moving on to the next one which has a broken mainspring, which is evident when winding and no tension ever holds. I have another junker 917 I bought at a yard sale for it's parts and time to swap out the mainspring. This process is really straight forward and once done, the movement runs beautifully. Since I was going to take it apart to service anyway, I went the extra step and cut down the base plate diameter for a future PAM homage build with this movement. There is already an excellent tutorial by Nightwatch at his blog here that covers in detail not only the plate size reduction but an entire 917 disassembly. I strongly recommend this tutorial to anyone who wants to get in to working on the 917.

A few shots of the cut down plate 917;

Onto the third one, the ebay chance purchase. These purchases can go a lot of different ways and the one thing I hope it is not is that it is missing the roller jewel like the first one in this article was. Usually I can ask enough questions to the seller to sort out issues like a broken staff but no way to tell if the roller jewel isn't there without looking. The only possible tell is if the watch winds but does not tick and this symptom can be caused by many things. Well, it turns out it was a really simple problem in the end, the stem was snapped off inside the movement. I took apart the movement, cleaned and oiled and re-assembled, stuck a stem from a another 917 to see if it would work and.....how about that, it runs well.

A close up where you can see the snapped stem;

Well, as for the three Hamilton 917s, two are spoken for, if you are interested in the third to be turned into a watch, please get a hold of me to reserve it.

Tested.com talks about mechanical watches

I came across this post and thought I would share it here, Tested.com (Jamie and Adam of Mythbuster's fame) has a site that well, test stuff. They have a lot of years of breaking things in very interesting fashion and are now on a website doing exactly that (don't worry, not the watches!).

Following up on my first watch build

The prototype that started it all for me, SWC0000, my very first watch build and the watch I have been wearing everyday since finishing it (http://iwanttomakeeverything.blogspot.com/2012/02/hamilton-917-wrist-watch-conversion.html) save the occasional rotation of my Certina DS or the PAM homage I build out of the Hamilton 870 (http://iwanttomakeeverything.blogspot.com/2012/05/hamilton-870-conversion-pam-homage.html); it has been my daily beater, a tool for me to tell time with and ticking away strong to this day.

I haven't been exactly careful with the watch either, I have had a few good dings against the glass and some wear and tear shows but to me, that's part of the process of a time piece that I age with. Yes sure I can take it apart and clean it, buff out the various dings and scratches on the glass but what fun is that? I want to see how long something I make lasts in normal conditions, not ideal operating conditions. The completion was February Fifteenth and a bit over three months of daily wear later, no worse for wear I have to say.

As for what I put my watch through, I work in IT and I have nailed the glass against server racks countless times and it has survived a fair beating and the staff and balance is still good on the movement. Another area of concern that I had was shooting; can the movement deal with recoil of a firearm well? So far my watch has not slowed down nor gained speed and I shoot a range of calibers as well as firearms, pistol between 9mm out to my very typical .45 ACP and for rifle caliber I typically shoot 5.56 NATO and as for shotgun I only own 12ga. Bicycling in the city caused no issues from the road vibration and bumps and the watch does great on the nights out drinking (and by drinking I mean getting irresponsible of a fine time piece after enough beers, bad me!).

I suddenly have a hankering to work on some of my tattoo machines. Oh, did I neglect to mention I formerly tattooed for a living?

Wittnauer 65 Revue Conversion Completion

I have completed the Wittnauer conversion recently where I began the project April 24th (http://iwanttomakeeverything.blogspot.com/2012/04/wittnauer-65-revue.html) and it was a challenging build between the movement being really thin compared to ETA 6497, Hamilton 917, etc. and the dial was something new as well. Speaking of the dial, I went through four iterations for this build and learned a lot about the interaction of the various steps from color enamel to the waterslide dry time and the cyanoacrylate causing unwanted peel against other materials and cyanoacrylate having an exothermic reaction between my thumb and a cotton patch that got stuck to me and burned me a bit.....a whole lot of cursing and scotch later; happy to report that the build is done, getting SWC0005 serial as the 5th production watch to date. For the dial, I wanted something different and whats more different than bright orange! I saw an older Breitling pilot watch with a bright orange dial and thought it was very cool and decided to make one myself.

oh so orange....

I initially started the build with a different hour hand but couldn't get it to fit in a satisfactory fashion and decided to stick to the original hands. The Wittnauer hands a really weird sizes to say the least. You can also see here before I cut the second hand to fit as well (this is also version four of the dial);

Once the alternate hour hand (which came off of a Gruen Veri-Thin) was replaced with the original, the next challenge was a movement ring. The movement is larger in diameter than a Hamilton 917 but far thinner and I wound up using silver square wire stock, .22GA soldered in about a 1.5" diameter loop for the movement ring and that did the trick. Very surprising was that the original stem not only fit the 44mm pilot watch case perfectly but the thread tap was T6 and fit the wrist watch crown on the original stem without any fitting at all which is a nice change compared to my usual fitting of a stem.

The watch looks spectacular under the glass, its a really fun watch to wear. This also marks the first production watch from me that bears the SWC name on the dial.

Here the finished product;

With the watch finished and boxed, I have been meaning to come up with an interesting lid pull for my packaging and I had the eureka moment last night. In the spirit of the handmade artisan build as well recycling existing objects, I hand tap a hole on a bullet casing that has been fired once, tap a hole in the lid and use a piece of high tensile string from Atwood Rope MFG. to connect the two pieces together.

Now thoughts to a classy Molnija 3601 with hour and minute hand only perhaps....