Reply With QuoteWhy not give Duncan a call aka the watch bloke. I know he’s busy but he does a good job and it’s reasonably priced
I have a Steinhart Ocean 1 auto that has stopped working completely. I noticed that it had misted up a few months ago, after a shower, which went away quickly. It then gained around 5 minutes a day, now it’s not going at all.
Obviously at this price point I don’t want to send it away for a £200 service given that’s the complete value for the Watch. However it was given to me as a special gift, and I’d like to wear it on the odd occasion.
Any ideas on the most cost effective way on getting it going again?
Why not give Duncan a call aka the watch bloke. I know he’s busy but he does a good job and it’s reasonably priced
He has a lot of work on but its well worth the wait.
Sent from my GT-I9505 using TZ-UK mobile app
Very slow but very cheap is Michael Swift on the Isle of Bute. Old fashioned family firm, been in business over 40 years.
Last edited by Der Amf; 18th November 2017 at 00:45.
I’m out of the game until I get the enthusiasm back or finish working on all my own watches.........whichever comes first, so I’m definitely not offering to take this on. However, given the fact that the watch may need replacement parts owing to the water damage, I think you’ve got to be prepared to pay someone a fair price to sort it out. No-one’s going to give a firm quote without seeing the watch, you have to give a repairer sufficient lattitude on the cost to do a thorough job because any repairer worth their salt won’t be prepared to cut corners to keep the cost down.
Servicing a watch properly involves around 3-4 hrs work, the watch has to be completely stripped down, it isn’t like changing the oil on a car.
Suggest you contact Brendan (webwatchmaker), Duncan (thewatchbloke), Animalone or Olli and see who’s interested.
Paul
Also have a chat with Joe at Anglesea Watches and Clocks, he’s very busy though so you’ll have to be prepared to wait.
If you tried the service you'd realise service cost is cheap really.
I've done quite a few service and restorations for people now and I ask a very small amount for the time taken but I can hardly ask pro money.
ETA movements I find a pleasure to service but you may well need more than just a service anyway. You'll not know for sure until it's totally stripped down and then you're into the job.
I would suggest selling it as broken and buying a new one for the most cost effective method but you say it has sentimental value.
Send it to the manufacturer. All the private ones on here are a sandwich short of a picnic! Don’t take my word for it, just search any recommended members posts, especially late night ones.
Brendan (webwatchmaker) has done a few watches for me. Two with very significant sentimental values.
I'd trust him all day long.
He's done work on my rolex, Seiko and omegas and he's posted some more exotic stuff he's worked on on here
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Originally Posted by Unlight
On http://webwatchmaker.com/index.php/prices/ the servicing of Automatic calendar watches is given as £195
Last time I serviced an ETA movement with water damage the replacement parts alone came to about £85.
You will need to get someone to look at the movement before you can get an idea of what the cost will be, (I'm not volunteering the day job keeps me too busy over Christmas)
Likewise, I have had several watches serviced now by Brendan. He has been the model of both courtesy and efficiency. This includes him advising against work that I had superfluously thought necessary.
I would recommend him without reservation.
Thanks for all your help. Anyone any idea of the rough costs of even having someone take a look at it? It’s a great watch but if it ends up costing 80% of what was paid for it then it’s time to flog it on for someone’s project!
You won't be able to get an accurate idea without stripping the watch down and cleaning the parts so that they can be examined properly, (you would basically be half way through the service at that point) I think if you can find a decent watch tech to do that for you for less than £100 you are doing well.
Rusty pivot from one I took apart recently.
This watchmaker has a website which includes a price list and an email address.
I'm aware that his prices are at level ridiculed on this forum, but perhaps he just has a cheaper taste in cars.
There’s also the question of how it ended up getting water in. If it’s operator error (for want of a better term) there’s no sealing issue with the watch, but if there’s a sealing problem that’ll need resolving too. This will clearly have a bearing on the repair cost.
No easy answer to this one, very few repairers will work cheaply thesedays, it isn’t worth it.
Paul
It isn’t a question of ‘ridiculed’, if he’s prepared to work for low prices good luck to him. Maybe the fairest way to set the labour cost for repairs should be based on 4 hours at the watch owner’s salary rate, with parts cost and consumables on top?
Paul
Last edited by walkerwek1958; 20th November 2017 at 15:31.
I'm not familiar with Michael Swift, what do you mean by ridiculed? Surely cheap prices would incur anything but ridicule!
£45 to service a 2824 seems very cheap to me, especially for someone with business premises and the associated costs to cover.
I know some watchmakers will simply remove the dial and date disc and then put the movement in the cleaning machine, then once it's dried they'll remove the auto winding bridge and oil whichever jewels and pivots are accessible. Most watchmakers will do it right and strip down the movement entirely to inspect all parts for wear before putting the parts in the cleaning machine and then rebuilding but this obviously takes much longer to do. It makes you wonder which method he uses.
Depends on how special a gift you consider the watch.
I’ve spent much more on servicing my late fathers watch than it originally cost but the monetary value of the watch is irrelevant in this instance.
I hear these stories and I always wonder whether there's an element of urban myth. No-one in his right mind would dunk the movement in a cleaning bath without removing the end jewels and the mainspring barrel. I think it's more a case of 'partial stripdown' then cleaning in a bath rather than the whole thing. If I was looking to cut corners that's how I`d do it, there are ways and means.
Regarding the guy in question, my guess is that he's old school and does things properly, but at that price he's doing his bank balance no favours.
I always took the view that working for silly-cheap money wasn't fair on the professionals who do it for a living; I probably fixed watches cheaper than I should have, but I certainly wouldn`t go down to a daft price.
Paul
Is that really a thing?
Only reason I say is I serviced an Omega sea master for someone and charged him not a lot. Thought he'd be really pleased with the price but he told me of the "bloke in town that could have done a new modern service where he just dropped it whole into some bubbling liquid to clean it" for similar money
I'd assumed he'd got the wrong end of the stick.
Oh it's a thing alright.
Some people don't have pride in their work, or the skills to do the proper job, see the thread on the Butcher!
It's just a matter of time...
Very much this. There's one name that often gets recommended on here (I won't mention who, I'll just say that he's not a member on here afaik) and I know for a fact he does this. I purchased a non-running Seiko from ebay that came with a service receipt from him dated two years previous and one reason it had stopped was because of the amount of dirt that had accumulated on the center wheel jewel. If he'd removed the cannon pinion prior to cleaning and then oiled the jewel the watch might still have been running but I guess that was too much trouble for him. When I removed the bridges there were the tell tale lines where the dirty rinsing fluid had dried and the graphite grease that Seiko use on the mainspring an barrel had mostly washed away but it was still filthy.
Then there's a Jeweller I do a bit of work for who would send watches to another guy because he was cheap and would only use me if the other guy returned a watch that was still faulty. I don't think he even used a cleaning machine, just removed a couple of plates and bridges and oiled whatever he could and never touched the cap jewels on the balance. That's what £30 was buying but the jeweller doesn't bother with him now due to too many returns.
And if you're still not convinced, remember that you used to be able to buy this stuff. No need to strip a movement down, just clean the whole movement, rinse and then put it in the fluid to lubricate the entire movement.
Last edited by Dynam0humm; 21st November 2017 at 16:21.
If you know it as a fact then why would you not mention his name and help protect other members? Unless you're not actually 100%..
Because I'm not in the business of harming other peoples business.
His prices will tell you who it is. If someone is offering a full service for less than £50 then you have to ask how?
So you'd rather protect a bad businessman than protect forum members?
I've think I've said enough in this thread to help the forum members protect themselves.
If I was going to start trashing someone's name then I'd need physical evidence which I don't have. I can only say what I've seen and if I start naming names here then they might accuse me of libel and I couldn't be bothered with that hassle. Nor could Eddie I suspect...
So your facts are in fact purely anecdotal and could be completely fabricated or incorrect.
Exactly. I can only tell you what I've seen and then it's up to you if you believe it.
Why dont you send a PM if you are that bothered, alternatively just accept his reasons. Which seem very reasonable to me.
Actually I quite like the idea of taking a reasonable hourly rate for a skilled and trained engineer (£40) + parts + overheads + return postage and insurance + VAT to "estimate" the cost of repair. Not much change out of £250 for starters - more if they have nice offices and expect to make a profit.
Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The dunk and swish method used to be common practice in the trade, thank goodness L&R have stopped making Duo and Solo lube! Here's an article reproduced from the Horological Journal of September 1971 about the methods and results. Also included are summaries of a report from the Laboratoire Suisse de Recherches Horologores Nuechatel when they did some tests on the fluids, the results are surprising. More of interest to me is the fact they could process 120 movements with L&R 566 and rinse before the fluids need changing. I can't get anywhere near even half that and that's with me doing a lot of pre-cleaning and pegging out on the bench beforehand!
That's good enough for me, much as I find it hard to believe someone would 'service' a watch in this way I`m now happy to accept it. Apologies for sounding like Doubting Thomas.
I`ve certainly come across watches that have been partially dismantled to get them running better.
In many cases a watch can be made to run better by partial stripdown, cleaning the balance and re-oiling the end jewels. A bit of oil on the pallet stones will help and a touch of oil on the escape wheel pivots will help more. That's not a huge amount of work compared to a full clean/stripdown and in most cases it'll make a watch run well enough for a jeweller to sell and give 3 months guarantee on.
Paul
One day, someone is going to smear you with unfounded suspicions, and you'll be very angry, and you'll deserve it.
Single data point for Michael Swift. In 2014 I bought a cheap Seiko from eBay for £24 which came complete with road rash. The timekeeping was Not Good, but I forget exactly what. Probably losing around a minute a day, clearly needing a service. I sent it to Michael Swift, who had been recommended to me by one of the mods on the WUS vintage forum, and waited patiently for it to come back serviced, with a new crystal. On its return it was running with much greater accuracy, now no worse my brand new 2824 (-10s/d when fully wound once a day) Three and a half years later, and having been worn plentifully, and definitely not babied, the watch is running at the same accuracy.
How his business does is his business, but one can imagine multiple reasons for his pricing himself so modestly. Perhaps, for example, he prefers servicing old obscure watches owned by watches lovers who aren't rolling in £££ than spending his life tending to corporate bores' status symbols. Who knows?
One thing that has really sunk in with me is cleaning, and how long it takes and just how much dirt I can see, sometimes even after cleaning when it can look good enough at x15 or x20, that at x35 magnification you see something else that could have been missed.
Cleaning the parts takes, for me, the longest time.I realise that unless this is tackled with a really high standard, it makes the rest of the process futile. Or at best will end up with a watch that might run, albeit poorly/unsatisfactory amplitude, which of course could be down to other issues, and the watch can be just about regulated enough at this point... I guess that happens a lot?
I'd imagine another method is to leave the calendar side, rodico the train bridge, and then stick it back together with new lubrication and then just regulate the balance!?
I can't imagine what the quick-fix-dunk-everything method leaves behind..let alone not confronting issues like the rusty pivot on the previous page for it to snap eventually and cause more damage, or necessitate another service. I suppose I'm not surprised this goes on, as even though I'm of course a newb and learning all the time,I see the signs someone has been inside a watch before me where screws are missing or incorrect, screw heads are chewed, scrapes and dents on the mainplate or bridge, over oiling where it seeps down to the pinion, bent calendar plates etc. Maybe for those guys it would have been better to not strip the watch! :)
Last edited by Bodo; 21st November 2017 at 19:58.
Dunno about deserving it but if anyone accuses me of doing a half arsed job on their watch such as the dunk and swish method I can always refer them to the 20-30 pictures I take when disassembling each and every movement and the four pictures of the finished watch in various positions on the timegrapher.
If he's doing a proper job for the love of it then fair play to him. It must be hard to earn a living though if you consider it should take at least three hours to service that Seiko of yours and you've overheads to cover. I sure as hell wouldn't run a shop for £15p/h.
I can understand why someone may have questions when a service is priced a lot lower than the standard rate, but it is probably not fair to automatically assume that corners are being cut without some proof. After all not everyone is motivated by money.
I've done a couple of jobs for forum members over the last year and have on occasion either not charged or asked them to make a fundraiser donation instead. I'm lucky that I have a day job that pays the bills so I don't need to make money off the repairs I do. I just like to help out on the forum sometimes or for the entertainment when the mood takes me.
Low repair pricing generally helps nobody.
Customers are suspicious that an intensive repair was not carried out and worn parts not replaced. The repairer doesn't cover himself for unexpected problems that can often occur.
Many watch repairers have traditionally been poor businessmen and were often browbeaten by the customers they worked for. They ended up leaving the trade.
These days many watches have extremely high retail values so it's possible for repairers to charge a fair amount.
Experience has taught me that there are no short cuts when servicing a watch.
Some brands require a high servicing price since a service and polish can take a day and a half and parts can be extortionately expensive to replace.
I think of PP, VC, JLEC and GP to name but a few.
However, most sensibly priced indies will still be cheaper and quicker than returning to the AD.
Brendan
There's a rather glaring clue in post #23 in this thread, if you can be bothered to do a search.
F.T.F.A.
I think it's crossing a very thin line to criticise other members abilities here.
Businesses can be destroyed by angry or difficult to substantiate remarks.
That's not to mention recent laws protecting people from online abuse.
Brendan
Yes, ignoring the criticism aimed at some people, I would like to give you an idea of the costs involved.
To get a set of the needed oils factor in £2-300. The cleaning fluids say £80 a month (depending on volume of work).
Parts costs of a decent repairer, a minimum of £15 for a working with without anything badly wrong (mainspring and seals). For a watch with unusual seals add more.
Peg wood, ancillaries, finger cots, etc etc. It all adds up.
7 years ago when I was self employed my monthly costs of working from home in two converted rooms was around £400-500 excluding parts. So no rent or other overheads associated with a shop/office space.
I was charging on average £2-300 a service working on Rolex, Omega etc.
I was making money, but I was hardly raking it in.
For the watchmakers mentioned in this thread, would you know if they’re still around (and still recommended)?
Recently, I asked CW Sellers/Jura for the usual price to service an ETA2824. Excellent timekeeping, no known issues, etc. And I was quoted £65 to merely look over the watch and determine the servicing cost!
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