Servicing mechanical watches, or not?
People who follow me here know that I'm cheap. I never spend much on a single watch, at least by the standard of our community. Watching Max interact with his AD to play the build a $20000 watch collection game feels like watching a nature documentary about poisonous spiders in Australia - not my world. My own mechanicals are sourced either from China, or from the bottom end of ebay.
Over the last couple of years my collection incorporated a few dodgy runners, especially those dodgy vintage ones from ebay.
Today I decided to embark on some servicing of my bad offenders, and as I have no skills to do any such serious stuff myself, I handed the three watches in the pics to my local watchmakers shop, and I'll record what will happen from here on, following up on this post with further developments. I was told I will get a quote from the watchmaker in about a week's time. I cannot promise you that I won't get cold feet, as the quote will certainly exceed the watches' values, but by how much I have no idea, we shall see in a week or so.
So, why these three watches? I put them on the timegrapher and...
the Ruhla did not appear running too badly when I was wearing it, but the TG could not agree with itself what the rate was, was it running 2 minutes a day fast, or 2 minutes slow? Amplitude was with 161 not good, but far from my worst offender. But the beat error: 7.3ms. Yikes! I presume something is very wrotten in the state of East Germany.
the "Diamond", the only modern watch in this lot annoyed me from day 1 with a poor power reserve. Fully wound it might not last the night. Beat error is with 1.5 a tad high for a modern watch, but an amplitude of 130 degrees is baaad. I strongly suspect that this thing came unlubricated out of the factory.
the Ingersoll is my most recent acquisition of the three. Visually, it looks in good nick, but the TG data: rate +390s/d, amplitude 120, beat error 5.4ms. As close to a TG snowstorm as any running watch managed to produce...
Are my criteria for picking watches for service fine, or would you have weighed other criteria more? Which of these watches would you think is the most hopeful to be boosted by a watchmaker's work? Are the data suggesting that some of these watches are already gone?
UK-based German expat. Likes cheap watches. Not bothered about brands.
I think you are the best person to chose which ones to take into service. I’m looking forward to hearing what you find out with regards to what they are able to improve and what they charge.
I think you are the best person to chose which ones to take into service. I’m looking forward to hearing what you find out with regards to what they are able to improve and what they charge.
I am the best person to chose which watch to take into service, but that's because I'm the only such person. The buck stops with me, I pay the bill.
The problem is that all my jargonish rambling with which I justified my rationale is regurgitated opinion of other people, seeing this on youtube, or forum posts on WC or elsewhere.
I nominate the Ingersoll for irrational reasons. My suspicion is that the quotes will all be within about 25 pounds of each other.
I’d go with the Ingersoll. That’s the only one I feel is worth the expense of repair.
the Ingersoll has the most potential, but it actually was the cheapest of the lot, it cost £20, including shipping.
I now realize that my original post was a bit misleading, I did not mean to be asking, "which of the three should I save?", more like: are my criteria for picking watches to be serviced sound? Am I missing a criterion, am I over-valueing another? The reason for the which-to-pick sentiment was that I picked those 3 from a list of a dozen I tested. The two vintage ones had the worst beat errors of all, the Chinese watch is one of only two (mechanical) of my Ali purchases that ran so badly it affected wearability, and the other one is in the drawer of shame and won't be revived.
When I'll hear about the cost, the most likely followups by me will be: (i) price is ok, I save all three, (ii) price is too high, but I service one if only to see how much a watch service can achieve, (iii) are you f..... kidding me?
I think you chose the 3 because they are not working well. The Ingersoll seems to need servicing the most.
Today, I got the quote from the watchmaker. It's £158 each. Well, they are all hand-winders. That is rather painful, because £158 is about the combined value of these 3 watches after servicing. I consider doing it anyway, just as an experiment to see what my watchmaker can do, if only for future reference.
update: So I did, they told me it would take about 4 weeks. ... I keep you posted.
I got my watches back today. I was not charged for the Ruhla, because apparently he could not fix it - it keeps stopping, so I'm told. The timegrapher gives me a snowstorm. The beat error is a tad lower than it was. I'll see how it performs on the wrist.
The Ingersoll has now a much better accuracy, though the TG fails to settle on an actual value. But amplitude is still low, beat error is still high.
The Wei Shi was the low hanging fruit for a watch service. Amplitude more than doubled after the service, beat error went down to effectively 0, but... the accuracy is now worse, going from -19 to -34.
First impression: not really worth the money, values of the watches aside..