wristwatches

[HDBRbuilder]

Heuers are considered to have been made with better quality control BEFORE being taken over by TAG group.  Calling a Heuer a "TAG" is like calling a Mercedes a "Daimler"...just saying.  Even though, TECHNICALLY, a Mercedes HAS BEEN a Daimler since day one....the first "Mercedes" was named after the daughter of Emil Jellinek, who had commissioned the Daimler company to build him a race car in 1901. 

 

The TAG group took over Heuer in 1985....when many traditional Swiss watch companies had either gone out of business OR were about to do so due to severe loss of market share thanks to inexpensive Japanese-made quartz watch movements becoming the norm rather than the exception in the marketplace.  At around this same time period, ETA (originated by Eterna in the 1800's...ever hear of the Eterna Kontiki??...the "five balls" for Eterna relate to the five ball bearing used for the pivot point of the automatic winder rotor) ended up becoming a major conglomerate for quality mechanical Swiss watch movements, to include the Valjoux 7750.  Pretty much every Swiss watch company producing mechanical wrist-watches relies on ETA movements....and quite a few outside of Switzerland also!

 

I will stop at this point...but the quality of a watch REALLY IS ALL ABOUT ITS MOVEMENT and the case in which it resides.

 

 

[CECAA850]

15 minutes ago, HDBRbuilder said:

Calling a Heuer a "TAG" is like calling a Mercedes a "Daimler"

TAG is easier to spell.

 

Last time I checked, there was a Diamler sticker on every MB sold as well.

 

[oldtimer]

The brits call them mercs.  Too confusing with Mercury over here.

[Travis In Austin]

3 hours ago, JL Sargent said:

For reference I've been getting just over 10 years out of the rechargeable/solar watch type battery. I've replaced two batteries in Casio G-Shock solar powered watches and both were just over 10 years old. I expect the Citizen will perform similarly. 

 

A lot of professional divers I know swear by the Casio G 

[Max2]

1 hour ago, HDBRbuilder said:

Heuers are considered to have been made with better quality control BEFORE being taken over by TAG group.  Calling a Heuer a "TAG" is like calling a Mercedes a "Daimler"...just saying.  Even though, TECHNICALLY, a Mercedes HAS BEEN a Daimler since day one....the first "Mercedes" was named after the daughter of Emil Jellinek, who had commissioned the Daimler company to build him a race car in 1901. 

 

The TAG group took over Heuer in 1985....when many traditional Swiss watch companies had either gone out of business OR were about to do so due to severe loss of market share thanks to inexpensive Japanese-made quartz watch movements becoming the norm rather than the exception in the marketplace.  At around this same time period, ETA (originated by Eterna in the 1800's...ever hear of the Eterna Kontiki??...the "five balls" for Eterna relate to the five ball bearing used for the pivot point of the automatic winder rotor) ended up becoming a major conglomerate for quality mechanical Swiss watch movements, to include the Valjoux 7750.  Pretty much every Swiss watch company producing mechanical wrist-watches relies on ETA movements....and quite a few outside of Switzerland also!

 

I will stop at this point...but the quality of a watch REALLY IS ALL ABOUT ITS MOVEMENT and the case in which it resides.

 

 

Aren't a lot of the upper companies are owned by Swatch now?  I bought my wife a nice Omega Seamaster several years ago on a Vaca and had issue years later with it.  Their service was non existent. They just wanted us to pay $1200 to have the minute arm reapplied tight and align it.  Had to get a fellow in Canada to fix it and all is well.

 

[Travis In Austin]

59 minutes ago, HDBRbuilder said:

Pretty much every Swiss watch company producing mechanical wrist-watches relies on ETA movements....and quite a few outside of Switzerland also!

That may be true, but not in the case of Rolex. 

 

They started with Aegler, purchased a part of Aegler in the early 20th century, then bought all of it and let that family continue to run It, now it's all under Rolex.

 

Rolex is fully vertically  integrated, they have their own foundry, they make their own gold alloys, cases, movements, everything except, if I recall from the tour, the hands. 

 

Watch hands are apparently a real ***** to make.

 

 

 

 

[Travis In Austin]

29 minutes ago, Max2 said:

Aren't a lot of the upper companies are owned by Swatch now?  I bought my wife a nice Omega Seamaster several years ago on a Vaca and had issue years later with it.  Their service was non existent. They just wanted us to pay $1200 to have the minute arm reapplied tight and align it.  Had to get a fellow in Canada to fix it and all is well.

 

I don't know near as much about this stuff as Andy does, but Swatch does own ETA, and ETA makes many, many different grades of movements.  I would think Omega would use their better grades.  Can't speak for their customer service, repairs.

 

Travis 

[HDBRbuilder]

26 minutes ago, Max2 said:

Aren't a lot of the upper companies are owned by Swatch now?  I bought my wife a nice Omega Seamaster several years ago on a Vaca and had issue years later with it.  Their service was non existent. They just wanted us to pay $1200 to have the minute arm reapplied tight and align it.  Had to get a fellow in Canada to fix it and all is well.

 

SWATCH, is an owners' group which has a number of companies under it....to include ETA...which also translates, in turn, to it owning Eterna.  What has happened, pretty much, is that SWATCH (Swiss Watch) has put every company under its umbrella in one way or another...either by directly owning the company, or at least CONTROLLING STOCK in the company, or by having the ability to CONTROL the company because it supplies the movements for the watches of the other companies.  Keep in mind that Switzerland is a CONFEDERATION, and NOT a REPUBLIC.  Now, due to that status, the corporate laws for its companies have similar but not EXACTLY THE SAME RULES applying to "anti-trust" situations that we have here in the USA.  Swatch tried to limit its supply of particular movements to particular Swiss watch companies a number of years ago, but was denied that due to Swiss Anti-trust regulations...so an agreement was reached to slowly limit the supply over a multi-year span in order to get around those regulations. 

 

What has ALSO happened in the interim is that other nations have began to have their own companies reverse-engineer Swiss Mechanical movements, to a point to where it is now generally only true EXPERTS who can tell the difference between a knock-off and an original product.  This has MAINLY happened in China, but also elsewhere.  It is not even uncommon nowadays to end up with a classic original which has had at least one repair part installed which was NOT made by the original movement company....but in China, India, Pakistan...etc.

[Travis In Austin]

On 3/26/2018 at 12:56 PM, HDBRbuilder said:

Rolex has NEVER made its own movements, they just "jewel-up" out of house movements.  What you look for is the MOVEMENT, not the brand.  The more complicated the movement the more jewels (rubis) it should have, and 17 jewels (rubis) is more than enough for a non-chronometer movement.

Yes they have and do.  They did exclusively have Aelger supply their movements starting in early 20th century, then they bought part of it, and then they bought all of it including the factory but let that family run it, now it's all done by Rolex.

 

I don't think they ever "jeweled up" anything.  They specified and patented their movements and had Aegler make them (exclusively) under strict quality controls.

 

The Submariner started out as 26 Jewel when it came out in the 50s I think, but is now 31.  That movement was designed all in-house at Rolex.  The Director was an avid diver.

 

In the 60s the USA had a tariff,  there's that word, on imported watches with more than 20 jewels.  So Rolex, like a lot of Swiss companies, created a "tariff buster" 17 Jewel watch, but that was the Oyster I believe, I don't think they did that for the Sub.

 

When the tariff went away the movements went back with more jewels, and they moved the 17.jewel to a different line, like the Tudor.

 

I got all of this info from a tour, many, many years ago, I think what they were telling was pretty accurate, but who knows.

 

I agree, it IS the movement, and that 3135 31 jewel movement, from what I have heard, is pretty highly regarded.

[HDBRbuilder]

26 minutes ago, dwilawyer said:

I don't know near as much about this stuff as Andy does, but Swatch does own ETA, and ETA makes many, many different grades of movements.  I would think Omega would use their better grades.  Can't speak for their customer service, repairs.

 

Travis 

ETA makes between two to four "grades" of each of the movements they make.  Rolex does not use any Rolex movement designs, they use movement designs generally under license from ETA...whether they get the grade of the design in, or UPGRADE the parts in-house and then reassemble the movements, OR buy the PARTS for the movements and assemble the parts AFTER each part has gone through the upgrade routine is not known to me.  Hell, they may even be taking partially unfinished Chinese parts or something and doing the entire parts-finishing/upgrades in-house...but people want PARTiCULAR movement designs in what they buy, and for chronometers, they want particular cassettes for each dial involved for the particular base movement.

 

In other words, mechanical watches are like a kit, you have the base movement and you add different cassettes to it for different types of dials on the chronometer, depending upon where on the face the dial will be and exactly what the dial is for....minutes, seconds, day/date, even year, or stop-watch/reset.  It is akin to ordering your car online as a "build-it-yerself" with the options you want it to have, to include engine, performance, etc. 

 

Most of the extremely expensive self-winding Swiss chronometers are based upon Valjoux or Lemania DESIGNED basic movements, with cassettes added.  The patents went out on most of those movements decades ago...so it is just getting the movement built that is the issue, along with its cassettes....but you want it to be a high-quality production item.

 

ADDITIONALLY....there are other movement designs just as high-quality as those originally designed by Valjoux or Lemania...way back in the day, and Brietling (the ORIGINAL Brietling company) used a number of Venus designs for its watches, even to a point of pretty much leaving Venus almost unable to make ITS OWN watches because almost all labor was being used to supply Brietling with its needs.  How many times have you ever seen a real VENUS watch?  I have a handful of them, but they are getting to be fewer and fewer showing up nowadays on the market, UNLESS they are dress watches for ladies. 

 

Ever hear of Mondaine??  For decades and decades the official railroad watch of Switzerland's rails was Mondaine (it still is)...ever see a classic Mondaine MECHANICAL dive watch??  You won't very often, they get grabbed up almost as soon as they get listed.

 

WYLER...one of my FAVORITES, classical TOP LOADING movement (meaning no rear door to the movement)...they invented INCAFLEX for their own method of shock-proofing the movements...and sold the patented parts needed for other companies to CONVERT their watch movements to INCAFLEX shock-proofing...way back before WWII!  Incaflex uses SPRING STEEL zig-zag spokes on the balance wheel, so that the spring steel absorbs the shock and saves the balance wheel pivots points from damage.  EVERY WATCH MAKER KNEW that it COULD BE DONE, but just didn't figure out HOW...until...WYLER.  They used to advertise incaflex by throwing a Wyler watch off the top of the Eiffel tower and it still kept great time after it landed.  Talk about GUTSY advertising!

[HDBRbuilder]

26 minutes ago, dwilawyer said:

.

 

In the 60s the USA had a tariff,  there's that word, on imported watches with more than 20 jewels.  So Rolex, like a lot of Swiss companies, created a "tariff buster" 17 Jewel watch, but that was the Oyster I believe, I don't think they did that for the Sub.

 

When the tariff went away the movements went back with more jewels, and they moved the 17.jewel to a different line, like the Tudor.

 

I got all of this info from a tour, many, many years ago, I think what they were telling was pretty accurate, but who knows.

 

I agree, it IS the movement, and that 3135 31 jewel movement, from what I have heard, is pretty highly regarded.

Jewels are all now pretty-much artificial rubies nowadays, not natural ones, so it is much less costly to have more jeweled bearings in watches nowadays.  Jeweled bearing requires the finished JEWEL being insert into a precisely-made holder in the movement body sections.  Labor-wise, and machining-wise, this increases the cost of production for the watch movement.  BUT...a 17-jeweled non-chronometer movement has more than enough jeweled bearings in it to be considered high-quality.  More jeweled bearings don't hurt or really help anything, they just drive the cost up for MOST non-chronometer movements.  I have a few non-chronometer movement dive watches and dress watches with 25 or more "jewels"...from back in the day BEFORE artificial rubies...in the old days the term used for "jewels" in European-made watches was "rubis".

[HDBRbuilder]

1 hour ago, dwilawyer said:

Yes they have and do.  They did exclusively have Aelger supply their movements starting in early 20th century, then they bought part of it, and then they bought all of it including the factory but let that family run it, now it's all done by Rolex.

 

I don't think they ever "jeweled up" anything.  They specified and patented their movements and had Aegler make them (exclusively) under strict quality controls.

Jeweling up a metal surface can easily be done with a pencil eraser chucked up into a drill press.  It creates overlapping swirl patterns that remind one of fish scales.  It is basically used on finely buffed metal plates and such to give those plates a patterned "look".  In reality, if the end mill swirl patterns used on the plates to machine them FLAT in the machining process are not finely polished to reduce or eliminate the swirls left by the end mills, the jeweling does not need to be done for a visual effect.  This is because the original end mill swirls will remain if not polished away. 

 

Here is a view of the Rolex 3135 movement Which was introduced in 1988, and please note that the end mill swirls have not been polished away, so it is jeweled without having to be jeweled...simply because it was never polished after the milling operation.

 

"Jeweling" is often done on bolt-action rifle bolts and such to create a "look".  Also, if a watch has a glass-backed case, the movement is generally "jeweled" and additionally polished lightly to enhance the view of the movement parts.

 

Rolex actually plates quite a few of its movement parts.  Notice the RED ruby jewel bearings and how where they are mounted has to be accurately milled for them to be inset?  This makes a movement more expensive to produce, whether-or-not it actually improves the mechanical longetivity of the movement over and above a metal-to-metal plain bearing.  This is why you pay more for movements with more jeweled bearings.  Some of the finest pocket watches movements ever made operated with JUST three or so jeweled bearings in the movements. 

[JL Sargent]

7 minutes ago, HDBRbuilder said:

simply because it was never polished after the milling operation.

Having done a fair amount of machining myself, I am fairly confident that what you are seeing there is in fact simply "window dressing" or jeweling as you describe. Simple touch marks as they are made with an abrasive compound on a spinning eraser of sorts.  If that plate had indeed been milled from a billet for example, it would not look anything like all those swirls. The mill marks would instead be long lines across the work.

[HDBRbuilder]

5 minutes ago, JL Sargent said:

Having done a fair amount of machining myself, I am fairly confident that what you are seeing there is in fact simply "window dressing" or jeweling as you describe. Simple touch marks as they are made with an abrasive compound on a spinning eraser of sorts.  If that plate had indeed been milled from a billet for example, it would not look anything like all those swirls. The mill marks would instead be long lines across the work.

That's how it would look if I was milling it...straight lines of swirls instead of spinning it on a central pivot...so you are probably right, it was jeweled-up, but it sure appears that they used something much more abrasive than a pencil eraser, doesn't it?

[JL Sargent]

1 minute ago, HDBRbuilder said:

they used something much more abrasive than a pencil eraser, doesn't it?

The magic might be the lapping compound. here is a video on "burnishing" as they call it. 

 

 

[HDBRbuilder]

2 minutes ago, JL Sargent said:

The magic might be the lapping compound. here is a video on "burnishing" as they call it. 

Until I saw the edges of the metal he was doing this to, I though it might be aluminum, but the slight golden color on the unfinished ends tends to make me think it is magnesium or magnesium alloy...I hated milling magnesium plates flat at the foundry pattern shop...always a fire hazard!...and it always happens in the blink of an eye...get the buckets of sand and put it out! BEFORE THE WHOLE MILL MELTS DOWN! LOL!

[JJkizak]

21 minutes ago, HDBRbuilder said:

Until I saw the edges of the metal he was doing this to, I though it might be aluminum, but the slight golden color on the unfinished ends tends to make me think it is magnesium or magnesium alloy...I hated milling magnesium plates flat at the foundry pattern shop...always a fire hazard!...and it always happens in the blink of an eye...get the buckets of sand and put it out! BEFORE THE WHOLE MILL MELTS DOWN! LOL!

 

My friends in the Navy used to tell me stories about some aircraft made of magnesium/alloys that if they did catch fire they would push them over the side of the carrier and watch them burn all the way down to the bottom of the ocean.

JJK

[rebuy]

I'm just people, Have a Timex, Takes a Licking and keeps on Ticking.

 

If I'm spending Rolex money, I'd rather have some Forte's.

[Rich_Guy]

2 hours ago, JL Sargent said:

The magic might be the lapping compound. here is a video on "burnishing" as they call it. 

 

 

 

This is commonly called a "machine turned" finish, it can be accomplished using a mill and a wide variety of spinning tools, such as wood dowels, rubber, wire bristles,  leather,  sand paper rolls and so on and normally either an oil or lapping compound is used. It can definitely create a very beautiful finish when done well.

[tigerwoodKhorns]

23 hours ago, rebuy said:

I'm just people, Have a Timex, Takes a Licking and keeps on Ticking.

 

If I'm spending Rolex money, I'd rather have some Forte's.

 

What are you going to do with 13 pairs of Fortes?