A Good Watch Deserves More Than D.I.Y.
by Dillon Patterson Article PublisherWatches
are a status symbol when wearing certain expensive makes but beware the fakes!
These are usually easy enough to spot as a good genuine mechanical watch should
have an almost smooth second hand movement.
The
fakes generally tick forward every second where the genuine makes click three
hundred and sixty times a minute. Even so, beware the skilled salesman who may
have a genuine one which no doubt he has stolen off some poor holiday maker and
with a clever deft movement can switch to the fake as you are counting the
money.
In
USA on holiday a few years ago I got the price down on a supposedly genuine
three thousand dollar watch to three thousand Rupees which works out at about
five dollars and still the cheeky boy felt he had made a killing.
The
safe way to buy genuine watch is perhaps to buy one of the better
makes skeleton models. These have a glass back or front which reveals all the
working parts. As a rule of thumb the more parts there are to a watch the
better the quality. Top of the range watches that cost many thousands of pounds
can have up to one thousand and more separate parts.
Watchmaking
began in earnest in the early eighteenth century but it wasn't really until
after the First World War that people began wearing wrist watches and even then
it was mostly women as men thought them rather effeminate and preferred the
pocket or fob watch.
The
Swiss have pretty well cornered the market on the high priced watches although
they have also mastered the branding and selling of tens of millions of cheap
ones as well. The Cuckoo clock makers now produce exquisite masterpieces for
which there seems to be no end of demand for.
Explorers
are the lucky recipients of some of these watches as there is much free
advertising if your make is for instance worn by the first man on the moon or
become a world champion bike or car driver.
There
is an area of Switzerland not too far from Lausanne on Lake Geneva where clocks
and top class watches have been made for a couple of hundred years and some of
the very best and most expensive have a policy to sponsor expeditions which
they know are going to get much publicity. When the watch stops working it's
time to look for some watch repair specialists and what you do not want to do is
fiddle with it yourself unless you are fully trained in the art of repairing
watches.
Some
high-end watches take craftsmen over a year to make and dismantling it yourself
to get at the root of the problem is definitely not a good idea. If a watch has
twelve hundred parts you just know that when you put it all back together one
tiny screw or spring is going to be left on the workbench and you are going to
be scratching your head.
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Created on Apr 26th 2020 09:36. Viewed 525 times.