Thursday, July 24, 2008

Collecting Mechanical Watches

This passage mirrors many of my own thoughts on mechanical watches:

"Mechanical watches are so brilliantly unnecessary.
Any Swatch or Casio keeps better time, and high-end contemporary Swiss
watches are priced like small cars. But mechanical watches partake
of what my friend John Clute calls the Tamagotchi Gesture. They're
pointless in a peculiarly needful way; they're comforting precisely
because they require tending.
And vintage mechanical watches are among the very finest fossils of
the pre-digital age. Each one is a miniature world unto itself, a tiny
functioning mechanism, a congeries of minute and mysterious
moving parts. Moving parts! And consequently these watches are,
in a sense, alive. They have heartbeats. They seem to respond,
Tamagotchi-like, to "love," in the form, usually, of the expensive
ministrations of specialist technicians. Like ancient steam-tractors
or Vincent motorcycles, they can be painstakingly
restored from virtually any stage of ruin."


William Gibson
Science fiction author


Read the whole thing here: "My Obsession"

Monday, May 26, 2008

NOS Vostok Komanderski Paratroops

One of the things that I enjoy about collecting Soviet/Russian watches is the often bold and iconic designs they use on the watch faces, which is very different from western watches.

This particular watch is photographed alongside the sleeve patch of the parachute forces of the USSR.

I posted about this particular acquisition on Watch U Seek.



Sunday, May 18, 2008

1st MWF: Moscow

I've had this Moscow made in 1956 by the 1st Moscow Watch Factory for quite a while, but it took a good 18 months to get it into my watch maker for repairs. Though it runs fine, someone had replaced the stem and made a poor job of it leaving the replacement stem extending a good millimeter from the case.

My watchmaker was able to replace it with no problems and the new one is dust-poof which was not a feature of the original.

This watch has a 16 jewel movement and has one of the loudest sounding ticks in my collection. Which is interesting for such a small watch (it is an intermediately sized 30mm case with 16mm lugs).
I picked a brown calfskin strap for it and my watchmaker swapped out the gold buckle for a more period appropriate one made out of stainless steel.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with this catch and it's nice to see a watch over half a century old still ticking strongly.