Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Off Topic Watch Repair

It’s been almost 2 years since my treasured 30 year-old slim-line Rotary Watch stopped working. Rotary wouldn’t even look at, citing its old/obsolete internal movement.

My local/independent watchmaker claimed that he could find a replacement movement. 18 months later, he still hadn’t managed to locate such a replacement movement.

By chance, my Wife required a replacement Watch battery from Hinds. I mentioned my Rotary Watch issues. I remembered they originally had my model in stock at the same time as my original purchase. They were adamant that they would be able to repair it.

I didn’t hold out much hope that they could. However, 2 weeks later, their investigation revealed that there was nothing wrong with the ‘quality movement’, but it did require a replacement circuit board. Another 2 weeks later, I was asked to collect my now fully-working Watch. I’m chuffed to bits! - plus the repair has a 12 month warranty.

It pays to persevere.

Nice one, enjoy.

Regards,
Carl

Excellent - good for another 30 years! I'm a big fan of watches with a movement in them. A smart watch will never replace my mechanical one.

I’m no fan of AppleWatch!

iwatch therefore I am. Also have a Baume & Mercier who are owned by Richemont apparently, small world.

It's certainly hard to find fault with a watch which tells the time very inaccurately.

My mechanical watch loses <0.5 sec per day, never needs charging, winding or a replacement battery. You're right, it's hard to find fault with it.

Cliff, my comment was somewhat flippant but I've long since understood mechanical watches to be fairly inaccurate. I get the whole thing that they aren't just time pieces etc but <0.5 seconds / day seems remarkable, and way better than one might reasonably expect. How come? Also, isn't it (generally) true that mechanical watches lose time on a variable basis? Is <0.5 secs some sort of average or a best-case figure?

Hello

My Rado Automatic watch is extremely accurate after over ten years.

The only thing is automatic watches stop after about 24 hours of inactivity so if I wear my Garmin Sports watch for a day I have to restart the Rado by shaking it and resetting the time.

Of course they have to be serviced eventually and this will probably cost more than all the batteries would have cost together.

Neil

I took your post as tongue-in-cheek but just wanted to dispel any notion that mechanical watches aren’t up to their primary function. I’ve owned various brands of mechanical watch over the years from the mid to higher end of the market (but not silly high-end like Patek Philippe). The worst gained about 2 sec\day but after a bedding in period of a few months all were consistent in their gains\losses for years.

I don’t think I’ll ever get a smart watch as I find technology more and more intrusive these days and one more gadget tracking my every movement on my wrist is not for me. YMMV

I did a few minutes of sniffing around the 'net after reading Cliff's post & <0.5 sec / day does indeed appear to be remarkably accurate for a mechanical watch. 3 minutes / year? Shoddy by quartz standards, let alone those radio-signal watches, but 'good enough' for most I'm sure, even airline pilots!

I dug out this article about Rolex's 'new' (as of 2016) testing standards for their mechanical watches of +/- 2 secs / day, a vast improvement on their previous (& seemingly still impressive) -4/+6 secs / day. Those are more the sort of figures that I (as someone with little knowledge of watches) would have expected to see. Is your watch, Cliff, renowned for its accuracy or did you just get lucky? What do its makers know that a giant like Rolex doesn't?

All Watches are invaluable for measuring passing time while we all wait for the Meridian 210.