Swiss Dollar Watch

[chris mabbott]

I was messing around with the camera yesterday, updating some file pics and I took a few of this one.
I’ve had it for a while, picked it up from a market, it wasn’t working, broken crytal, very dirty, which was the cause of it not working..

Not sure who made it or where it’s from, it say’s made in Switzerland but could be from anywhere. I haven’t been able to find any info, I think I posted it on NAWCC at one time but I think it’s just a cheap knockoff, still, it works and keeps reasonable time.
The case is nice, brass, I have a thing for brass cases 😯

So here’s a show & tell..

[chris mabbott]

Back

[chris mabbott]

Dust cover

[chris mabbott]

Movement

[chris mabbott]

The ZERO jewel movement

[michael weaver]

I can’t believe you bought that with all of the jewels missing! 😮 That is better quality than the dollar watch I have. The good thing about them is that when you are practicing use of your tools and destroy one you are out maybe a little more than it originally cost.

[david pierce]

Chris, Mike,
I bought a few inexpensive pocket watches that were made in China but the movements were large wrist watch movements in a pocket watch case. The movement components were not polished but the watches work well and keep good time.
david

[chris mabbott]

Mike, the fun really started when I began to re-install the missing jewels 😆

David, I found that too, I got a couple of Chinese watches that came in a lot, only to find they had ETA movements in them. Did you polish the parts afterwards?

Chris

[david pierce]

Chris,
No, the darn things work so well I don’t even want to open the case. When I put them on my watch timing machine the graphs are almost perfect.
david

[chris mabbott]

David, are you inadvertently recommending Chinese lathes 😆 😆

Chris

[david pierce]

Chris,
Let me put it this way.

In a perfect world:
The English are in charge of the police
The Germans are in charge of the army
The Italians are in charge of love
The French are in charge of food
And the whole thing is run by the Swiss

In an imperfect world:
The Germans are in charge of the police
The French are in charge of the army
The Swiss are in charge of love
The English are in charge of food
And the whole thing is run by the italians

All my life I heard about fine German craftsmanship and believed it until I bought a Volkswagon and later a Mercedes. After learning my lesson my wife and I both drive Toyota cars. The lesson I learned is to look at something based on its actual merits and not a cultural prejudice. I am not pro Chinese lathes but I bought one in spite of all of the bad press I heard about Chinese products. I took a chance and bought one and it turned out to be a great machine. When I saw a picture of the NANO lathe (which I think is Chinese) I inquired about it on the forum. Jan Gerene posted back and indicated that he was generally dissapointed with his. What I will advocate is use what works best for you and ignore designer labels.
david

[chris mabbott]

😆 Well said. I can only agree David as my auto is also Japanese.

Funny, but I was on a project a while ago, the machine in question was Chinese, I was surprised, pleasantly, by the quality of workmanship.

Chris

[gerene]

David, I would like to add something about the Nano lathe, which is indeed Chinese (made by Sieg). I might have given the impression that this is not a good lathe but I have to clarify this a little bit.
The lathe in itself is not bad and the price/quality is rather excellent. However, it was advertised as a watchmakers lathe which in my opinion it is not. One cannot replace WW-collets or similar by ER-11 collets since they do not grip at the top of the collet and hence cannot hold a balance staff for instance. Since this was the first lathe I bought and used, I did not have a clue at that time. I also bought it because it was advertised to be convertible to a drilling and milling machine. That is true, but as you all know (and I do too now) different machines for each purpose are better. Converting from one to the other takes about 5-10 minutes and in real life is not that practical.

I mainly use the machine in its micro drill form and sometimes convert it back to have a lathe smaller than my Taig lathe.

The milling option is in my opinion really under standard. That is I was not able to mill even a small workpiece. That is probably my fault because it was the first milling experience I ever had but I know that the milling attachment is not rigid enough to really use it.

I probably should buy a watchmakers lathe sooner or lather and I am looking at the Sincere lathe for that purpose. I am just a little bit concerned about importing it into Europe because customs can be a real pain and import duties sometimes prohibitive.

Jan

[david pierce]

Jan,
You might be able to make it more watchpart friendly by using jeweling chucks and inserting them into the ER-11 collets. These are usually inexpensive and come in sets. it could be worth a try.
With milling I learned years ago on my UNIMAT that a machine is useful only up to a certain cutter diameter. When the cutter force overpowers the structure of the machine it will not cut well. That machine might do a great job is you put a small enough cutter in it. On a machine that small you would probably not want to exceed a cutter diameter of 1/16 of an inch. If you know a dentist he may be able to give you some used dental drills. Also, I think these can be purchased off of Ebay.
david

[gerene]

Thanks for the info David, but excuse my ignorance for not knowing what jewelling chucks are or how they are used. Would you be so kind as to explain this a little bit more?
For the milling I do have cutters of 1 to 3 mm, which is aprox. what you are referring to, but I never tried them on the Nano-mill, I use them on my Proxxon Micro mill, which is small but pretty good.
I also use the milling attachment for the Taig lathe, which works fine. I bigger mill is on my wishlist but does not have a high priority at the moment.

Jan

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