A lemania, lemania

Not sure wheather to post here or in the old lemania thread on the other brands section. Since I am starting over I figured here is as good a place as any.

This watch as a bit of a story. When we were at the factory, they said Lemania did not sell watches with a dial marked Lemania. One of the Nawcc members said that this watch was a FAKE. becouse of that. His attituse was a lot of the reason I left the Nawcc. I think he has passed on now as this was over 25 years ago.

The stained dial is how I got the movement. I was thinking of attempting to clean it, but after watchin some you tube videos is seems that attitudes on these old warhorses have changed.

This movement is also a lot smaller than the CH27 c12 derivatives.




The movement itself is in pretty good shape. I am using my cellphone for these photographs as I have yet to set up the camera I bought last week for macro photography.

If anyone knows the caliber off the top of their head It would save me time looking it up again.



This is a movement I would love to case up again. Lemania is one of my favorites and what inspired me to collect in the first place. Not really sure how one would go into looking for an appropriate case for this. Quite possible that the case was scrapped out. I would be wanting to put it into something plain and simple like stainless steel.

Edit: the background grid is one inch (25.4mm) so it can be seen how small this movement is.

I looked up the 1280 on Ranfft which seems to show only the base movement. This one is more like the CH27 12. I got out the Tisot 873 and the movements are quite similar. The smallness seems to come from not having a case around it. The raw movement does seem to have a spacer around it. The balances are quite different.

I got out the ligne guage, posted a photograph of it in an old thread under watchmaking. Both movements are 12L with a ring. The so called goat movement is seems to be a landeron cal 48 at 13 and 3/4L. If the guage can be trusted.

The Esembl-O-Graf book only has the CH27C12 and a 1949 copyright date. Somewhere I have a fax of one of the omega materials sheet. I also have a nice binder with many of the pre 1960s parts diagrams, need to dig that book out of the closet.

These books are useful. I found another disassembled chronograph, which also seems to be a Landeron and has the same setting stop silhouette used to identify the caliber.

A lot of this is re-learning from decades ago. I am sure I am making a lot of mistakes in my analysis of this stuff.

-j

Hi.
The giveaway to the caliber designation is the number 105 on the dial.


The above are from the Lemania fourniture catalog and from a 1956 UK dealers brochure.

Your caliber 1280 movement would be 27mm in diameter and is a simplified caliber 27CH-C12 (25xx).

Cheers!👍

Great find.
Now I need to find an apropriate ss case for it. This movement looks to be in great shape apart from the surface staining on the dial. For an uncased movement I am surprised the most of the hands ar still on it apart from the hour hand and one of the sub dial hands.
As noted it was a trip to the lemania factory that inspired me to collect watches.
-j

Lemania had a modular approach to watchmaking. The 25xx/23xx (27CH) hi-grade movements was fully interchangeable with the 12xx calibers.

As such, any case made for a 27mm Lemania chronograph movement will fit.
Your challenge will be to find one that also fits with your dial diameter.
EBay may be a good place to start looking.

Happy hunting!
😀

I need to look right under my nose. It looks like the case the dialing experiment is in in would fit the lemania and make it a wearable watch. Would make it a franken though. Then this watch is from the land of the un-dead anyway. I think the 'junk' movement is a venus. (I wound it and it started running.) Who knows if that was origional to the case. Since I redialed that movement I do not know what was on this. The bezel is not from the case as it is polished. Case is a wreck as most of the plating has worn off with brass showing through. The pushers are quite pitted.

Ebay prices for this stuff is insane. Sadly most of the interesting stuff seems to ship from sketchy countries.

Spent the morning sorting throug the junk cases. Never knew I had so much Bulova stuff. Probably should make a thread for it. I keep finding so much intersting 'stuff.' Not a lot of chrograph cases. Ironically I think all these cases will nicely fit into a box I just got from eBay.

If only I did not hate the mechanics of selling. Especially the meaningless 'rating' system.

What are the thoughts of others. If the prices online are real I could sell off some of this stuff I do not care about, then get something I might like.

-j