Are manual watches less durable and prone to wear

Archer

Most watchmakers I know will not do this sort of work, because what we would have to charge for the work most people simply wouldn't pay. This also not the sort of everyday task we do, so for us to do this work is terribly inefficient. I will make very simple parts if it benefits the customer to do so, or modify parts to make them work if appropriate.

Making a barrel requires cutting gear teeth on the outside of the barrel, and depending on the origin of the watch (in this case I'm assuming Japanese) it may use different gear tooth forms from say Swiss watches. That means custom cutters are required, so not cheap depending on how the teeth are going to be cut. Again because you are only making one, the cost of those cutting tools is amortized over 1 part, not 100's of parts.

There are a some watchmakers who all they do is make parts like this, but their customers are not you, they are watchmakers like me. The guy I've used for a few jobs in the past, has a wait list of at least a year, and he doesn't really "quote" you up front. You get a very rough idea and then have to trust him to charge you appropriately for his time (he's fair, but charges accordingly). He won't service the movement, so you have to disassemble the watch, send him the relevant parts, and just wait to hear that the job is done...

He's very busy because very few people do this sort of work. It is almost always preferable and cheaper for you, the watch owner, to find a spare part somewhere, even if it means buying up old movements and stripping them for parts.

STANDY

A good watchmaker can make any part needed now and into the future. Price may be a factor but plenty of companies make small stuff for not only the watch industry.

(Know of an Australian watchmaker who is getting plenty of business making small stuff for other industries (space/medical) on newly acquired watch making CNC type machines bought for watchmaking.

Waltesefalcon

You're really over thinking this whole thing. Wear your watch, enjoy it, don't stress so much.

Archer

What specific movement are you referring to? Is the GS 4500 series? If so, I recall servicing a 4522 (I think many) maybe 15 years ago, and even then parts were very hard to find.

To your question, there's no real answer to that - enough to last you as long as you plan to keep the watch.



Springs are probably the most forgiving when it comes to using a replacement that isn't exactly 100% the same as the original. So chances are unless this spring is something very unusual, there will be a generic that will work.

Has someone told you that the barrel needs replacing and that mainsprings are no longer available?

Waltesefalcon

I mostly collect American pocket watches. None of these companies have even been in business since the 1960s, which means there are no newly produced parts. I keep an eye out all the time for NOS parts, and I have a decent collection of main springs, balance staffs, etc. for many of the models I have. I will search ebay periodically for parts and parts movements. Sometimes I'll buy a watch for its parts and then decide it is too nice to harvest, and then, I have a new project.

B blueboost

No, manual wind watches are not more delicate. Source- am watchmaker.

sheepdoll

Costs are of course the main factor to making parts. Most modern post WWII watches are made using large runs of parts. Often stamped in presses with a certain yield rate. It really comes down to understanding material science and metallurgy. That was really what people like Harrison and Ghrame understood.

Back in the 1990s I got as interested in the tooling as much as the results. One of my mentors ran a tool and die shop. He actually sold me my lathe to prove a point. Which was you can not press a button and parts come out.

My desire was to replicate an 18th century automaton. Curiously in the last 251 years, many parts of the original have been replace, probably 1/4 to 1/3 of the parts. These seem to get a total tear down and rebuild every 30 years or so.

I actually built a pinon gear cutter. It is not something one uses to make one off parts. I also spent the time making an EDM machine. Curiously someone in the maker space has expressed interest in EDM. Modifying a 3D printer into a wire EDM.

More recently I have been working with lasers. A lot of my carrier was working with laser printers. What all these machines including 3D printers and CNC machines have in common is the need for stepper/servo controllers.

This is something that has matured a lot in the past few years. With programs like light burn and grbl. My CNC mill has been apart for years. Was controlled by a program called Mach-3. Which used Windows XP and a parallel port. Talk about obsolete.

On the other hand people are using fiber lasers to cut things like hands out of razor blades. (pun intended.) This can also with effort be used to replicate some of the stamped lever springs and jumpers. There are books on replicating these with grinding. Again it comes down to an understanding of the material science and metallurgy. Heat treating the metals is sort of a black art. Or one could simply build a controlled furnace to set things to temperature. Someone simply like Columbus has to decide to do it.

The real trick however is getting the data into the G-Code format. Programs which convert STL or DXF to machine tool paths can be expensive or complex. Those in the trade who know how to convert DXF to G-Code are highly paid. Often having more work than they can handle.

I did start to program some of the mechanical doll into CAD. Easy to get distracted, I also like Orrerys, and if one has a gear cutter such things can be seductive. I also went down the hole with photogramerity which replicating objects from photographs. This strongly borders on AI. Since it is a form of machine vision.

Every now and then I contemplate making cad drawings of watch parts. Another rabbit hole was making Cad drawing of Babbage's computing engines and the Antkeythera device. I started to do this with some repeaters I have. It is not difficult to do. Mostly though there is no real return on the invested time. Like anything else in this day and age it is programming, scritpting and program debugging.

Industry often talks about man hours. Which his how many hours it would take a single person to do a task done by a group. So expanded out It would probably take me between 500 and 2500 years to explore all the rabbit holes I am interested in.


edit: post occured while I was replying.

mseamaster

Seiko 4522 felt like it got stiffer to set after winding it. I have Seiko 4500/4502 which don't resist at all, even if wound.

It made me think I was doing something wrong.