Longest time without service

There are many examples of watches running for a very long time without service. Not sure these are really indicative of anything though, because for example here is a Cal. 2500 that was worn for only 5 years, and the movement was a mess inside. You can see debris in the jewels:



There was fine brass dust all through the movement from something wearing:







Here the pinion of a wheel was torn right out of the wheel:



This is a post on the automatic winding bridge, and the source of the debris:



It used to be round:



The post in the barrel bridge where the pinion had torn out of the wheel, had come loose - bridge was replaced along with a bunch of other parts:



This was a watch worn daily, and although the owner was a contractor all he did on jobs sites was supervise and help with a bit of clean up here and there, so it wasn't really abused, just well used.

So service intervals are a subject we goes round and round on forums all the time.

There is only one thing I stand firm on - don't apply the same rules to all watches.

If it's a modern watch, you use the service center for service, then letting it run until there's a problem may be the most economically sound approach, knowing that if the watch leaks it's going to cost you much more. But if you collect vintage watches using that same approach, in particular with movements where parts are discontinued and hard to get (and very expensive when you get them) then it's not likely the best approach. ion those cases you will want to preserve the parts that are in the watch as much as possible, be cause that $15 train wheel in the modern watch mat be $150 in the vintage watch. if you have to replace a lot of those, it's going to hurt.

Cheers, Al

Yeah, @Archer has a way of subtlety illustrating what happens when things don’t get addressed quickly 😲