<<< modern 321 tech question >>>

D Duckie

Hi Brian,

Welcome to the forum😀
It's a different crowd around here from what you're accustomed to over on the darkside😉
I hope you enjoy it here👍

josiahg52

He is one of the best I know. I personally would not send my Omegas to anyone else.

dsio

Al’s been around a long time and is a particular favourite among owners of vintage 321 Speedmasters. When people list 321s for sale here a recent service invoice by either STS, Archer or Simon Freese tends to carry a small premium as people know the watch has been done right.

Omegafanman

Well done on getting an EW - a grail watch for a few of us here.

4011021

Sometimes I leave my 3861 chrono hand at 6 o'clock as well, for the same reason, I like to see the applied logo. I searched the forum and found quite a few Archer's replies saying that it wouldn't cause any damage.

Dan S

Is it true that some people advance the sweep hand one second a day to indicate the date? 😵‍💫

STANDY

Why don’t you just set the chrono in tune with the second hand and have it running all the time instead of stopped at 6 …..😗

STANDY

You can run it all day for 24 hours as it just clicks over after 12 hours and starts again 😉

Many run it all the time and it does no harm…

Brandrea

Thank you for this.😀

Is there any reason you can think of that the RSC here in Toronto advised against it?

Archer

It depends on the brand. When I was at the Swatch service center in NJ 10 years ago for some training, the work done to the movements was done by watchmakers. There were two groups of watchmakers - a group that worked on brands such as Omega and "lower" so Longines, Tissot, and on down. Then there was a group that worked on everything "above" Omegas, so Blancpain, GO, Breguet, etc.

The only part of the service that watchmakers did, was the servicing of the movement itself. Everything else was done by people who had been hired off the street and trained in their specific job, so they were not formally trained watchmakers. This includes initial disassembly, all case work, and final assembly steps like fitting the dial, hands, and final casing and QC.

As far as I know, Omega has not yet moved to the sequential servicing style of servicing, which is what you are referring to. This takes the unskilled labour idea further, where people who have no formal watchmaking training are trained on individual parts of a movement service, and the movements move down what amounts to an assembly line. In this scenario, it's a trained watchmaker that does the final inspection and adjusting of the movement.

This is very common in movement manufacturing, and is now becoming more common in servicing. Here's sort of one version of this at Blancpain's factory (this is new production):

This is installation of mainspring barrels into the movement. The movements are circulated under the table top on a conveyor system.

Cheers, Al

Archer

There aren't nearly enough new watchmakers being trained to replace those who are dying, retiring, or leaving the profession. This is a major issue and will continue to be one for some time. I've said several times before, that this is the single biggest thing that threatens the watch collecting hobby. No one wants to buy expensive watches that can't be fixed in the future.

The industry knows this, and has to take some steps to help mitigate this problem. This is why you will find all the major conglomerates and independent brands, have their own watchmaking schools or are affiliated with one. However, this doesn't stop those who graduate from going to a rival brand, or going out on their own. So as much as they can train people, it still leaves things out of their direct control to a some degree.

This is where these other tactics come in, such as sequential assembly style servicing, and outright swapping out of movements. The latter is more common with some other brands, such as Tudor, but I'm quite sure that for lower end Swatch group brands, they are likely doing the same. For a brand like Omega, since most of the watches they make have serial numbers on both the movement and the case, and those numbers match, movement swapping really isn't an option. For watches that don't have this, like the Speedmaster reduced models, then yes swapping the movements is the standard.

Brands like Rolex, and conglomerates like Richemont or LVMH, who really don't sell parts to independent watchmakers anymore, are in a way shooting themselves in the foot by forcing all that volume to their own service centers (a big part of it anyway). Add in the disaster that is the 323X movements, and RSC's are under terrible strain right now, and service times are getting longer and longer. At least Swatch group allows external servicing of watches from Omega on down, which takes some load off their own service centers.

As for being surprised at what the Swiss did 10 years ago, you have to understand the Swiss and this industry. They are very traditional and set in their ways to a degree. They are slow to change things from what is seen as the "correct" way of doing things, and I expect that higher end brands will continue this way for a long time. The lower end (and mid-tier brands like Rolex/Omega) will be the ones who adopt to newer ways of doing things, out of sheer necessity.