I saw my first bumper movement a few days back, and yes it's different but why do I see people making a point that their watch has a bumper movement?

 

They are fun to wear. You can feel a slight thud as you turn your wrist reminding you that you are wearing a bumper. It is an interesting method to wind the watch that avoids infringing on full rotor patents.

Plus they are just cool!
I'm wearing one now:

 

Some of the case styles I am drawn to with thick lugs tend to house bumper movements.

 

Yes, I am aware of this. I did not intend to mislead with my statement. Sorry. I have a handful of older bumpers that predate full rotor movements.

 

I'm wearing my anonymous late 1940s A SCHILD 1192 bumper automatic now, and have been for the past ten days. It had been discarded by someone in the past as obsolete, and it was left to moulder in a drawer of old watches for 40 years (that I know of), and perhaps longer. It has astonished me with its performance since I resurrected it and serviced it. Considering that there has been about a century of evolution in watch design since the early automatics, to find one of these artifacts still alive, functioning well, and giving pleasure, is worth celebrating. And owing to attrition over the decades, there is only a small percentage of these "bumper" automatics that survive.

 

...and they come in many different flavors...

 

Wow! DIBS!
My favorite Polerouter layout!

 

The bumpers here don't see hard use, but they've given perfect satisfaction. It's fun to have a few on hand.

 

Bumpers were the first self winding calibers put into wrist watches because they were already in existence in pocket watches. Both the hammer (bumper) and rotor winding systems were experimented with before 1900, but neither worked all that well in a pocket watch because there wasn't enough movement to generate enough motion to wind the spring. Obviously your arm moves & twists hundreds of times more than your torso, so these automatic winding systems were converted to wrist watches.

 

66 years on, working fine, keeping accurate time. Not very water resistant, as the original owner apparently found out the hard way. But I can wear it without worrying about damaging its value -- on sunny days, anyway!

 

Hi mozartman;

What movement is featured in your 66 year-old Omega?

Here's a pre-service photo of the 351 movement of the watch seen in the middle of the three posted. It should be about the same age as yours is.

 

Best of all, they were also capable of chonometre quality performance...

 

Yes, Caliber 351 also, in use 1949-1952.

 

I finally got my very first vintage watch serviced. It's an Omega bumper cal 342.

Before service, I noticed there was a thud moving back and forth when I shook the watch. Now that I got the watch back (as of today), it runs great/keeping accurate time (for the last 8 hours) but there's no more thud when I shake the watch.

Did the lubrication and changing of paul bearing yoke (sp?) part muffle the thud?

 

You can remove the case back and see why.

 

Just like getting new shocks on your car when you have it serviced - sort of. Boing!

 

I'm not adept to do that...yet.

But after wearing it all day today, I did feel a thud/knock on my wrist at one point. And it's still keeping good time