WRUW Today?

Canuck · Mar 28, 2020

Fritz
house work day...

this looks pretty good along side the toilet brush!

itty bitty "several jewel" Swiss cylinder escapement in a silver case, late 1800s, its a cheap piece of shit (always was) but its pretty.

The “jewelled” dial on your watch is a work of art. That was a separate phase of watchmaking that I have always had immense admiration for. The spoilage rate on fancy enamel work like that was very high. I believe they used coke ovens back in the day, and fly ash was a problem. That dial was made by hand, and it would require several firings to achieve that result. The last firing used a thin film of clear flux to cover the decoration. Beautiful. Although, it disguised a very ordinary Swiss movement with cylinder escapement.

Fritz · Mar 28, 2020

Canuck
The “jewelled” dial on your watch is a work of art. That was a separate phase of watchmaking that I have always had immense admiration for. The spoilage rate on fancy enamel work like that was very high. I believe they used coke ovens back in the day, and fly ash was a problem. That dial was made by hand, and it would require several firings to achieve that result. The last firing used a thin film of clear flux to cover the decoration. Beautiful. Although, it disguised a very ordinary Swiss movement with cylinder escapement.

Agreed! Each one of these dials was an individual work of art! They were the fashion watches of their day. All show and no go. Aimed squarely at the ladies they were invariably very pretty little things, often in gorgeous cases, with cheap basic movements. This little bugger is solid silver with a nearly perfect dial and it didn’t cost me over a hundred bucks, they’re just not worth anything

a bit sad really.

cgaites · Mar 28, 2020

Woke up to a couple inches of snow this morning. After spending so much time holed up in the house, the kids were glad to get out and build a snowman.