'What Do We Do ?'

..or ...

'What Makes Us Great ?'

Unlike the 'Bodgit-Korner' pages, where we demonstrate how not to go about repairing timepieces, this page showcases some of the reasons we believe you should entrust the restoration of your valued possessions to us.
In short this is where we 'blow our own trumpet'.

We don't aim to bore you with lots of examples of general work in progress...
or to show you lots of pretty pictures of our spotless workshops and technicians in white labcoats (mainly because we don't own any labcoats, ..we are too busy for them to stay white for long enough to get a picture of even if we did and, besides, we much prefer to wear the traditional watchmakers 'Bib');
...instead, we will simply pick out one (or perhaps two) examples which perhaps illustrate why we feel justified in claiming that we offer one of the best services in the world for the repair and restoration of precision and/or horological mechanisms.

INDEX

Example-1

Here's one to get us started, ...
A client brought along a gold cased and braceleted ladies cocktail watch. At first sight no different from the other tens of thousands produced in the 60's and 70's
This one was manufactured by Longines, so the workshop thought it knew what to expect when the case was opened.
The case of the watch was not particularly smaller than others of it's type, and nothing externally gave away the fact that Longines had fitted this particular watch with their Calibre:320 movement; ... one of the smallest movements ever produced.
That wasn't a problem in, and of, itself; ... but it did raise a dilemna when we began to inspect the movement.
The calibre:320 has a miniscule mainspring barrel which is some 5mm, or so, in diameter.
The workshop inventory told us that we had in stock a winder for these Calibre:320 movements which our founder had made for himself some years back. Unfortunately,during one of our two major workshop moves over the years, we must have misplaced it; and at the time that this watch arrived not one, of the 5 different sets, of mainspring winders available to hand in the workshops, had a winding-unit small enough to fit inside this barrel.
On further examination of the watch it also became clear why the watch had developed a stubborn refusal to run. In all the years since it had been manufactured, the mainspring had clearly never been removed for cleaning and fresh lubrication, it being thickly encased in layers of dried out and crusty lubricant.
It was obvious that previous servicing had been skimped, and rather than run the risk of not being able to get the mainspring back into the barrel without damaging it, others had repeatedly ignored its place at the heart of the cleaning cycle.
Specialist tools for these watches are no longer available, (and even if they were, then the present-day Swiss factory's allegedly stubborn adherence, to what has been described as its 'anti-competition' mentality, and as a part of the Swatch group, with their constant refusals to supply even basic parts to the UK trade, would probably have meant yet another refusal in answer to any request of ours)

By the way... you may want to remember their refusal to supply parts to the trade in the UK if you are considering spending up to, and beyond, Ł1000 on a Longines watch.

Clearly, this commitment to our own Quality Standards, and any difficulty in acquiring tools was not something we could expect our client to fund, ...therefore the choice became shortlisted to 1 of 3:
1:- Decline the service and severely disappoint a client. (Something we are always eager to avoid)
2:- Bodge-It, by dropping the entire mainspring and barrel assembly into the ultrasonic cleaner, just as others had obviously done before us, ... and far too many 'so-called' watchmakers continue to do today; .. and keep our fingers crossed that enough of the gunge could be removed to allow the watch to run for at least a few months.
(This option was never seriously considered, and we would have reverted to option-1 above first)
or...
3:- Set about to manufacture the specialist tool/s required ourselves.

...And that (option 3) is exactly what we did.
The images following give you some idea of the scales we were working at when producing the tool/s.
They may appear tiny to the casual observer, and we have labelled them as being 'Tiny', but we would like to point out for you that the Lathe shown in the image is actually the largest of our watch-bench lathes, we have others which go down to only fractions of the size of this. These smaller precision machines are used to produce replacement parts requiring the most finely detailed work, ...some of it so small that you need a microscope-lens camera to get clear and meaningful images.

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KlokWurX^tm the UK's premier Watch, Clock and Jewellery Services	'What Do We Do ?' ..or ... 'What Makes Us Great ?' Unlike the 'Bodgit-Korner' pages, where we demonstrate how *not* to go about repairing timepieces, this page showcases some of the reasons we believe you should entrust the restoration of your valued possessions to us. In short this is where we 'blow our own trumpet'. We don't aim to bore you with lots of examples of general work in progress... or to show you lots of pretty pictures of our spotless workshops and technicians in white labcoats (mainly because we don't own any labcoats, ..we are too busy for them to stay white for long enough to get a picture of even if we did and, besides, we much prefer to wear the traditional watchmakers 'Bib'); ...instead, we will simply pick out one (or perhaps two) examples which perhaps illustrate why we feel justified in claiming that we offer one of the best services in the world for the repair and restoration of precision and/or horological mechanisms. INDEX Example-1 Here's one to get us started, ... A client brought along a gold cased and braceleted ladies cocktail watch. At first sight no different from the other tens of thousands produced in the 60's and 70's This one was manufactured by Longines, so the workshop thought it knew what to expect when the case was opened. The case of the watch was not particularly smaller than others of it's type, and nothing externally gave away the fact that Longines had fitted this particular watch with their Calibre:320 movement; ... one of the smallest movements ever produced. That wasn't a problem in, and of, itself; ... but it did raise a dilemna when we began to inspect the movement. The calibre:320 has a miniscule mainspring barrel which is some 5mm, or so, in diameter. The workshop inventory told us that we had in stock a winder for these Calibre:320 movements which our founder had made for himself some years back. Unfortunately,during one of our two major workshop moves over the years, we must have misplaced it; and at the time that this watch arrived not one, of the 5 different sets, of mainspring winders available to hand in the workshops, had a winding-unit small enough to fit inside this barrel. On further examination of the watch it also became clear why the watch had developed a stubborn refusal to run. In all the years since it had been manufactured, the mainspring had clearly never been removed for cleaning and fresh lubrication, it being thickly encased in layers of dried out and crusty lubricant. It was obvious that previous servicing had been skimped, and rather than run the risk of not being able to get the mainspring back into the barrel without damaging it, others had repeatedly ignored its place at the heart of the cleaning cycle. Specialist tools for these watches are no longer available, (and even if they were, then the present-day Swiss factory's allegedly stubborn adherence, to what has been described as its 'anti-competition' mentality, and as a part of the Swatch group, with their constant refusals to supply even basic parts to the UK trade, would probably have meant yet another refusal in answer to any request of ours) By the way... you may want to remember their refusal to supply parts to the trade in the UK if you are considering spending up to, and beyond, Ł1000 on a Longines watch. Clearly, this commitment to our own Quality Standards, and any difficulty in acquiring tools was not something we could expect our client to fund, ...therefore the choice became shortlisted to 1 of 3: 1:- Decline the service and severely disappoint a client. (Something we are always eager to avoid) 2:- Bodge-It, by dropping the entire mainspring and barrel assembly into the ultrasonic cleaner, just as others had obviously done before us, ... and far too many 'so-called' watchmakers* continue to do today;* .. and keep our fingers crossed that enough of the gunge could be removed to allow the watch to run for at least a few months. (This option was never seriously considered, and we would have reverted to option-1 above first) or... 3:- Set about to manufacture the specialist tool/s required ourselves. ...And that (option 3) is exactly what we did. The images following give you some idea of the scales we were working at when producing the tool/s. They may appear tiny to the casual observer, and we have labelled them as being 'Tiny', but we would like to point out for you that the Lathe shown in the image is actually the largest of our watch-bench lathes, we have others which go down to only fractions of the size of this. These smaller precision machines are used to produce replacement parts requiring the most finely detailed work, ...some of it so small that you need a microscope-lens camera to get clear and meaningful images. Return to Index

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