As complications go, the chronograph is both prized and something of a Mt. Everest for amateur watchmakers. In this article, I’m going to walk through re-assembly of a “typical” (if there is such a thing) cam-driven vintage chronograph movement, the Venus 188, to show that - if you’re systematic - there’s nothing to be afraid of. I’ll also talk about adjustment and tuning of the chronograph functions.

Triple Calendar + Moon Phase with a pointer date is a prized complication among vintage watches. I thought it would be interesting to go through how this rather complex calendar system is put together as part of a movement service. Strap in!

In my ongoing series exploring vintage watch movements, my focus has been on movements with interesting design quirks or features, but I thought it might be helpful to go over a very “vanilla” watch movement, with a typical design and no complications whatsoever. Accordingly, the subject of today’s post is the Bulova 7AP, a very simple but quality movement manufactured in the late 1930s.

The A. Schild 1706 is an interesting movement with a somewhat unusual automatic winding mechanism. As we shall see in this article, this design has some benefits, but one major potential pitfall.

The Elgin 626 is a neat little USA-made movement from the late 1940s designed specifically to power the sub-second tank-style watches popular at the time. However, the horologist who designed this movement clearly must have been a bit bored with the lack of complications, because they seemingly went out of their way to add some truly strange design features. In this post we will explore these oddities.

Kicking off a new blog series, we take a look at the Gruen N 710 SS. This 1960s automatic movement was manufactured for Gruen by… someone. It’s a bit of a mystery, as, beyond a stamp indicating Swiss manufacture, the movement only has Gruen markings.