As we continue our exporation of weird and wonderful automatic movements, let’s take a look at the 1950s-era Longines 19AS. The 19AS sits in a wonderfully in-between moment in automatic watchmaking—when the industry was leaving bumper automatics behind, but hadn’t yet settled on the now-familiar reversing wheel architecture that would dominate later full-rotor designs. In this article, we’ll walk through assembly of the 19AS automatic mechanism step by step, using the process not just as a repair guide but as a tour of the movement’s thinking: how Longines packaged a modern, 360° oscillating weight into a layout that still carries transitional DNA. Along the way we’ll highlight the design choices that make the 19AS such an interesting—and frankly underappreciated—milestone: a practical, serviceable full-rotor automatic that hints at the future while still wearing the fingerprints of the bumper age.

Continuing my series on weird and wonderful automatics, this article explores the A. Schild 1173 — a very early, mass-produced automatic first introduced in the mid-1930s. Its bumper-style architecture traces a direct lineage back to the original John Harwood automatic concept. We take a close look as this design as it comes back together on my restoration bench following a cleaning.

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.