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Comment by aeturnum | Hacker News Reader

I used to collect and restore pocket watch movements. This looks like a really lovely guide and is the kind of thing that's quite hard to find. Horology isn't a "very online" kind of pursuit.

One of the challenges starting out is getting watches that were made to be repaired, but aren't too expensive. It looks like esslinger sells the movement covered here for $45, which is a great deal[1]. I used to buy old soviet watches like Molnija[2], which were unauthorized copies of high quality western movements.

Watches were very much the cell phones of their day! If you enjoy the evolution of mobile computing you might find them compelling.

[1] https://www.esslinger.com/genuine-seiko-3-hand-automatic-wat... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molnija

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Molnija wasn't a ripoff, Soviets purchased the design and the initial tooling from Cortebert.

This particular Cortebert's calibre is indeed somewhat famous for being used by Rolex in 1940's (as cal. 618).

It's a fine movement in itself and Molnijas are not bad at all, both in their original 15 jewel variant (from 1947 to early 1960's) or as a later 18 jewel one. I would just avoid the specimens from 1990's or later.

I especially like the 18 jewel Molnijas from early 1960's that were still decorated with Geneva stripes and had a microadjuster. Molnijas became more utilitarian later on.

Thank you for the correction! I uncritically took my story from a webpage on soviet watch history. I also didn't realize that the design was a shared ancestor of both rolex and molnija - I thought molnija had copied rolex. Such are the pitfalls of being an amateur.

I've found that most soviet watch brands decay in quality as you get into the 90s. If they don't, they start to match the price points of their western counterparts.

It's quite understandable, accurate and detailed on-line information about Molnijas is a bit scarce...

Do you need several-standard-deviation better than average fine motor control to mess with this stuff? I can't imagine successfully handling any of the pieces of the movement, so my "repair" skills would be limited to swapping out the whole thing or using some kind of robotic apparatus to gear down my movements.

I had the same concern and that's part of why I got into pocket watches instead of wrist watches! That said, my experience is that people who repair watches are no more superhuman than you or I and that it's mostly experience.

>my "repair" skills would be limited to swapping out the whole thing or using some kind of robotic apparatus to gear down my movements.

Mine too! I never talked to anyone who did repair as a job, but my impression is that most repair is swapping out broken parts for working ones from other cannibalized movements. In theory you could fab new parts, of course, but that would be beyond my skills and experience. Think of it like how people build computers: they replace components and make sure it all works together.

But back in the day people used to make all the parts by hand, right? And they still have to make parts when repairing old pocket watches, etc... how do they do it?

Naw - precise timekeeping evolved with the ability to reliably manufacture precision components. That's one of the ways in which it parallels cell phones! There's this whole technology race where material science and timekeeping mechanism development mutually urge each other on.

I think for larger clocks (like the ones repaired by John in S-Town[1]), hand-created components were far more common. They were developed as objects that would be maintained and watched by a large community and less precision was manageable.

[1] https://stownpodcast.org/

No more than say, building a model airplane or model car. The movements for these watches especially are relatively cheap - you can find plenty of 7S26s on ebay for right around $20-25 - so the cost of replacing one that you might mess up is low. i recently rebuilt a similar movement with no prior experience and am actually wearing the watch right now. The best tool to have is a loupe, a good set of tweezers, and patience!

This is the kind of horology I enjoy. Lately it's been hard to find a community where it doesn't just mean "I buy expensive watches and post pictures of them online."

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