Horological Meandering

With the two recent auctions of the Journe and Dufour Repeater/Soneries,
May 13 2008,05:31 AM

there has been some talk in the different fora about repeater movements. I know that there have been some comments that in house might be prefferable, and frankly I must admit, I am an in house movement person. However, with repeaters I might deviate from this preference. Our beloved CL pointed out to me that with a Patek, Vacheron, or Kari you get a more conventional movement that is more easily serviceable. This has me thinking, how many watchmakers can actually service a Dufour or Journe Grande and Petite Sonnerie? Or even a Kari decimal repeater for that matter? I can just imagine a watchmaker having a Dufour all disassembled on his bench, parts everywhere, and he is thinking WTF did I get myself into? Opinions Welcome.

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Interesting, Jasny
May 13 2008,07:19 AM

But you can generalize the question to other complications or " exotic " movements...

The Service of a watch can be the last fight in horology...

How many new companies can be sure to be able to exist, furthermore, to service their watches in 10 or 20 years???

That bmakes me think, too...

Best, and waiting for others inputs about this topic!

Nicolas

This message has been edited by amanico on 2008-05-13 07:19:34

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I'd bet...
May 13 2008,10:08 AM

that if you can service one grande sonnerie you can service another.
The problem is certainly how many people have the training to service such a complication at all.
I remember the people in the sonnerie shop at Daniel Roth telling me that they each produced about two watches a year and serviced two watches a year.  They were 3 or 4 watchmakers.  That's not an awful lot of sevices each year.
I would not want to give my hard earned repeater to any old watchmaker.  They would certainly enjoy the possibility to play with such a piece, but without the necessary training I would have my serious doubts to getting it back running better than before the service.
Don

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And Don lets not forget the Journe system of stopping the ringing when the power is low.
May 13 2008,10:50 AM

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Not many competent people...
May 14 2008,03:51 AM

I once investigated this for a friend who owns a very nice VC pocketwatch chronograph minute repeater. 

After some searching, my watchmaker pointed me at someone he'd studied watchmaking with who now worked for the SAV of a top-end maker, but had previously done servicing/repairing/restoring complications for an auction house, and so had seen far more repeaters than most watchmakers.

His comment was that there's a huge difference between being able to on the one hand dissassemble, clean and reassemble a repeater and on the other being able to adjust it and set it up so that it will function correctly without excessive wear etc.  Given the number of poorly set-up repeaters he'd seen, he was doubtful whether even the makers had the skilled staff required to get it 100% right everytime.  He reckoned that skilled, knowledgeable repeater experts were far less common than people who knew tourbillons.

Personally, I think that servicing complications is going to become a very expensive nightmare in the next decade, especially with exotic materials etc, and that some of these ultra-complications will turn out to be white elephant vault-queens that change hands for astronomical prices at auction but are never used and never serviced.

nick

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Well it certainly makes sense that there is a huge difference between
May 14 2008,05:09 AM

redoing a repeater and having it sing. I assume Vacherone, Patek, AP, and a couple others will always have fairly competent repair people. Hopefully they will spend the time to tune it nicely. I also assume, if one uses a classic movement that has been around over a hundred years and merely tweaked and perfected, a competent repair person could be found. It is the supper innovative ones that might pose a problem as the repairers learning curve will most likely be only on that one piece, or a very limited number. The other day I was trying to understand an article in French (I don't speak French) about repeaters. I happen to see a picture of a movement that had 4 hammers and 4 gongs. I thought to myself what a creation, who would be patient enough to fix that.

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