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Hi all I'm Bill from Mandurah, Western Australia. I stumbled into this forum while looking for information on how to dismantle and rebuild a LONGINES La Grande watch (ladies variety). What luck! This is a great site, with such a friendly bunch of members, all willing to share their knowledge of this fascinating hobby. I've always been interested in fixing things - cars, boats, houses etc. plus I've always liked watches and clocks. So, whilst I'm a rank novice I'm very keen to learn. At the moment I'm getting together a few tools and plan to work on quartz watches while I learn the basics, then hopefully progress to mechanical watches in the future. Cheers for now

That'll be an AS1700 then, a very competent movement that came with 17 jewels all the way up to 41 jewels and possibly beyond. As I understand it AS's calibre numbering convention ends in 1 if it has a calendar. So 1700 is the base calibre without date, 1701 is a 1700 that has had a date wheel added. I have no idea where I picked that gem up from or even if it is correct so if anyone else knows different then I would be happy to stand corrected. The silly number jewelling that some of these movements enjoy is largely a marketing gimmick. I have an AS 1701 41 jewel variant in a Le Cheminant Master Mariner from the late 50's/early 60's. I serviced it when I first got it and of course wanted to know where all of the extra jewelling went. To my great amusement and indeed horror, 18 of them (I think it was 18) were inset into two of the auto wind intermediate wheels and served absolutely no function at all. What I have is a (very good) 23 jewel movement with a rockery on board!! I have some pics somewhere; if I can find them I will post.