Greetings from the west coast of Canada

[Ronin]

Good morning all,

 

Brand new to this site.  I'm a budding watch collector and just started getting into repairing them.  Been changing batteries for a few years but now I want to start fixing and restoring older watches.  

 

Quick question to start me off.  Does anyone know a good database of movement user/installation manuals?  The first watch movement I've disassembled is a 1969 Bulova 11BLCD and I've having trouble finding any manuals for it.  I've reached out to Bulova and they keep tell me to send the watch into them for repair, completely missing the point.

 

Looking forward to chatting with you all

[RichardHarris123]

Hello and welcome from Leeds, England.  Some manuals exist and some don't.  Not sure about yours. 

[AndyGSi]

Welcome to the forum.

It all depends what you want from the manual but a good place to start is Cousins here in the UK.

https://www.cousinsuk.com/document/category/bulova-movement-parts

[watchweasol]

A good place to look is Esslingers and Jules Borel, Cas-Ker  all have service sheets covering many movements.

 

The attached  files will give you some insight.  Tha above suppliers are all in America so closer to home

TZIllustratedGlossary.pdf TM 9-1575.pdf

[JohnR725]

1 hour ago, RichardHarris123 said:

Some manuals exist and some don't.

then in addition to some existing and some not existing the majority of them only partially exist if they exist at all. Many of the watch companies felt that wherever was servicing their watch was probably a professional watchmaker so basic guides explaining lubrication of every single caliber probably do not exist. So a lot of times the only cover unique features of the watch. Then when they were scanned from paper to PDF typically scanned by material houses solely for parts not for servicing.

then in addition to parts manuals websites covering parts are handy this one is nice. Yes there others I just like this one for most stuff.

http://cgi.julesborel.com/

then you go to the Bulova section and ultimately get here

http://cgi.julesborel.com/cgi-bin/matcgi2?ref=BUL_11BLCD

then just because it has a price listed doesn't mean it's available sometimes it will tell you if it's discontinued but don't assume because there's a price that they still have it in stock. What's nice is you click on the part names ever give your cross reference the everything cross references to handy when you're trying to find the part

then they fail part number you can go to the main site and do a search and see if they actually have it in stock or something like this I would probably go to eBay as there's all sorts of parts more than likely.

http://www.julesborel.com/

 

2 hours ago, Ronin said:

Bulova and they keep tell me to send the watch into them for repair

the problem with the watch companies are a lot of them are in name only. In other words they were purchased or combined with other companies and have moved and anything in the past is now gone. So Bulova is part of citizen and they've moved so I would be really surprised if they had anything at all plus I'm very surprised that they could even service the watch more than likely they would send it out. In addition to probably whoever's answer your request doesn't even know what it is anyway

for instance Bulova made a tuning fork watch called a Accutron. But now Accutron is just a brand or division of Bulova. If you wanted to send your tuning fork watch to them they have a very tiny list of preferred people across at least the US who would service the watch they will not service it themselves at least the prior generations. I've heard a rumor that are coming out with a new tuning fork watch so that probably have to service that.

then if you're looking for Bulova stuff this is an interesting site

https://mybulova.com/vintage-bulova-catalogs

 

[oldhippy]

Thank you for your introduction and welcome to this friendly forum.

We all look forward to your contributions and continued involvement. 

If there is anything we can help you with don’t be afraid to ask. Nice clear photos can help a lot.

[Nucejoe]

Hi there Robin, welcome to the forum.

[watchweasol]

Hi one I forgot is Merritt and they are in Canada .