Greetings From Sunny Sc!

[bullet308]

(sunny it is, even in February, though its a bit chilly this AM, just under 0 centigrade...)

Hi, I am Tom, and I live in South Carolina, USA, and after years of dabbling about with watches, the bug has finally bit in earnest.

By background, I have been many things...I worked in the printing industry to start with, then went back and got degrees in business education, then I taught US History at the high school level for a few years, and have worked mostly as an IT person since then. Now, I run my own little IT consulting business and do work mostly for private non-profit organizations here in the state capitol, Columbia. 

Interspersed with all of that, I also worked as a licensed gunsmith specializing in centerfire long range target rifles and was a competitive shooter, and became a pretty fair machinist, doing a lot of custom barrel and chambering work. I will probably be cranking that operation back up fairly soon...

The watch thing started with two watches I inherited from my uncle via my father...the first was his Bulova A-11 that was issued to him back in World War 2, when he flew B-17s out of England. I got this one perhaps 25 years ago and had it professionally serviced at the time. I will probably go into it for another service sometimes soon when I get better at this stuff.

Then, just this year, from my fathers estate I received my uncles 1940s vintage Longens, a simply beautiful old watch. I also have my father's Bulova Accutron Railroad Approved (he was a railroad man for 36 years) that is due for a major overhaul...alas, his Hamilton 992B was stolen by a disreputable coworker on the job, which lead to his buying the Accutron in the early '70s...

So, now I want to learn to work on these things, and being fairly methodical about this sort of operation, decided to standardise on just a few movements at first, ones that I can get plenty of cheap parts and donors to go with. Owning and liking several of the Vostok Amphibias and Kommanderskes, and spying that I can get a seemingly limitless supply of parts and scrap movements out of Russia and the Ukraine on eBay, I bought up a basic set of tools, some fifty 2409, 2416, 2209 and 2214 movements out of Kiev for about $1.50 each, and started buying up Vostok watches in various states of disrepair to match.

I am not much of a watchmaker at this point, but I am having fun! 

Thanks;

-Tom


 

[bobm12]

Welcome aboard Tom! That was a great introduction. I'm looking forward to hear about your watchmaking adventures in the future!

 

Cheers,

 

Bob

 

PS. That's a beautiful Longines!

[oldhippy]

Hello Tom, plenty of tips and help here for you. I like the Longines I used to service many of them because the shop I worked in was a Longines agent, but I went into the Antique clock repairs and restoration.

[clockboy]

Welcome Tom, Very nice watch collection. I suggest before servicing any of your collection practice on many low grade watches first.

Enjoy the forum.

[bullet308]

Thanks for the warm welcome! Oh, yes, I suspect a few Vostocks will give up their lives in my pursuit of knowledge! To date, I have dismantled several of the 2209s, carefully putting parts in their own little containers and made note of things to do (and not do) in the future. The learning curve is decidedly non-trivial here! At some point I will post pics of my tools and open myself up to critique and suggestions. Which part of the forum would be best suited to that? 

Thanks again!

 

>>>BULLET>>>

[bobm12]

 

 At some point I will post pics of my tools and open myself up to critique and suggestions. Which part of the forum would be best suited to that? 

 

Hi Tom,

 

It depends on what you want to post. If it is about tools, we have a tools section and if it is a walkthrough we have a walkthrough section. Other stuff goes according to what you want, there is the help part, and among others, this section where you can probably do everything barely related to watches... I know you'll figure it out and we keep sections to a minimum to keep guessing to a minimum (unlike other forums). If the topic doesn't match the section, we'll move it for you to the appropriate place to ensure cohesion and maximum exposure. The important thing is you are here and all contributions are welcome!

 

Cheers,

 

Bob

[dadistic]

Greetings!

 

Love the Longines.

[Geo]

A warm welcome from me 7.62 ;), and what a cracking introduction. We have a but in common Tom, I used to build and shoot competition revolvers and then full bore rifle when pistols were banned at this side of the pond.

There are a lot of good friendly and skilled people on this forum that you can call upon if you require assistance.

[clockwatcher]

Dammit Geo, you beat me to the 7.62 jest!

 

Hi Tom and hello from the Garden of England! 

 

Your intro was very interesting and enlightening - it's always good to get an insight into a fellow WRT member and his or her appreciations. I recently obtained a Komandirskie that has become a daily wearer but I'm still waiting on a Longines. Geo's already alluded to your gunsmithing and your handle so I'll just say for the moment that I've just become a member of a local Rifle Club. I know many Brits envy the freedoms in the US regarding handguns, me included. Over here we're pretty much restricted to black powder revolvers, or pistols with long barrels a la Buntline Special. We just can't be trusted with anything else! :(

 

Keep the posts coming!

John 

[WillFly]

Welcome Tom - great introduction. And a nice Longines. I used to shoot when I was in the school cadet corps - a long, long time ago - .22 rifles in our indoor range and .303 rifles when out at camp with the regulars. I even got to Bisley - the UK's no. 1 shooting range - and fired Bren guns. For those who don't know/remember the Bren gun, it was Britain's premier, tripod-mounted machine gun in WW2. Fantastically accurate and great to shoot - but a bummer to carry at the "trail" on a 20-mile route march!

 

I confine myself to a .177 gas pistol these days...

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[bobm12]

Or you can shoot .177 rimfire ammo, the new, flatter version of the .22 rimfire! Doesn't kick and goes really flat and fast...and farther away than the airgun!  Not to be used against watches when frustrated!  :)

[Vich]

Hello Tom and welcome from me,

 

I am quite fond of the Bulovas myself as well and as you can tell from the responses, with your background and knowledge I am sure you will have some interesting posts for us to read, especially if you have a "but" in common with George ;) . (bet he changes that now)

 

I don't own and have never worked on a Russian Watch and looked at them including the Vostok out of interest then I saw a tired old worn and battered "Podeba" watch with a simple face and a sub dial, I was drawn to it as it reminded me of me but I resisted as I have an ever increasing list of "projects" already and I know nothing about the quality etc..  However, I then went back and put a low offer in so it is in the lap of the Gods now - always liked sub dials.  It would not be the first time I have bought an old watch out of curiosity alone even if it turns out to be a bad idea.  If my missus makes any comments I will of course blame you Tom.

 

I am now off to find out what a Podeba is  - perhaps I should have done that before putting in the offer - hey ho.

 

Cheers,

 

Vic

[bullet308]

Again, thanks for the warm welcome!  

Yeah, I have been >>>BULLET>>> or some permutation thereof since I first logged onto a BBS back in 1993...had to call myself something, looked around, my computer was in the reloading room, and sooo I became >>>BULLET>>> (plus some memorable numbers when I need them, most commonly "308")

I started out shooting metallic silhouette pistol and rifle back in the '80s, then moved on to NRA Service Rifle, where you shoot tuned-versions of the M1, M14 and (nowadays, mostly) M16 rifles. Was on the SC State team for three years and went to Camp Perry for the national championships three times, where I was, in 1992, the TOP shooter on the third worst Service Rifle team in America. :-) In one match, I came in 285th out of 1600 competitors, which means I was thoroughly okay as a shooter, in the thick of the other okay shooters from around the nation. Drop one point or pick up an extra X, and you could move twenty places up or down in a heartbeat. I think eight more points and three Xs would have put me in the President's 100, but there were 185 people between me and that honor, soo...

Along the way, I apprenticed to the gunsmith that built up the State Team's and our National Guard teams rifles and helped him build them in preparation for going to Perry...so, I got pretty good at building National Match Garands and '14s up out of parts, doing all the arcane tricks and tweaks you have to do to get them to shoot well...lots of fun. I also worked going general repair and cleaning work in a couple of gun shops around town...ah, evidence of a misspent youth...

Attached is a photo I recently found of the two rifles I took with me to Camp Perry in '91-'93...I helped to build both of them, the top one is my personal rifle, built up out of rejected parts from the Marine Corps Team's armorer shop at Quantico on a Springfield Armory Inc. receiver...the lower one is my team-issued TRW M14NM, US government property...hated to have to give that one back, but apparently, it was needed more in Afghanistan rebuilt into a designated marksman's rifle than in my safe gathering dust...(that was the rumor when DoD ordered them all taken back up in the early 2000s, in any case)...

Nowadays, I mostly just tinker with my own stuff, AR-15s or whatever...but once I get the lathe wired back up and running, I may hang out a shingle as a gunsmith once again...

Oh, and one of my prouder possessions: a BSA Model 12 target rifle, about 1948-vintage, complete with Parker-Hale 7A rear sight...an ex-UK club gun, from what understand...shoots very well indeed...

I am quite familiar with the BREN, and wish I were more familiar than I am...there are quite a few transferable .303 BRENs in the US, but they still go for tens of thousands of dollars each, and there is precisely one transferable L4 in 7.62 NATO on the NFA registry...Lord only knows what that thing is worth...

All the Vostok stuff I had been ordering over the last month has been trickling in, first the Ukrainian stuff, and now the Russian orders are starting showing up...I now have 4 Komandirskies and three Amphibias on-hand...unfortunately, all of the Amphibias that have arrived so far are going to need to be overhauled before they can be put into service...cool! I mean, bummer... :-) 


And now, I am off to install a video camera and capture card and associated software and cabling for a client...they will be doing a two-week training starting tomorrow and that stuff has to be up and running, um, very soon... 

And again, thanks.

-Tom

aka
>>>BULLET>>>