Service: Zenith El Primero Power Reserve 03.0240.4021 / calibre 4021

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We’ve done quite a few El Primeros here at the workshop, but never the calibre 4021. The 4021 is a modification of the calibre 400.
Instead of the hour recorder and date, the 4021 has a pretty nifty power reserve indication. On top of that, the movement is skeletonised around the balance and escapement, so that these components are visible through an opening in the dial.

The dial looks a bit Breguet-like, and there is of course no hour recorder as on the calibre 400.

This watch was sent in from Lithuania, just to make the whole thing a bit more interesting 😉 Continue reading →

Mitka’s vintage watch shop

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Dear reader of our Watchguy blog.

I enjoy acquiring and fixing watches that I find interesting. However it is an expensive hobby and the time I spend on my own watches takes time away from client watches. Therefore I have decided to showcase my collection to anybody who is interested. All watches I list on this page have either been inspected or serviced by myself personally. This is my own little project and Christian has very kindly allowed me to have a link to my site. He is not responsible for any of the watches I sell.

Continue reading →

Why we don’t polish watch cases

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Firstly, happy New Year from us at Watchguy.co.uk! We hope that you had a good party, and that you have recovered well 😉

We get a lot of requests for case polishing, and we know that most manufacturers and watchmakers polish the cases of the watches they service. We believe that that’s a very bad idea indeed…

If you polish a watch case, you have to sand the case down to the deepest scratch first. This can easily be 1/10mm or more… Once that is done, you polish the case, and remove more material. Continue reading →

We’ve changed our booking system

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Dear Readers and Customers,

We used to operate a booking system that made our customers go to a booking page at a certain date and time, to try their luck to grab one of the slots we were giving out. As fair as the system was, it did lead to frustration on the side of our customers, and to watches ending up in our workshop that we usually wouldn’t have accepted.

To make the whole process a bit less onerous, we now have a booking page that is always accessible (https://watchguy.co.uk/cgi-bin/book), so there is no more waiting. Once you have submitted your request, we will answer within 2 working days with a positive or negative response. This decision will be based on our judgement, e.g. can we carry out the repair (if parts aren’t available, we can’t), do we want to carry out the work (we both have children to feed), and do we have enough capacity at the workshop.

Please don’t be offended if we refuse to take on a watch, as we do get quite a lot more requests than we can handle in the workshop.

Let’s see how the new system pans out, and what feedback we get. We can always go back to the old system if this leads to more frustration.

New kid on the block: openmovement

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We are all familiar with various movement manufacturers, and how the watch industry is split into companies that use in-house movements, and those that use “off-the-peg” movements.

The in-house area isn’t that well defined, as lots of manufacturers claim to have their own calibres, but use standard movements (usually ETA), that they claim to have modified. These modifications range from nothing at all to having each component reworked by Swiss virgins during full moon (that is a slight exaggeration, but some of the claims are fairly hard to believe). For the watch buyer, this is a cloak-and-dagger operation, made to confuse buyers and to make them believe that they are buying a watch with a true in-house movement. It’s all about the movement value to watch price relation, and the cloak-and-dagger boys flog their watches for 20 to 30 times movement value without blinking. You know who I’m talking about … Continue reading →