Hi Richard, thanks for your comment.

My opinion of the lathe hasn’t changed. It does it’s job perfectly well. There is a wheel cutting attachment for it, although it was the one thing that I didn’t buy. Be be honest if you’re going to cut small wheels to a high precision, then you’d probably need a sturdier medium sized lathe. Although if you had the patience I’m sure you could cut a wheel accurately if you made each pass with just a minor adjustment to depth. I hope that helps!

Best regards
Richard

Hi James,

I ordered it through eBay. The user name of the guy was sincereclocks and he’s based in China. If you do an advanced search on ebay using just the username you should be able to find him.

I hope that helps.

Colin

Thanks Robert.

For the money, which for me was around $2,800 including postage, the lathe is really pretty good. I had to spend at least 2 full days stripping it down, cleaning it and adjusting it, and perhaps after a week of use I had become pretty familiar with its quirks enough for it to function for me as well as a Bergeon lathe. The lathe comes without instructions, although it’s fairly intuitive if you’ve used a similiar one before.

For me to get a Bergeon lathe with the same tools and add-ons would probably have cost $15-20,000.

You can probably get a decent 2nd hand lathe for less, but it’s a bit of a gamble unless you can inspect it in person and you know what you’re looking at. Buying a 2nd hand lathe on-line is generally very expensive, and so local auctions are a better bet. Better still would be to get to know a watchmaker who is retiring who would be happy to help out.

I ummed and arred about buying a lathe for a while, as it’s a hefty investment and to be honest not a great deal of use outside of the exams at the moment. But for me I asked myself whether I wanted to be a watch technician or a watch maker, and if you want to be a maker, then a lathe is a necessity. The value doesn’t depreciate massively either which is a bonus.

Let me know what you decide on.

I was quite pleased with how the piece turned out, although looking at some of the photos I’ve taken there are quite a few areas that I’m not as happy as I could be with. But thats the nature of a timed exam, and you have to know when to quit.

It does sound like you have taken on quite a lot this year. With practice the servicing exams are like second nature, and I am sure they are very straightforward for people already in the industry. Unfortunately not everyone, myself included, has that kind of experience behind them.

The theory and practical pieces are something that everyone struggles with I think, so if you manage to even scrape a pass in those you should really pat yourself on the back.

You will get some general feedback after the exams, and the BHI are always encouraging in showing that people often do considerably better the 2nd time around, and so even if you don’t do as well as you’d hoped then just take it as a good practice for next time

Anyway keep at it, it’s a long hard slog but with persistance you’ll get there in the end! Colin

I also just finished my exams. I made the mistake of doing too many exams. I wrote the theory exam, serviced the quartz and the mechanical watches and then built the first and second year practice pieces. It was too much with not enough practice. I cannot say if I will pass any save for the theory, in which I did ok. I would not recommend it to anyone unless they are well advanced and work in watch service already. Cheers!