Can you watchmakers please give us the lowdown on how to interpret the watchmakers marks inside our cases? I've opened them enough now that I'm very curious... Thanks!
ok, The chicken scratches that a watchmaker puts into your watch simpley tell who, when and what the watchmaker did to your watch. The first parts of the code is useually the watchmakers identifcation (Who) sometimes the middle of the code is what he did to repair the watch (What) and the last is the date of the repair (When).
Most of the time you will have a id and the date when it was repaired, but others like myself sometimes puts in what they did.
If I was to completely restore your watch and I replaced your mainspring , you would see a code in the back like this: ez1cm211
desifer: ez1= me the watchmaker / C= complete service / M= mainspring / 211 = date Feb, 2011
Others very, depending on place of education, cirt.# ,ect. But for the most part, you can tell as a novis the date it was last worked on by the last 3 to 4 digits.
almost all watchmakers do it a little differant, but it make sence to them for warranties
Hope this helps. Mike..
Most watchmakers back in the day would keep a log book for every repair (now we use computers)
but they could look up the repair if the watch came back in 7 months if there was a problem and they could tell in their log what they did to the watch and see any other note there was like poising errors, bad lug, dent in the case, ect.
Most watchmakers warranty their work for at least one year and if a customer came back 2 years later and said the watch was not working correctly, he could look back to see if it was covered in the proper time.
Mike.