Well what can I say about this one, its the crown jewel of my jump hour collection. Yes maybe others in my collection have a more interesting design but this one has a bit more pedigree.
This watch was designed by Francois De Baschmakoff. He was an artist and was the first designer to work for LIP a French watch company. He did away with the conventional hands to tell the time and replaced them with rotating discs which was innovation in its time of the early 1970s.
This watch was a gift from my wife for my 50th Birthday in August of 2022. A big birthday made all the more special as I was recovering from surgery for prostate cancer at the time.
My wife had conspired with some of my watch friends Andy Windle and Lode Roelofs who are fellow watch collectors that I have known throughout my watch collecting years. She said she wanted to buy me a watch but didn’t know what to get me. The guys talked and they both knew my interest in the unusual. Lode happened to have this LIP in his possession. He is known in our circles for finding the best watches in charity shops and outdoor markets. The deal was done, Andy bought a strap and the presentation box and my gift was ready.
My wonderful wife presented this to me on my birthday and I was amused and surprised. I never thought she would buy me another watch again. She actually bought me my first ever automatic watch, a Tissot many years ago which I absolutely love and treasure. What a great wife I have!
Upon examination of this watch on my birthday I could not help but notice one critical issue, the hour disc was not jumping into position on the hour. It was like its under powered or something out of alignment.
This meant that actually telling the time was really difficult as it would get stuck between two hours so you were not entirely sure what hour you were in!
In this photo below is it 12:25 or 1:25? as the hour disc is supposed to stay stationary until the hour change clearly I would have to remedy this issue.
I was really looking forward to sorting the problem out as I could not wear it as it was and given its my 50th present that would not do. I took to my Facebook group in the hope that someone had experience with these and could give me some guidance. In my head it was surely a simple problem and probably just need the discs aligned or something.
A member did reply to me saying he had the same problem on his and his watchmaker told him it was very complicated and involves spring adjustments. This worried me slightly so I went looking for parts in advance. The movement is an AS1902 and by sheer luck I was able to find on https://speedtimerkollektion.com/ under the Hoga brand which was basically the same watch, a set of springs and rotating discs.
I did some Googling and found a blog of a watchmaker who also had the same issue and shown a photo of a coiled spring inside the hour wheel. I really did not like the look of this spring! it could end up really messy quickly on this repair. I also knew this spring was not in my parts that I had ordered.
Here is the photo he put up.
Once my parts had arrived I was ready to go. With some trepidation I removed the watch from the case.
Here is a photo of the rather beautiful movement it contains.
That is quality for a jump hour believe you me!
Now sadly I do not have any photos of the work I did on the watch so I will just have to explain what I did.
The hour disk has teeth on the outside of the wheel which you can see in the photo above. The release lever holds the tension of the disc in place. The minute wheel as a protruding tooth that you can see between the 0 and 5. This tooth when passing the release lever releases the tension of the coiled centre spring and the hour wheel will jump into position and the lever will engage on the next tooth. How it works is as the hour disc is locked in place the hour wheel the disc sits on in the motion train still continues to move and in doing so applies tension onto that centre coil spring.
It took allot of trial and error to figure out how to adjust it but basically with the minute wheel off you can with the crown wind an hour on without the tension being released. If you do this and then move the lever manually to release the tension I found that a full 360 turn and release would fire the hour disc much more than the one hour it would jump to! So I had to just hand wind say 6 hours and release to see where that would jump to. Eventually you find the right tension setting and when you do just fit the minute wheel on so the tooth is in the right position. This was equally not quite straightforward as the tooth takes maybe 3-4 minute to actually travel past the tension release point. It ends up just being a massive trial and error, at least is was for me. There is probably some logic in it somewhere but for my tiny mind I could not see it.
Here is a video of the “Jump” in action.
I was really relieved to fix this issue and then kicked myself for spending money on parts unnecessarily. That’s the way is goes sometimes in this hobby though.
Now I can wear this watch with pride and also please my wife when she see’s me wearing it.
I will now finish this blog with some nice photos of this watch.
(addition- I have recently reviewed this watch on my second channel that you can watch here)
