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Välkommen till ett uppdaterat Klocksnack.se
Efter ett digert arbete är nu den största uppdateringen av Klocksnack.se någonsin klar att se dagens ljus.
Forumet kommer nu bli ännu snabbare, mer lättanvänt och framför allt fyllt med nya funktioner.
Vi har skapat en tråd på diskussionsdelen för feedback och tekniska frågeställningar.
Tack för att ni är med och skapar Skandinaviens bästa klockforum!
Hallå,
Ropade hem två klockor som låg på samma utrop. "20/30 tal?" trodde auktionsfirman (Björnssons i Lund).
Klockorna tickar på bra och tisdshållningen förvånansvärt bra. Tuffa länkar.
Den ena är en Zenith. Sen vet jag inte så mycket mer än att de är rätt snygga och koola. Kan någon hjälpa mig med identifiering? Urverk? Ålder? etc etc?
En ledtråd är ju materialet, Staybrite. Introducerades tydligen 1920 men slog inte igenom hos Schweitzarna förränns på trettiotalet.
Bra tung artickel om framtagandet och införandet av rostfritt stål; http://www.vintagewatchstraps.com/stainlesssteel.php
Stainless steel, acier inoxydable in French, initially called "rustless steel" in English, was invented accidentally by Harry Brearley in 1913 when he was trying to improve the alloy steel used for gun barrels.
Brearley was head of the joint Brown Firth Research Laboratories in Sheffield, set up by John Brown and Company and Thomas Firth & Sons. In 1912 Brearley had been asked to look into the failure due to internal erosion of rifle barrels manufactured by the Royal Small Arms factory in Enfield, near London. Brearley thought that steel with an increased proportion of chromium above the five percent then in use might solve the problem and ordered in October 1912 two crucible melts of steels having 10 percent to 15 percent chromium. Both melts proved too high in carbon, but Brearley persisted with more melts, and a successful cast, No. 1008, with 0.24 percent carbon and 12.86 percent chromium was made on August 20, 1913. Samples were sent to Enfield for testing as rifle barrels but didn't show the desired improvement. However, while testing the material in the laboratory, Brearley noticed that it resisted acid etching for microscopic examination of its crystal structure, and he was surprised to notice that samples left in the laboratory atmosphere didn't rust.
Brearley realized that this new material was ideal for cutlery, particularly knives, which at the time had carbon steel blades that rusted very easily, and he persuaded a friend, Ernest Stuart of R. F. Mosley & Co., to try it out. Stuart reported that knife blades made from the material had proved to be rustless (Stuart commented that stainless steel would be a more marketable name than rustless steel), but that the steel was so hard to forge it ruined his tools! Brearley's low-carbon alloy of iron and chromium was Martensitic stainless steel, meaning it had a very hard form of steel crystalline structure in the hardened condition, but was amenable to annealing by heat treatment to make it workable. Eventually, with Brearley's advice on forging techniques and heat treatment, satisfactory methods of working the material were developed. Martensitic stainless steels are ferromagnetic and not as resistant to corrosion as later austenitic stainless steels, so they are not often used now unless very hard wearing is required. Firths didn't make the most of Brearley's discovery and it wasn't patented in the UK, so many firms started making their own versions of stainless steel.
Brearley was succeeded at Firths by Dr. W. H. Hatfield who developed an Austenitic stainless steel by adding nickel as well as chromium to steel, arriving at a stainless steel containing 18% chromium and 8% nickel (often called "18-8 stainless steel"). Austenitic stainless steels are very tough and ductile, non-magnetic, and cannot be hardened by heat treatment, but they can be hardened by cold working. From 1924 this new alloy was marketed by Thomas Firth & Sons under the name "Staybrite" and went on to be widely used in making cutlery, kitchen equipment and kitchen utensils. John Brown and Company and Thomas Firth & Sons merged in 1930 becoming Firth Brown Steels.
In the early 1930s, Geneva jewellery, watch bracelet and watch case manufacturers were searching for a cheaper material to use instead of the precious metals they were used to because the Great Depression, the worldwide 10 year financial slump which followed the 1929 Wall Street crash, reduced demand for expensive items, so they needed to cut costs and reduce prices. Cedric Jagger noted that "the biggest melting-down of precious metal watch cases of all time took place in the great ... Depression of the 1930s". This melting down of watch cases for their precious metal naturally also meant that the demand for new watches in precious metal cases was reduced. Gold and silver cases were used for 51.8% of Swiss watches exported in 1920, falling to 29.1% in 1930 and only 5% in 1935. It is also notable that watches shrank to their smallest sizes in the 1930s, from a relatively common size for a man's watch of around 33 to 35mm diameter during WW1 down to as small as 28mm in the 1930s. Part of the reason for this seems to have been that watchmakers competed to make smaller and smaller watches to show off their technical prowess, but as ladies wristwatches had been available in this size for many years there must have been another cause which started this trend. A natural desire not to flaunt ones wealth during a period of such austerity, and therefore for a small and discrete wristwatch, was probably the origin of this fashion.
Stainless steel was an obvious material to use, but because it was much harder than the silver and gold they were used to, they found it was difficult or impossible to shape, machine and polish with their hand tools and traditional, time honoured, techniques, and required changes in the way the watch cases were made. Silver and gold watch cases were traditionally made by forming, with simple hand tools, bar and sheet material into individual parts of the case, which were then soldered together and polished so that the joints between the component parts were invisible. This method of making watch cases developed before powered machinery was invented, but it was continued; partly out of tradition, but also because it was an economical way of handling the costly raw materials used; silver, gold and platinum. Even when powered machinery became available and it would have been possible to machine a watch case from the solid, the sheer availability and cost of blocks of silver and gold, together with the requirement to gather and reprocess large amounts of precious swarf, made this method of production economically impossible and so the old methods continued.
But the advent of stainless steel changed everything: it was not practicable to make steel cases in the traditional way, the material was much harder than gold or silver, too hard to form by hand into the individual pieces required by the old methods. And making the many welded or soldered joints required by the traditional methods was difficult in steel. Neither was it necessary economically. As a raw material, steel was cheap; so cheap that its cost could, to all intents and purposes, be ignored in watch case making. It was economic to machine away large amounts of material during the manufacturing process. But this couldn't be done on an old hand turned bow-lathe, it required powerful machines.
In an article in the Journal de Genève on 4 April 1934, Philip Werner, professor at the School of Watchmaking in Geneva, reported progress that had been been made in working with the new material. After explaining the difficulties of machining and forming stainless steel, which "at the beginning made them despair", and the processes developed to overcome these difficulties, M. Werner presented the audience with various objects from the watch bracelet makers Gay Frères, the jewellery factory of A. and E. Wenger, and the watch case factory of Taubert & Fils. Taubert & Fils had been working with stainless steel from the late 1920s and were evidently selected to demonstrate that they had the techniques and processes necessary for making watch cases out of stainless steel to the rest of the watch case industry in Geneva. The Tauberts had evidently invested heavily in modern machinery for their factory on the Rue des Pêcheries to be able to make case this way, giving them a technical lead over many other Geneva watch case makers. A Taubert advert in 1943 noted that the serial production of stainless steel watch cases was made possible by the move of the old Borgel factory to the current "spacious, light and powerfully equipped" (emphasis added) factory in Plainpalais.
Staybrite steel had been introduced to the Swiss watch industry in the 1920s by Firth Steel Sales AG, founded in 1919 in Switzerland as a subsidiary of Firth Brown, but until the 1929 crash had received little interest from Swiss watchmakers. A combination of financial pressures due to the crash and advertising by the makers of stainless steel promoting it as a new "wonder material" suitable for the "modern age" resulted in an interest to use it for watch cases. The take up of stainless steel must have been quite rapid and extensive because by 1934 Firths were taking out advertisements in the Swiss watchmaking press, such as the one reproduced here from 1934, reminding watch makers, and watch case makers in particular, that Staybrite was only made by Thomas Firth John Brown Ltd. of Sheffield and was protected by Swiss patent No. 138 647, and that the name "Staybrite" could only be used on items actually made from Staybrite steel, and only with authorisation from Firths..
In his presentation M. Werner mentioned that the steel was an alloy containing 12% nickel and 12% chromium and "whose colour is particularly beautiful." Staybrite steel with 12% chrome and 12% nickel was called Deep-Drawing Quality (DDQ) because it had better cold workability than 18/8 stainless steel. In engineering terms, "drawing" is a forming process in which the metal is drawn over a former, or pressed into a die (mould) by a punch. "Deep drawing" refers to a drawing process where the depth of the drawn component exceeds the thickness of the material. The original 18/8 stainless steel was not sufficiently ductile to allow deep drawing, so the DDQ alloy with less chromium and more nickel was developed. This YouTube video Rolex 904L Steel shows watch cases being made by punching and drawing - the link will open in a new tab.
Staybrite DDQ was less corrosion resistant compared to 18/8 stainless steel due to the lower chromium content, but 18/8 stainless steel couldn't be formed into watch cases by drawing so Staybrite DDQ was widely used for Swiss watches until the 1960s and 1970s when new stainless steel alloys, still closely based on the original composition of Staybrite DDQ, were developed. Today the brand name Staybrite belongs to F.W.Hempel &Co. and is registered and protected in numerous countries.
Two important Geneva watch makers who placed early orders for stainless steel watch cases with the Tauberts because of their expertise in working with the new hard material, which their existing case makers couldn't work with, and who were consequently also early adopters of the Taubert waterproof decagonal back case with cork stem seal, were Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin.
Grymt fina! Börjar själv att bli allt mer intresserad av klockor pre 1950-tal.
Skulle säga att det snarare är 1930-tal än 1920-tal med tanke på fonten på sifferindex och att det är stål och inte silver.
Stilen på Zenith-tavlan är fortfarande i art deco stil så den kanske är från tidigare 1930-tal medan den andra är lite senare 1930-tal.
Grymt fina! Börjar själv att bli allt mer intresserad av klockor pre 1950-tal.
Skulle säga att det snarare är 1930-tal än 1920-tal med tanke på fonten på sifferindex och att det är stål och inte silver.
Stilen på Zenith-tavlan är fortfarande i art deco stil så den kanske är från tidigare 1930-tal medan den andra är lite senare 1930-tal.
Tyvärr fanns det inte så mycket matnyttigt i Zenith-bibeln som jag trodde. Jag har så många böcker att jag ibland blandar ihop dem. Jag bifogar dock en (usel) bild på den lista som fanns i boken:
Frågan är om inte denna från nätet är att föredra:
Härligt Mr. Rossy, några av närbilderna på Zenittavlan är rena konstverken. Ta en förstoring o rama in och du har en bild med klass ! Jag tänker på bild 5,6 och 7 : så fina!
Tyvärr fanns det inte så mycket matnyttigt i Zenith-bibeln som jag trodde. Jag har så många böcker att jag ibland blandar ihop dem. Jag bifogar dock en (usel) bild på den lista som fanns i boken:
Frågan är om inte denna från nätet är att föredra:
Tack! Men jag får ingen rätsida på serienumret och dateringen. Min har ju 8220756 vilket är en siffra mer än 800000-serien (år 1907) som annars pekar på produktion efter 1975?
Tack! Men jag får ingen rätsida på serienumret och dateringen. Min har ju 8220756 vilket är en siffra mer än 800000-serien (år 1907) som annars pekar på produktion efter 1975?
Dem där serienumren är för urverk inte boetter. Tror det kan hittas under balansen.
Edit: för övrigt en väldigt fin zenith, skulle gissa på 30-tal.
Edit 2: Sorry, ser att ni redan listat ut det. 38-39
Dem där serienumren är för urverk inte boetter. Tror det kan hittas under balansen.
Edit: för övrigt en väldigt fin zenith, skulle gissa på 30-tal.
Edit 2: Sorry, ser att ni redan listat ut det. 38-39
Nej, vi har väl inte listat ut det än?
Men jag insåg att det måste gälla verket och då blir det ju precis första numren för 1939. Intressant. Byggd strax innan andra världskrigets utbrott alltså! Året min far föddes dessutom!
Gratulerar med dessa två !
Året min far föddes dessutom! 
