u/kevinspoonie

Coworker found out I work on watches and tossed me this Baume & Mercier MVO 45216 in the morning and asked if id take a stab at.

By lunch time it was 15min fast (4 hours elapsed).

Got it home and tossed it on the timegrapher and it couldn't even pick up a decent reading.

Discovering it was a 7750 movement I got pretty excited. Ive worked on Seiko Chronos and a ST19 but always wanted to dive into the ever famous 7750.

1st headache: B&M tries to be cool and requires a special die, kinda like a Rolex casebqck but slightly larger to open the caseback. Rubber ball wouldn't work and rubber/silicone dies would work either. Let's go ebay!

Once those arrived and finally got a good look at the movement, it appeared that the balance spring was slightly lopsided and some coils were touching.

Ordered a new balance complete as I didnt want to eat up alot of time on my coworkers watch. I woukd had to spend time trying to bend it back into shspe to just mess it up and ha e to wait on a new one to arrive.

2nd Headache: Apparently its damn near guaranteed that the tube on the chrono hand will separate from the hand since it's so damn tight on the post. At least that's what happened to me. Once again, didn't want to waste time so I bought a new hand. Ill practice staking it back together since I'm now done with this watch.

I ran into a couple minor "speed bumps" but once I "figured it out", i was good to go and it all came together quite nice.

That little Oscillating Pinion was a pain in the ass to get sitting upright!

I was so relieved once I got everything back together and saw my readings on the timegrapher. After assembling and oiling, I'll let it run for about 24hours before checking and it looked good. After all the chrono partsvwere put back on with the dial and hands included, checked it again and... phew.

Success!

I then decided to polish up the bracelet and case a bit because it was beat to hell.

3rd Headache: these B&M bracelets endlinks were a damn nightmare to get back onto the case. I dicked around with this for close to an hour until I finally got once side installed.

Screw B&M with their proprietary casebacks and bracelet endlinks... so frustrating.

Learned alot, had fun, got frustrating at times but now i have and extra 7750 to play with (donor movement i didnt end up needing) and maybe use it to build someone at work a watch. I got a watch running like shit back into shape by swapping out a few parts and got to sink my teeth into a 7750 finally.

I restore and fix watches as a serious hobby.

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With that being said, a coworker brought this to me to "research."

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Said it belonged to his father in-law.

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Only thing im pulling up is that it appears to be a reference W645484 from the 1960s. Thats it. No info on what type of movement it could be. There also isnt much to dig into in terms of a serial number database online.

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Besides being a little dirty, it looks to be in pretty decent shape, all functions work and its keeping time. Winding the stem is a pain possibly from gunked up oil from the 60s.

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I thought i was buying a "few" and got shipped about 20 of each.

Finally got to use one today on an old Elgin. Was quite happy I remembered i had these and they hsppen to have fit.

These will probably last me the rest of my life.

Willing to send a few to a good home for free.

My lame "novice" trees are pics 13 (Kingsville Boxwood) & 14 (Trident Maple).

My major contribution to the show this year (besides my 2 trees) is that I upgraded our clubs lighting setup for the shows.

Instead of LED tubes that are like fluorescent lamps with LED strips in them going the entire length of the tables and being a real pain in the ass to set up, I researched and came up with an idea to use track lighting with individual spot lights that can zoom. Seeing the set up at Kokufu in Japan this year, it kinda pushed me to bring it to the board of our clubs attention and tell them I think we can kinda mimic it.

I think it turned out great as we could highlight specific things, especially the kusamonos by giving them their own very tight spot light or leave it wide to cover an entire tree.

Its the first year and event using this lighting system and I am trying to think of a way to push lights out further from the curtains to aim the light toward the front of the trees versus being directly above. Had to use ALOT of light heads for the larger trees and shohin displays to help eliminate the shadows of their shelves or of some trees being so big that we could only light up the top or bottom half with one head. Smaller trees and kusamon/accents came out looking amazing.

My trees are kinda dim in the photos because we ran out of table space that had the lighting and we had to set up extra tables near the windows because we had so many exhibitors this year. Not a bad problem to have. Great trees took up the prime real-estate and mine (rightfully so) weren't up to the caliber that deserved great lighting....maybe next year haha

Im only going into so much detail about the lights because I was pretty nervous about how it would turn out being damn near directly over the trees but as soon as we lit up our first table, I was so happy and had a huge sigh of relief.

And about our tribute: David has been in the club for a long time and was my first "bonsai friend". I met him at my first workshop and was so welcoming and so nice. Immediately hung out with me to share his thoughts on my first tree and then helped me executethe plan. I would trade him some of my fancy moss for a piece of his lime sulfur stash. I would come over every now and then to help him repot or move some of his larger trees as they were getting to be a little heavy for him to do it solo as he was getting older. Everyone loved him and he was just an all around awesome dude.

He decided to retire and sold his law firm. He then took his first retirement vacation with his wife and about 3 months later he was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.

We've helped him sell most of his collection to some some responsibile, educated club members and his better, show quality trees me and other club board members take turns going over to help take care of them and to also help out David's wife with house duties. They decided that when he passes, she will keep these trees and we will continue to help her care for them.

I wanted to do something nice so I brought up the idea to show a couple of his trees on his owm and put together the write-up along with the pictures to his wife so Dave can hopefully see it and to also give his wife something to have that shows how highly we think if him and how loved a respected he is when hes gone. She can look back and know her husband had a huge impact in our small community.

Sorry for the the long post, just wanted to find a place I think might appreciate our trees and to also let everyone know that an AMAZING fucking guy named David had an impact on my life and that he should be honored for being the great guy he is.

Tell the ones you care about that you love and appreciate them.