WS 6: Repairing a Caliber PUW 910

A simple Quartz Dress Watch resurrected

This is the story of a simple quartz dress watch revival: Guy Laroche is the brand, the watch is Swiss made. My father-in-law has been wearing this watch for a very long time, he is not really a watch fanatic, just wears them. I thought, this is going to be easy, just pop in a new battery, close the back and change the strap and there it will go again... well, it should turn out completely different.

PUW stands for Pforzheimer Uhrenwerke (Pforzheim Movements). Pforzheim is one of the cities in Germany, where watchmaking has a strong and long tradition. PUW made a lot of quartz movements in the 70ies and 80ies and was very popular. At least I have seen many watches using this movement and the fact that most watch parts shop in Bangkok still carry spare coils, circuits or whole spare movements speaks for this too. Also very interesting, the color of the circuit board lets you see where the board has been manufactured. Black and green boards from Asia, the typical light blue boards from Switzerland.Today PUW is owned by Swatch Group if the information I got from my watchparts shop is correct.

This was a "solo flight" by the way, I was working without my tutor Rob B. since I thought this is going to be so easy, well, read and see

Reto Castellazzi, Hua Hin, December 2nd, 2004

Click here to start the walk or click on any thumbnail >>>

The Patient	The Movement	Ouch...first Problem	Circuit removed	Coil and Circuit removed
A replacement Coil	Corroded Coil Contacts	A replacement Circuit	The Underside	Stripped Movement
Rotor Close-up	A replacement Movement	The Backside	The Dial Side	Replacement Movement installed! Finished! - Not yet...
Cannon Pinion Close-up	The new and old Cannon Pinion	New Movement and old Cannon Pinion	Finally, the Back is on again	The restored Beauty
Happy End - Ticking happily ever after ...