Curious No32 MkIII, answers on a post card please????

[gsimmons]

Military watch prices seem to be one of the few that have stayed up or steady in the past five or so years. Their seems to be more interest as well.

[PrinzEugen]

Yes if that's an issued Seiko (generation 2) watch then around £295 ish would be around right - the earlier Generation 1 ones go for £450+. Judging from that MoD sales website they're still being disposed of by the military. As gsimmons says, interest in issued watches has rocketed recently. G10 is most commonly used to refer to the bog-standard CWC or Pulsar watches with (I think) the 541-5317 nato stock number, rather than the higher spec chronos.

[Peter Laidler]

The term 'G10' is in fact a shortening of the full G-1098 which is the army form AFG-1098 which you have to sign for anything valuable and attractive (V&A in Army parlance). So you get a watch or binos or compass or whatever....., and book/sign it out on a 1098 form as opposed to another similar form called a 1033. Yep, that's it again, an AFG-1033.

The WWW on the back of the watch is WATCHES wristlet, waterproof. Although if you did have a waterproof one, you were lucky!

VERY suprised if the MoD were still disposing of the gen 1 watches that came from the primary makers. These were the Longines, Omega, Eterna, Record, Vertex, Jaeger le Coutre, Cyma and a few others if anyone wants to remind me although I have fixed them all. These were all WOCS. The next ones were Smiths mechanical, made in Wales, Hamiltons and then we started to get the fat CWC's with big battery then the small battery cover then the slimmer version with a cheaper movement and onwards and upwards as they say....... onto the one-way-trip pulsars that were plagued with winding shaft/stem problems. Eventually it became uneconomic to replace the battery! The day of the £20 garage watch had finally arrived!

There was always a school of thought that instead of supplying wrist watches, just treat them thesame as a leatherman or a pair of underpants. If you wanted a bloody watch - or a leatherman or a pair or bloody underpants just go and buy one! If you didn't want to buy a watch or have a decent jack-knife in your kit then you'd know that the highest rank that you were ever likely to achieve is mess orderly!

[PrinzEugen]

Ah yes Peter - well the old WWWs certainly aren't being disposed of still - although some handwinding CWCs and Hamiltons seem to turn up at this lot from time to time: MOD Sales, Military Vehicles & Used Ex MOD Land Rovers for Sale . A lot of people try to collect all 12 WWWs or the 'dirty dozen' as they're sometimes called. Some are more numerous than others - but if you find a Grana you're quids in as they're very rare. Mostly at the mod disposal people as well as the (sometimes known as) G10s, they also get the Seiko Gen 1 and 2s (Gen 1 etc is just something said by collectors as there are two versions - I've got a 1984 Gen 1 which has three push buttons and no date - Gen 2 has date and two push buttons) - but the prices they seem to go for there are silly and I think people forget about the 20 per cent VAT to be added!

[Simon]

Well I've had chance to strip the scope down and to my untrained eye the internals appear to be the same as those in any other MkIII scope.

I've also removed the soldered half rings from the Ocular end. They are made from Brass and have been perfectly shaped to fit around the Ocular bell, definitely not a home gunsmiths work so I'm wondering if it was for a Military purpose of some kind?

Cheers,

Simon.

[Roger Payne]

Thanks Simon. Most of the guts look to be standard Mk3 to me as well. (I've got two in bits in front of me as we 'speak'!). Any further thoughts Peter, Warren, anybody?

[Peter Laidler]

Mmmmmm. I wish maybe I'd pursued the one I was asked to overhaul now. However unless it's photo/camera distortion some parts look distinctly out of scale. Diaphragm springs and shoes are totally different to what we're used to unless I am looking at things differently. And yes, I understand the wide ocular end mounting thing now.......

But G-10 watches. Never heard of nor seen a GRANA. The Omegas occasionally came with different dials. Some had a very wide form of WD arrow and others didn't carry the name OMEGA but just 10033 which was the Army part/VAOS number from W-10/VB 10033. The VERTEX was the toughest in my opinion, certainly as far as the usual balance staffs went. Never saw a broken one or had to replace a broken one. Best was the Omega but the Longines was sought after (and VERY good inside). I always thought that the rare ones were the Jaeger le Coutre.

One of the watchmakers at the big workshops at Soest told me that the movement inside the RECORD (and I think he said the CYMA too....) was exactly the same as the movement from the similar German Army/Wermacht issue watches. Can you comment on the likelehood of this Gary?

[gsimmons]

Yes, it's possible. The movement in my WW2 Glycine is made by A. Schild. The Swiss ebauch companies made made and still make movements for most of the watchmakers. Omega, Longines, Smiths and LeCoultre made their own movements as well as using other manufactures like A.Schild.

[Peter Laidler]

Thanks for that Gary. It's absolutely amazing what you learn and are reminded of on this forum.

[Lee Enfield]

1 of only 2 No32 scopes in The Lee Enfield Forum Forum