Couple of Qs about a new (10 year old) Bulova Precisionist Wilton

NoelC · Apr 12, 2024

Hi! I'm new here...

I picked up an older (B4 == 2014 I believe) Bulova Precisionist "Wilton" Chronograph model. I got it for a decent price on eBay.

It seems to be running just a hair faster than the touted Precisionist accuracy. Specifically, I've seen an advance of +1 second in 8 days, which more or less means about +45 seconds per year. Yes, I know that's not really long enough to see if it will wander around and maintain +/- 10 seconds a year. In this 8 days I wore it during waking hours for about half the time, and kept it in a watch box the rest.

Frankly, I'm not upset at all with this level of performance, and fast is better than slow, but I'm just wondering... When these 262khz crystals age do they tend to run a little slower or faster? Is there an observed trend? I have no idea whether this watch was running for all or part of those 10 years - I suspect not, since it was essentially new with stickers still on it and not a scratch to be found. I'm thinking it got put in a box and left alone as an investment. All in all I'm happy to have it and wear it. It's absolutely beautiful, and I do like the 1/16th second advance of the sweep seconds hand when not in chronograph mode..

Also - a hair off topic for this forum - but does anyone here know if the face crystal can be changed to a sapphire one for these big (47mm) models? I don't have a clue about the availability of such things, but I am imagining one day I'll scratch this one. Most all of my other watches have sapphire.

Thanks in advance for your time and knowledge.

-Noel

Mandaue · Apr 12, 2024

NoelC said:
Hi! I'm new here...

I picked up an older (B4 == 2014 I believe) Bulova Precisionist "Wilton" Chronograph model. I got it for a decent price on eBay.

It seems to be running just a hair faster than the touted Precisionist accuracy. Specifically, I've seen an advance of +1 second in 8 days, which more or less means about +45 seconds per year. Yes, I know that's not really long enough to see if it will wander around and maintain +/- 10 seconds a year. In this 8 days I wore it during waking hours for about half the time, and kept it in a watch box the rest.

Frankly, I'm not upset at all with this level of performance, and fast is better than slow, but I'm just wondering... When these 262khz crystals age do they tend to run a little slower or faster? Is there an observed trend? I have no idea whether this watch was running for all or part of those 10 years - I suspect not, since it was essentially new with stickers still on it and not a scratch to be found. I'm thinking it got put in a box and left alone as an investment. All in all I'm happy to have it and wear it. It's absolutely beautiful, and I do like the 1/16th second advance of the sweep seconds hand when not in chronograph mode..

Also - a hair off topic for this forum - but does anyone here know if the face crystal can be changed to a sapphire one for these big (47mm) models? I don't have a clue about the availability of such things, but I am imagining one day I'll scratch this one. Most all of my other watches have sapphire.

Thanks in advance for your time and knowledge.

-Noel

My NOS Longines VHP PC from 1996 runs fast - it will gain about 20-25 seconds a year. Fortunately it can be corrected.

I don’t think aging effect can be generalized into slowing down or speeding up though. It depends on what caused the aging.

gaijin · Apr 12, 2024

NoelC said:
Hi! I'm new here...

I picked up an older (B4 == 2014 I believe) Bulova Precisionist "Wilton" Chronograph model. I got it for a decent price on eBay.

View attachment 18264469

It seems to be running just a hair faster than the touted Precisionist accuracy. Specifically, I've seen an advance of +1 second in 8 days, which more or less means about +45 seconds per year. Yes, I know that's not really long enough to see if it will wander around and maintain +/- 10 seconds a year. In this 8 days I wore it during waking hours for about half the time, and kept it in a watch box the rest.

Frankly, I'm not upset at all with this level of performance, and fast is better than slow, but I'm just wondering... When these 262khz crystals age do they tend to run a little slower or faster? Is there an observed trend? I have no idea whether this watch was running for all or part of those 10 years - I suspect not, since it was essentially new with stickers still on it and not a scratch to be found. I'm thinking it got put in a box and left alone as an investment. All in all I'm happy to have it and wear it. It's absolutely beautiful, and I do like the 1/16th second advance of the sweep seconds hand when not in chronograph mode..

Also - a hair off topic for this forum - but does anyone here know if the face crystal can be changed to a sapphire one for these big (47mm) models? I don't have a clue about the availability of such things, but I am imagining one day I'll scratch this one. Most all of my other watches have sapphire.

Thanks in advance for your time and knowledge.

-Noel

Welcome to WUS (Watchuseek).

Perhaps you would find more folks with knowledge about crystal replacement on your watch in the Bulova forum found here: Accutron, Bulova and Caravelle Forum

Bulova has a rather checkered past in the HAQ forum. It was soon discovered that Bulova's claim of +/- 10 seconds/year was not real. Bulova long ago stopped advertising such an accuracy claim.

HTH

BrianBinFL · Apr 13, 2024

NoelC said:
Hi! I'm new here...

I picked up an older (B4 == 2014 I believe) Bulova Precisionist "Wilton" Chronograph model. I got it for a decent price on eBay.

View attachment 18264469

It seems to be running just a hair faster than the touted Precisionist accuracy. Specifically, I've seen an advance of +1 second in 8 days, which more or less means about +45 seconds per year. Yes, I know that's not really long enough to see if it will wander around and maintain +/- 10 seconds a year. In this 8 days I wore it during waking hours for about half the time, and kept it in a watch box the rest.

Frankly, I'm not upset at all with this level of performance, and fast is better than slow, but I'm just wondering... When these 262khz crystals age do they tend to run a little slower or faster? Is there an observed trend? I have no idea whether this watch was running for all or part of those 10 years - I suspect not, since it was essentially new with stickers still on it and not a scratch to be found. I'm thinking it got put in a box and left alone as an investment. All in all I'm happy to have it and wear it. It's absolutely beautiful, and I do like the 1/16th second advance of the sweep seconds hand when not in chronograph mode..

Also - a hair off topic for this forum - but does anyone here know if the face crystal can be changed to a sapphire one for these big (47mm) models? I don't have a clue about the availability of such things, but I am imagining one day I'll scratch this one. Most all of my other watches have sapphire.

Thanks in advance for your time and knowledge.

-Noel

I bought a couple Bulova Precisionist watches back when Bulova was touting ±10 SPY. It didn't take long to realize their claims were unfounded. As Gaijin mentioned, eventually Bulova stopped claiming ±10 SPY. Yours is performing right about on par for the Precisionist. In the neighborhood of 60 SPY seems typical.

I enjoy mine for what they are - good looking watches with reasonable accuracy, and a nice simulated-smooth sweep for a relatively low price. Yours is cool - I haven't seen one like it before.

NoelC · Apr 20, 2024

Thanks for the welcome!

Yeah, am consistently still measuring more or less 0.1 second per day gain. But as Brian says, it's just nice and I enjoy it for what it is.

Interestingly, my 2022 Bulova Lunar Pilot has been running at more or less +2 to +3 seconds a year, based on my checks about every 6 months when I change between standard time and daylight savings time. When I record readings on my watch timer app over months I haven't found it to be varying much. I guess that was a lucky crystal pick.

Given that most of the quartz watches I have seem to more or less consistently gain time (a very few of them lose time) and none seem to vary that much from that overall timing, I've always wondered whether it's just economics of throwing out crystals that aren't "close enough" that drive the current state of the art. And I haven't been noticing much drift over time. I have one old Seiko that still keeps time to a couple of seconds a month, for example.

I've always thought something ought to be done digitally, too... E.g., the maker could time their watches carefully for gain or loss off the line using an atomic reference, then set a digital value (like, program the controller to just drop or add one quartz crystal vibration every few million or so) to get the result nearly dead-on every time.

-Noel

Mandaue · Apr 21, 2024

NoelC said:
Thanks for the welcome!

Yeah, am consistently still measuring more or less 0.1 second per day gain. But as Brian says, it's just nice and I enjoy it for what it is.

Interestingly, my 2022 Bulova Lunar Pilot has been running at more or less +2 to +3 seconds a year, based on my checks about every 6 months when I change between standard time and daylight savings time. When I record readings on my watch timer app over months I haven't found it to be varying much. I guess that was a lucky crystal pick.

Given that most of the quartz watches I have seem to more or less consistently gain time (a very few of them lose time) and none seem to vary that much from that overall timing, I've always wondered whether it's just economics of throwing out crystals that aren't "close enough" that drive the current state of the art. And I haven't been noticing much drift over time. I have one old Seiko that still keeps time to a couple of seconds a month, for example.

I've always thought something ought to be done digitally, too... E.g., the maker could time their watches carefully for gain or loss off the line using an atomic reference, then set a digital value (like, program the controller to just drop or add one quartz crystal vibration every few million or so) to get the result nearly dead-on every time.

-Noel

I think that the brands tend to bias their quartz a bit on the fast side for a few reasons:

1. Quartz without thermocompensation (TC) will run slower when warmer or colder than 23-25 deg C. Even if set perfectly at the factory, the frequency naturally varies with temperature. (This is a big part of what this HAQ forum is about. See first stickie.)

2. Consumers generally have a higher tolerance for a fast watch than a slow one.

3. It’s very costly to trim a watch to a very tight precision.

Therefore, it’s wise to aim to ‘trim’ the watch slightly fast. Around 0.5 second gain per day when off the wrist is what I gather the aim to be.

There are some high end non-TC quartz that’s trimmed more precisely than the norm. Patek Philippe used to guarantee their quartz calibers to within a minute a year. Some ‘special’ Spring Drive (9R15, 9R16, 9R96) is spec to 10 instead of 15 seconds a month. The non-TC Seiko caliber 4883 was spec to 1 second per month. (What I would do to get my paws on one to take a apart.)

Couple of Qs about a new (10 year old) Bulova Precisionist Wilton

NoelC

Mandaue

gaijin

BrianBinFL

NoelC

Mandaue

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