# My First Japanese Watch



## Chascomm (Sep 9, 2005)

I got this one last week. It's a *Q&Q automatic*










OK, so it's not purely Japanese










but here is the reason I bought it










Plastic balance bearings, impulse stud, pallet lever, escape wheel, escapement bridge, hand train, calendar mechanism and auto-winding bridge. And no jewels.

Q&Q is a brand owned by Japan CBM Corp, founded in 1964, a member of the Citizen Group. I don't know how much manufacturing they do for themselves and how much is subcontracted. These days their watches seem to use Chinese Miyota quartz movements in Chinese cases. My watch Korean-assembled watch (with Taiwanese dial) appears to be from the late 1990s based on its condition. The flat mineral crystal on a watch of this grade makes an earlier date seem less likely. It would appear that the movement is essentially disposable, as if made in competition with the cheaper quartz watches.

I haven't yet figured out where the calibre 2604 comes from. It looks like a development of the all-metal fully-jewelled Hamazawa 5026A from the 1970s.










The plate design, train layout and side-lever escapement seem to match exactly, although the auto module is clearly different. Another minor clue is that both calendar mechanisms have dual-language-capable day-of-the-week.

Does anybody here know anything about Hamazawa Ltd? Are they still in business? All I can figure out is that they seem to have made ebauches, complete movements and occasionally complete watches for a wide variety of brands including Sears (the US department store chain), Astral (UK brand possibly owned by Smiths) and even Orient (for their cheapest auto models). So were they responsible for the semi-plastic 2604 (which has been seem in several other minor brands besides Q&Q)? How long were they in production? I've reached a dead end in my investigations.

So does anybody here know much about the seriously low-end side of the Japanese mechanical watch industry?


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## JTW (Jun 14, 2007)

That's interesting, were "plastic" movements common or is this the only example?

Ian


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## Chascomm (Sep 9, 2005)

JTW said:


> That's interesting, were "plastic" movements common or is this the only example?
> 
> Ian


Tissot, in partnership with low-grade movement finisher Agon Watch Co, were the real pioneers with the 1970 'Astrolon' all plastic movement. Besides being all plastic, apart from the balance wheel and impulse jewel, they were greatly simplified compared to convention movements. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to have been much of a market and not many were made. The Q&Q 16 and 26 calibres are the only other examples I know of substantial use of plastic in a mechanical movement.

Of course these days there are millions of watches out there with all-plastic movements, but of course they're quartz; mostly the PC21 from Seiko subsidiary Morioka Tokei. The torque loads in a quartz movement are negligible so there are fewer engineering headaches and plastic has the advantage of being self lubricating.


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## pauluspaolo (Feb 24, 2003)

Don't know the first thing about it unfortunately but it makes for an interesting read. Thanks for sharing & posting the pictures :thumbup:

If you do a Google seach for the SCWF you should find the Seiko & Citizen Forum on Network 54 (you'll also find the South Carolina Wildlife Fund but that's less useful for watch chaps like us) - if you post on there what you've posted on here you may get some more information


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## Chascomm (Sep 9, 2005)

pauluspaolo said:


> Don't know the first thing about it unfortunately but it makes for an interesting read. Thanks for sharing & posting the pictures :thumbup:


Always happy to share. And if I dig up anything more, I'll be sure to pass it on here.



> If you do a Google seach for the SCWF you should find the Seiko & Citizen Forum on Network 54 (you'll also find the South Carolina Wildlife Fund but that's less useful for watch chaps like us) - if you post on there what you've posted on here you may get some more information


Unfortunately when I attempted to sign up over there, I discovered that I already had an account. :wallbash: That must have been set up years ago, so I don't know what my password was and my email address has changed so my password is unrecoverable. :wallbash: :wallbash:

So next time you're over there, you might want to point out that Chascomm is happy to be deleted from their database.

... and you might want to ask about the history of Hamazawa Ltd and how their 50xx calibre family became the 26xx used by Q&Q and others in the 1980s and 1990s.


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## Chascomm (Sep 9, 2005)

I've been doing some digging. Here's the story as I understand it:

Japan CBM Corp was established in 1964, and started selling watches under the Q&Q brand from 1976. Japan CBM don't actually build anything themselves, but simply subcontract, generally within the Citizen Group.

In 1971 Citizen Electronics was formed as a joint venture between Citizen and Bulova, for the manufacture on the HiSonic watches. By 1978, tuning-fork technology was obsolete and Bulova pulled out. CE started to branch out. In 1979, they set up a Hong Kong subsidiary called Premier Precision Ltd, who later set up a second facility in Korea.

In spite of the diminishing market for mechanical watches, Japan CBM must have seen an opportunity because they contracted Premier Precision to start turning out a range of low cost watches for the Q&Q brand. The movements they used were also sold on to other watch manufacturers. The design is clearly derived from the Hamazawa 50xx series pin-lever autos, but with a radical redesign aimed at streamlining manufacturing and assembly. As it is unlikely that a Hong Kong manufacturer specializing in electronic watches would undertake the necessary tooling-up to make a complete mechanical movement, we can presume that Premier Precision was simply assembling ebauches supplied by Hamazawa.

Hamazawa Ltd was founded in 1954. In the 1970s, they took out a few joint patents with Epson on non watch related items. They seem to have sold a lot of movements to various Japanese and foreign watch companies. In 1983 they merged with two other companies, one of which was a major watch case supplier for Seiko-Epson. In 1986, this company was swallowed up by Seiko-Epson.

I'm speculating here, but I reckon that Hamazawa probably lacked the means to make the move to quartz movement manufacturing, but was able to afford the upgrade from 50xx to 26xx calibres, so long as they had a guaranteed buyer. All non-Q&Q examples of these semi-plastic calibres that I have seen have been signed Premier Precision. Perhaps the Citizen group partially financed the development?

It is likely that if these movements were being manufactured exclusively for the Citizen Group, then production would have stopped after the Seiko-Epson takeover. This would make my watch older than I thought.

A close examination of the dial revealed what might be a serial number prefixed by 84, making my watch 25 years old. Therefore those similar-looking new Q&Q autos I saw advertized on a Moldovan website several years ago must be a completely different generation of watch, probably with the ubiquitous Miyota 8215. But this is also interesting as it shows Japan CBM Corp have had an on-going interest in seeking out markets for low-cost mechanical watches in a quartz-dominated world. Clearly such watches are not for everybody. Their Indian site lists a couple of mechanical models (triple calendar skeletons, no less!), but their Japanese site does not.


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