Is the Bestfit catalog the best book to buy if I'm going to work on Bulovas? What about the Swartchild Catalog? Or something else?

I have a deco Bulova 10AN I want to restore to start with. I've only been working on Elgin pocket watches so far, so I don't know anything about Bulova parts yet.

Hello Dale,
Don't know if I can help you but I have an old Bestfit book that I can photocopy what info you may need, I also have an old Marshall's book from the 60's. Also, if you could post a picture or two of the watch it would be great.

Ray

Dale, I have a number of 10AN parts and a great deal of experience working on these movements. What parts do you need?

You can visit www.mybulova.com for more information and my contact details.

Stephen Ollman

Back in the 1960s Bulova issued their own material catalogs "A-B-C"(Accutron_Bulova-Caravelle) catalogs in two parts. These cover their own production essentially post WW 11.I would recommend a search foe them. They are long out of print but a large number were produced. The Bestfit catalogs are by far the best for identifying movement interchangeability from their early days (1920s to 1940s) when they were using a large variety of ETA, A.Schild, FHF movements. Bulova movements were almost always well marked with their own model number. Example: Bulova 7x11 ligne popular movement marked 7AK or 7AP. The Bestfit catalog will tell you that is is ETA 735. The Bulova A-B-C books will show interchangeability i.e. model 11AL manual,11ALAC automatic, 11ALACD auto. with date, etc. There is overlap with both sets of books but these two are the best.

Thanks for the replies.

Stephen, I actually only need hands and a stem and crown. The watch has been sitting in a drawer for nearly 40 years. My grandfather gave it to me to play with when I was a kid and it is pretty beat up.

But it only needs a good cleaning. It actually runs like a champ! I'll look for your contact info. Thanks.