Lee's Watch Thread for MM'ers of Impeccable Taste

[Ken]

Well I won a 1960s 'JDM' 21-Jewel Seiko Sportmatic for $30 on eBay last night, which is good. Then I blew through the eBay checkout process and realized afterwards I had shipped it to my old house, which is bad.

So, assuming it does eventually end up in my possession, I'm looking forward to tinkering with my first "project" watch. It needs a good polish, a crystal replacement and a new band.

I submitted a "Package Intercept Request" at a cost of $19 (yes, for a $30 item) to make sure that this would make it to the correct address. I got an update last night that it was at the Dulles post office, which is where it should've stayed until it went out for delivery. But this morning it went to the Sterling post office, which is the distribution center for the old address. I called them and got parked on hold for 10 minutes to be told that they can't find the package, and suggested I call the Dulles location to see if it got kicked back over there. 90 minutes later and upwards of 20 calls to Dulles later, they still will not pick up the fucking phone.

I can actually feel my blood pressure rising.

Relevant:

[Apoc]

So my post from the last page was because I'd impulse bought this. Retails for 1600, but jomashop has it for 10xx and I also had a $50 coupon. It's backordered for 3-6 weeks, which gave me just enough time to digest my buyer's remorse and cancel the order (to pay for baseball season tickets).

[WRXtranceformed]

Haha well played, so you went into a retail store to see / try it in person before the cancel?

Stopped by my watchmaker over lunch break, he ain't done with it yet, said to try back on Tuesday. Slow moving, tough to get a hold of business owners are not my favorite to do business with but hopefully that 5 star rating leads to some quality final product.

[Apoc]

I saw it on Facebook after Maeng liked a post from Japopnik or something. The wife needed to get some jewelry cleaned, so I tried one on. I liked it enough that I thought $1000 on jomashop was a good deal (jeweler was charging retail - $1600) and ordered it that night. Three days later I cancelled the order when I got the bill for our MLB tix.

I don't think I regret cancelling it. I didn't love it because it's exceedingly heavy for its size (43mm) and realized just how wasteful it was to impulse buy a $1k watch. I'd rather have an AR or P30SK.

[SlimKlim]

Lemme tell y'all 'bout my experience with the post office today.

So like I said I spoke with a gentleman at the Sterling post office this morning who could not locate my package despite the tracking system telling me it was there. He suspected that it had been kicked back to Dulles because of my Package Intercept Request, and suggested I called there.

I literally called that location 20-30 times this morning, alternating between getting a busy signal or just listening to it ring. I drove over there at lunch and stood in line, gave all of the info to one of the employees and was instructed to wait by a blue door. After letting me pace for 5 minutes a woman came and told me that the item was in Sterling, the employee from Sterling was wrong, and seemed super pissed that I was bothering her with this shit.

I really try to keep my temper under control, but I couldn't stop myself from telling her that if someone had answered the fucking phone, I wouldn't be standing here wasting her time.

I got back in the car with the red mist truly setting in, and drove over to the Sterling location. I managed to talk to the employee who I had spoken to on the phone that morning, who had since located the package, but had not thought to, you know, return my call.

He goes and gets the package, but is waylayed by his boss who told us it cannot be released to me because the seller submitted the intercept request. I assured her that no, he absolutely did not, while simultaneously considering just snatching the package out of the dude's hands and making a break for it.

After two more trips behind the counter, and disappearing with my driver's license for 10 minutes, they finally back, scanned the package and handed it to me. Great Success!

Then I get back to the office and check my email and see an $18 charge for a "successful package intercept." Which was supposed to be the fee for catching it and re-routing it to the correct post office. NOT for me driving to the incorrect post office it shouldn't have gone to in the first place, to personally catch it before it ended up on a mail truck headed for my old house.

*deep breaths*

Anyway. I have the watch now. It's really pretty, definitely looking forward to tinkering with it. It obviously needs a band, a thorough polish, a replacement crystal, and the minute hand needs to be re-seated and/or slightly resized so it sits properly on the spindle, it's currently getting caught and moving with the second hand, as well as snagging on the hour indicators. I've got it sitting upside down to try and prevent any additional damage while it winds down.

After reading DIYs on how to actually service these things, I think I'm going to save that part for the professionals for now, if I can successfully repair the hand and replace the crystal, I'll bring it to my guy to service the actual movement.

[JPolen01]

Why didn't you just correct the address with the seller before it shipped?

[Apoc]

#coolstorybro

[SlimKlim]

Why didn't you just correct the address with the seller before it shipped?

You watch the latest Grand Tour yet? You could sooner get a German to drive without a license than get an eBay seller to change the delivery address once the transaction is final. It voids the Paypal seller protection or something.

[WRXtranceformed]

Glad it made it safely! Kind of a pain to deal with especially the added cost but looking forward to seeing this one cleaned up and restored to former glory!

[WRXtranceformed]

So after doing some research on the WUS forums, I took some time this afternoon to boil this beautiful strap to see if I could force the straightness out of it :lol:

Flat as a board:




I put it through a few rounds of boil bath / ice cooling cycles. First in a ramukan:



Then I curled it up in a 1/4 measuring cup (my wife assured me the plastic on this was fine in boiling water)




Much better!




Reinstalled:





It definitely gave this strap just enough give for it to be more comfortable and less rigid around my wrist, it feels like the rubber may have softened up just a bit too. Still has that vanilla smell! Might have to keep it around for a while. The Hydro 91 it came on is still a little more comfortable but I much prefer the styling of this one. Now that this feels good enough around my wrist, I may sell the H91 and still try to pick up a super jubilee (like this Strapcode one). I would really love to see what this watch looks like on a nice stainless bracelet!

[SlimKlim]

I was messing around with my new 20x loupe and realized I can use it as a makeshift macro lens so I took some detail shots of my pocket watch.









I also started breaking down my Sportmatic this morning. The only really difficult part so far was negotiating with the 50 year old pressure-fit caseback, everything else has been easier than expected.

Once the case back has been removed, removing the actual movement is as simple as using a punch tool to depress a small button which allows you to pull the crown & stem out. Some other watches have more intricate crown removal procedures but seikos seem to keep it simple. Then you just flip the watch over and the movement falls right out of the back.



I was able to poke and prod at the minute hand a little bit and get it to slip back into place, but I suspect it wouldn't take much to knock it back out of place either. I'm still planning to remove the second hand and see if the tolerances of the minute hand need to be snugged up a little bit, or at least just press it on further using the proper tool.



Next up was the crystal. This turned out to be the more rare bezel-fit kind, not the more common pressure-fit or glued-in kind. So the case knife had to come back out, but luckily it wasn't nearly as difficult to remove as the caseback.



Apparently there is a standardization system for watch crystals to help locate exact replacements, and I was able to figure out the exact part number for this watch's crystal then I found a new-old-stock one on eBay for $12 and ordered it.

That pretty much just leaves the actual polishing part of the project, which shouldn't be all that bad. Tons and tons of light surfaces scratches, not too many deep nicks, so I think it'll really come back.









The Sportsmatic dolphin logo is still really clear, they seem to rub away on a lot of these things, so I'll have to be careful not to strip that away when I polish it.



I also looked up the serial # and was able to find that it was likely produced in November of 1966.

[SlimKlim]

The jeweler's polish clays I got on Amazon have dehydrated to the point where it just sands away into dust instead of coating the felt polishing wheel. I blundered through a first pass with the heaviest cutting compound anyway, managing to waste a ton of polish in the process. I've currently got them sitting on my spare bathroom counter wrapped in soaking wet paper towels which should rehydrate them well enough to use after a couple of days.

In the meantime I can do a little soul searching. Half of me says to not worry about the heavier scratches, it is a 50 year old piece anyway, leaving some patina on it is fine. The other half of me wants to break out the sandpaper and go for a factory fresh mirror finish.

After the first pass on the left, original on the right.



And the heavier scratches and nicks under the loupe





That's a cat hair, on the right side of the image, to give you a sense of scale.





Now I'm at a stopping point until my polishing clays become workable and I get the rest of my tools and parts. And just for an update on my USPS drama, I'm pretty sure they blacklisted me for getting real with them on Friday. The watch I bought for Lauren was supposed to show up Saturday, and the tracking page said they made an "attempted delivery" at 11:52PM (!) on Friday night and that they left a slip, which they did not. The form to request a redelivery says its ok if there is no slip, but then tells you to sign the slip so that the mail carrier can leave it without someone being home. :evil:

The rest of my tools AND the crystal are also being shipped USPS, so hopefully I actually get it all, eventually.

[SlimKlim]

I hit it with 400 through 2000 grit sandpaper last night and removed or at least lightened up the majority of the scratches. A handful of the deepest ones remain but that's ok, I think it's going to look great after going over all of it again with the polish.

I also removed the second and minute hand last night and used the hand-setter to press them back into place. The minute hand seems to be seated snugly now so we'll see how it holds up. If it gets knocked loose when I start wearing it, it's not very hard to pop the movement out and fiddle with it again.

By the way. You can't really get a sense for how small the second hand of a watch is until it's loose and you're trying to handle it. The hole you can see here isn't a hole, it's actually a hollow tube, and the hole is too small the see with the naked eye. It fits around the inner shaft in the second photo. The hand is so small it catches onto the fibers of the microfiber I was working on and rips itself back out of the grasp of your tweezers. It requires an incredibly light touch to keep it positioned correctly in your tweezers, and more precision than I have to drop it back into its shaft. I basically dicked around with it for 15 minutes and got lucky.

[WRXtranceformed]

Wow that is crazy the scale that you work in when servicing watches! It definitely gives you an appreciation for watchmakers and what they go through to service movements doesn't it?

[SlimKlim]

I feel like if I wanted to go into it as a career I'd have to start practicing buddhism, do yoga, cut out caffeine and live a generally cleaner life just for the sake of steadier hands. I have no idea how one would polish or re-lume a hand.

[Apoc]

I'm pretty sure we've all already consumed too much alcohol to make a living working on watches.

[WRXtranceformed]

Picked up the 2000 today, my local guy did a great job! Didn't cut away too much metal to be noticeable at all and left some of the character marks there so you still know it's an older watch. Overall it cleaned up nice! He also realigned the seconds hand to land on the seconds markers pretty much perfectly every time.

Before:





After:






:thumbup:

My old Seiko I'm having him fix to give to my wife for Valentine's Day is still under the knife. A new Kinetic battery didn't do it so he's trying to oil and clean up the movement before he starts replacing parts. Will post back some thoughts when I get that back...it's actually a great looking watch, I had forgotten how much I liked it back before I was a watch guy

[SlimKlim]

Finished polishing the case of the Sportsmatic last night and got its band in the mail. Just waiting on the new crystal to get here tonight and then I can reassemble everything.

[Ken]

Had to go back to jewelry store since the Movado randomly fell off my wrist from one of the links they resized. Was not happy with that, especially since it fell onto concrete and got scuffed. Went back in and they were extremely apologetic and offered to buff the watch for free, didn't even have to be right then, I can come back whenever and get it done (i.e. once it gets some more normal wear and tear.) So, overall they made up for it.

Tried on a Breitling Navitimer Heritage while i was there and damn, do want. Last goal was to get the Movado so new goal is to get that at some point.

[SlimKlim]

Jeez that sucks, at least they owned up to their mistake.