010 - Citizen Automatic 61-0542

 010 - Citizen Automatic 61-0542

Up today is a Citizen Automatic from the 70s. It is a model 61-0542 and is from the time when Citizen was very much into producing watches with black anodised aluminium cases. 

This particular example was received in poor condition, the movement as well as the hands and dial were in poor shape. The movement responded well to a service and the hands are from another model (I have some gold hands from another watch that will suit this watch better). Unfortunately I can't do much for the dial except give it a light clean. The main issue here is the surface of the dial is lifting away from the metal base around the edges. I can't glue it down as the material is really stiff and my guess is that it will break rather than bend. Perhaps heat may work but that may cause more problems. I guess I'll have to live it, its not really visible but it bothers me. You can see the edge of the dial next to the date window is a bit curved in the picture below.

The 6501 movement is a reliable workhorse, you can get some data in the Ranfft website here and there is a write-up on this movement here as well.

This is an aluminium case and this presents its own problems. The plus point of aluminium is that it is pretty light and it is very comfortable on the wrist, especially on this example where I have it on a light strap. The downside is that it is very soft. Citizen tried to solve it by anodizing it, this gives a hard wearing surface but it eventually wears down and once you've gone past the anodizing wear is accelerated. The aluminium case also presents problems with galvanic corrosion where two dissimilar metals encourage corrosion to the point where it can become very hard to open the caseback. I usually apply some heavy grease on the caseback threads to try to avoid this problem in the future.

The caseback, the first three digits of the serial number, 409 here, tells us that the watch was made in Sept. 1974. Citizen uses the second and third digits of the serial number to denote the month 01,02...10,11,23 compared to Seiko where they only use the second digit and use 0, N and D to denote October, November and December respectively. As a point of interest, the caseback is marked BLG which means this is a 'Black coated alloycase, Gold bezel'. My go to reference is Sweephand's excellent Citizen reference here. There is also a page dedicated to the case details here.

The watch also has a pretty hefty bezel as far as bezels go. The bezel extends to the edge which is quite normal but what is a bit unusual is that it does not surround the crystal but there is a portion of the case which serves as the boundary and transitions from the square bezel to a round crystal. I like it as it gives the watch some character. I'm not sure what the bezel material is but it looks like some base metal.

 

I have several of these Blackies which will eventually end up here. If you come across one and decide to buy it, one thing to check if the case has broken where the strap attaches. The aluminium is soft and I have a few where the case is scrap because the hole where the springbar goes has broken off.

Cheers!

25th Aug 2022

009 - Titoni Airmaster handwinding (ETA 2750)

009 - Titoni Airmaster 

Up today is a Titoni Airmaster from the 70s.Nothing especially fancy about this watch but it is representative of a watch that a better-off workingman from the time would have worn. 

Basically it has a steel case, decent jewelled movement and some water-resistance which is one step above the cheaper chrome-plated case and pin-lever movement watches which were the bread and butter of the time.

Here we can see the dial is marked Titoflex and Airmaster. Titoflex I believe refers to the mainspring and Airmaster was a brand Titoni used in the 60s and 70s when aviation was expanding fast. Also just above the 6 o'clock marker there is a little crystal, I believe it was mentioned as being Swarovski back in the day. I have a few Titoni where the crystal has fallen off and it was just left off, if you don't know about it you won't miss it. The dial looks a bit dirty but that's due to the close-up picture. In real life it doesn't really look so bad.

Inside is a 21J hand-winding ETA 2750, nothing spectacular but it gets the job done. I have cleaned and oiled the watch and it is currently running about 11 seconds slow/day. I am ok with that.

It still has its original crown.

And like most other 70s watches, the caseback detail is nice.

The original clasp is still present but I suspect the bracelet itself has been replaced at some point.

The brand Titoni seems to be popular in Asia and is practically unknown in Europe and in the USA. It started out as Felca and got the name Titoni in the 50s. The Felca name continued for a while but was eventually killed off.

The nice thing about these handwinds is they sit well under the cuff, unlike the automatics from this period which tend to be a bit chunkier.

Cheers!

008 - Seiko 5 6309-7320

 008 - Seiko 5 6309-7320

Up today is a Seiko 5 with a 6309 movement which I got for about USD10 in a flea-market here in Kuala Lumpur. It was just the watch head without its strap and wasn't running. I am a sucker for the 6xxx series of Seiko movements and I figured even if it wasn't running I should be able to salvage a few parts off it.

The first problem was the caseback was stuck and my usual tool could not get it open. One solution is to superglue a nut to the caseback and then open it with a spanner. I got hold of a 17mm flanged nut and glued that to the caseback. One thing you should take note when doing this is to ensure that none of the superglue gets into the joint between the case and caseback for obvious reasons. Once the glue had gone off I then held the case in a clamp and used a ring spanner to unbolt. The first attempt failed, probably because I have used that particular nut before and there were still traces of the old glue on the nut. I vent over it with a grinder to give a good surface for the glue to stick to and tried to get the caseback as clean as possible. The second attempt went well and the caseback came off to reveal the 6309 movement in decent nick, even the automatic rotor bearing was fine. This is a common failure point on the 6xxx series of movements and spares are not available.

caseback superglue trick 

The movement was cleaned and oiled and has been running steadily at around -23 seconds/day. I will keep wearing it for a few more days before I do the final regulating of the timing to get it running at around +5sec/day. 

The watch originally had a flat hardlex crystal, I did not have a correct one in stock so I used a normal plastic crystal. Looks OK compared to the scratched one that was in there before.

In the above picture you can see the caseback has a lot of scratches where I had to use a knife to get rid of the old superglue. Alcohol should dissolve superglue but the price of  alcohol has gone up a lot so I will just resort to scraping off the glue and will eventually sand it and polish the caseback.

The watch came without a band but the same flea-market turned up a water damaged Seiko 5 for around USD2.5. The bracelet was a decent enough fit so on it went.

All in this watch cost me less than USD15 and as long as I keep it away from water it should work well for the next ten years or so!

007 - Tissot PR516, with unexpected details

 007 - Tissot PR516

 A lot of us in the watch hobby are aware of the fact that Tissot and Omega are quite closely related, one good example is the Tissot 2481 which is the same movement as the Omega 1481. Even the 10xx Omega's can sometimes be found branded as Tissot.

I have this Tissot and while handling it recently I noticed that its bracelet clasp is signed Omega. Cool but I did not think anything about it... watch straps are easily swapped.

   Over the weekend I decided to look into the quickset which wasn't ...quicksetting. On this calibre, the quickset is by pushing in the crown. I decased the movement and cycled the quickset, my initial guess was that the stem was cut a hair too short and the crown did not have enough travel to activate the quickset. With the movement out of the case and the crown having unrestricted movement the issue with the quickset remained so it needed some further investigation under the dial. As I am a bit swamped with watch work I decided to reinstall the movement and come back to it some other time.

On blowing the inside of the case out with my puffer, I happened to notice this, the little Omega cartouche in the middle of the crystal inner. You will find this on most original acrylic crystals. I've never seen this before on Tissots.

Next I re-examined the caseback...

Normal Tissot at first glance but it looked a bit unusual.

It seemed like it had been machined and then restamped.  On closer examination, I can make out a mark in the area circled below, can you see it?

Its a bit hard to see in the pic and even with the caseback in hand you really need to have the light at the correct angle but the Omega logo can be faintly seen!

My guess is that there were a surplus of cases/bands which was diverted to Tissot which then machined off the existing markings and engraved their own logo and numbers.

Anyway hope you guys enjoy this insight into the Tissot/Omega relationship!

Anilv

    

006 - Seiko 5625-7000 KING SEIKO

 006 Seiko 5625-7000 KING SEIKO

Royalty in the house, yes no less than a King Seiko.

You have probably heard of Grand Seiko, the top of the line Seiko watch currently which had its roots back in the 60s but there was also the King Seiko of which you can read a brief history of King Seiko in this website. 

I am not a fan of gold plated watches as the plating usually wears off and leaves the underlying base metal visible but in this particular case (no pun intended) the watch doesn't look too bad. The only worn areas are the top surface of the bezel at around the 2 and 6 o'clock position. There is also some wear on the case edge visible in the photo below But it's not discernible when the watch is worn. 

One nice touch is the KS marked crown.

In keeping with the high levels of accuracy expected of this watch, there is a small screw between the bottom lugs. This screw is used to adjust the rate, ie to increase or reduce the rate of the watch. Pretty neat touch but why go to this trouble when it's much easier to just remove the back and move the regulator?

Well the reason is this watch has a fixed caseback and to get to the regulator you would need to remove the whole movement. The caseback helpfully tells you to 'OPEN THRU GLASS, PUSH SET LEVER, PULL STEM'. 

The caseback also has a gold medallion, just like the Grand Seiko. In my example someone has had a go at getting the medallion off but they didn't get very far, most of it is still on the watch. Wonder what glue Seiko used.

It is powered by a Seiko 5625 which is a pretty decent movement running at 28,800 beats per hour (hence the Hi-Beat on the dial) but is has one well known weakness. The date corrector (for the quickset) is made of plastic and prone to crack when the plastic shrinks. Even brand new unused (NOS) parts are cracked. It is possible to repair this part with a homemade part and there was someone selling replacement correctors but you will need to dismantle the actual component to fit it. 

On my watch the quickset is broken. The date will still changeover at midnight but you have to wind it forward (or backwards) to get to the correct date. On some watches you can wind it back to around 8pm and wind it forwards as a short-cut but on this movement the date just goes back and forth.

Picture of the  movement below from Ranfft's excellent website.

You can read more about the 56xx movement in this blog.

Overall it is a nice elegant watch and even though I haven't serviced it, it is running at a consistent +7secs/day. I will eventually get around to it but parts for this model are quite hard to come by so it may be a while!

005 - Seiko 5 - 7S26-03D0

 #005 Seiko 5 7S26-03D0 - Cal 7S26

Movement            : 7S36 (not 7S26!)

Year                      : 2007?

Condition              : Dial  1/10

                              : Case  8/10

                              : Movement 7/10 

Bracelet                 : Non-original

Crown                    : Original crown.

Crystal                   : Replacement generic

Serial no.               : Case - 775897

Up today is a Seiko 5 which I picked up recently in a lot of damaged watches. As you can see from the 1st picture, this watch has been neglected and my initial guess is the crystal broke and the bits were removed and the watch was left in a box with other stuff which further damaged the dial and hands. Apart from the missing crystal, the day/date frame and numerous hour markers are also absent. The dial surface also has had some contamination which has left some permanent marks on the dial. The brown stuff on the minute hand is some brown paper which has stuck to the aforementioned contamination.

When I first saw the watch, a key factor in deciding to buy it was the movement visible from thru the display back showed no water damage which would be a major issue. In this case the movement looked OK. I'm not really a fan of the 7xxx movements from Seiko but condition wise it doesn't look too bad from the picture below.

One area that typical wears on these watches is the rotor bearing. On this example the rotor bearing, which comes off with the rotor is OK but the rotor was loose in the case and not attached to the movement. This is common enough as I see a lot off these watches where the rotor has come unscrewed and all it it takes is to remove the caseback and reattach it. 

However I noticed that there is some distortion to the bridge around the rotor post. Sadly this is something that can occur on these 7xxx movement where too much downwards force can dislodge the post from the bridge as it is only friction fitted. In this case I tried to re-attach the post but the fit was too loose so another bridge was used (I have several 'organ donors'). Initially I thought the broken crystal was the cause of the watch being put away but looking at the damage it could have been the damaged rotor post which resulted in the watch being put away and maybe given to a kid to play with resulting in more damage!

The dial side is generally quite clean.

Here is a picture of the day/date quickset I always get confused with the two white plastic star wheels which perform the quickset function. The one closer to the middle is fitted to a post so you could potentially fit it upside down.
  

Seiko have to be credited for adopting display backs and their design department should be commended for riding the mechanical watch resurgence in the early 2000s. This is one area where they left a lot of other manufacturers standing at the gate. Here we can see the model reference, 7S26-03D0, where 7S26 is the movement reference and 03D0 is the case reference. These numbers will be required when ordering parts. In this watch, while it states 7S26 on the caseback, the main bridge I removed has cap jewels for the third and escape wheels, which is found on the 7S36 movement. Was this main bridge damaged on another watch and someone swapped out the part from a watch with a damaged crystal? We will probably never know.

All Seikos will have a case serial number. This will aid in dating the watch as the first digit is the 7 to the nearest decade, in this case 2007, and the second digit will denote the month, here it is July. It is a bit hard to read with the naked eye compared to the all steel models.

.

After a clean and service the movement was working fine. This dial was missing a foot, some dial markers and the date window. Nonetheless I decided to reuse this for the time being. I removed the remaining markers and found some other Seiko hands. A new generic crystal was fitted and this is the result. I've been wearing it a while and I kind of like it as it has a 'milgauss' look to it.

Meanwhile I found several dial and hands online and purchased some which I figured will look good. I opted for a sterile dial.

Still need to find a better strap as blue and brown do not really match but that is not a priority right now.

Thanks for reading!

004 Citizen V2 (7700 movement)

 #004 Citizen V2 - cal.7700

Movement            : Citizen 7700

Year                      : 1971

Condition              : Dial  5/10

                              : Case  6/10

                              : Movement 9/10 

Bracelet                 : Non-original

Crown                    :Original Aluminum crown.

Crystal                   : Original

Serial no.               : Case - 10309509

                             

Today's watch is a Citizen V2 from March 1971 (based on the serial number).  In the 70s Citizen released a lot of black-cased watches with the cases made of aluminum which was coloured (anodized?) black. Great idea as the watch is very comfortable and light but as aluminum is also very soft these watches usually have very worn cases. In this example, the black coating has worn away from the back and the case edges. While it is still wearable, it does tend to look old. Apart from the wear issues, another disadvantage of aluminum cases is that it reacts with the steel caseback and sets up a galvanic reaction which results in corrosion. This is because that aluminum and steel are quite far apart in the scale of 'noble metals'. This problem does not arise with steel casebacks in steel watches but you do see it in gold-plated cases. Here the gold plating does form a good protective layer but as it is very thin the the threaded portion of the case where the caseback screws in it will still be affected eventually.

Inside the watch is a 7700 (or some variant of it) which is a good workhorse capable of great timekeeping. Its not my favourite Japanese movement, that honour goes to the Seiko 6119, but its an easy movement to live with and as long as the hairspring is in good shape a clean and oiling is all it takes to get it running well. The main reason I don't really like it is because of the indirect seconds as this can cause some stuttering in the seconds hand. In addition you need to set the tension on the seconds pinion spring properly for it to run right.

The dial is not perfect and some of the dial lacquer has peeled away at the three o'clock area. Additionally there are some darker spots but as it has a starburst finish it looks fine while on the wrist. The bezel was originally gold plated but that has worn as well!

In the picture below you ca see the wear to the case and crown. It is still windable though.

Worn caseback.

Picture of the movement from the Ranfft page.

I have serviced this particular watch and over the week I have been wearing it it has kept time consistently well, losing about 4 seconds a day. Not bad for a 50+ year old mechanical device. 

003 Favre-Leuba Sea King (FL111 movement)

 #003 Favre-Leuba Sea King (FL111 movement)

Movement            : FL111

Year                      : Late 50s, early 60s(?)

Condition              : Dial  4/10

                              : Case  6/10

                              : Movement 9/10 

Bracelet                 : Non-original

Crown                    :Original Favre-Leuba

Crystal                   : Original tension ring

Serial no.               : Case - none

                              : Movement - 557856

 

Up today is a Favre-Leuba from the late 50s/early 60s. It is a Sea-King model which I just purchased on ebay. FL seems to have been quite popular in India and I see quite a lot of them being sold on ebay and some of them quite cheaply but buying these Mumbai specials are a gamble so you need to be a bit cautious when buying. Having said that they're cheap so no great loss if you make a bad decision.

 

This is the auction listing.. the seller was honest and mentioned that the caseback couldn't be opened. Generally this is a show stopper but in some cases it can be a blessing as we will see later.  USD25 works out roughly to MYR100 so its worth a gamble.

 

 

Picture below is also from the auction listing, the caseback doesn't looked bad, looks like they didn't try very hard to get inside! Another plus point.

 

 

 

Final picture from the auction listing and they both seem to have their original crowns ...quite often they have been replaced with aftermarket ones so having them still on the watch is great. One is a bit worn but I can live with that!

 

 

Anyway, when I received the watches I tried to remove the casebacks. I managed to get the back off the blue-dialled watch using normal tools (separate write-up on this watch to follow) but the white-dialled one refused to come off. This caseback had flats instead of notches and while I did have the correct removing tool I couldn't apply enough force. Time to go to plan B.

 

On time honoured 'trick' for recalcitrant casebacks is to superglue a nut on the back and use a spanner on that. Well I had some superglue (CYA-cyanoacrylate) in the fridge and nuts galore so I duly affixed one to the caseback.

 

 

After about 30 minutes to give the glue time to set I tried to remove the back with a correct spanner. I couldn't hold the watch tightly as the lugs were digging into my hand. So an adjustable wrench was brought out and the watch was secured with the jaws of the wrench in between the lugs.......success!

 

 

With the caseback removed, the movement was revealed. One benefit of the stuck caseback was it did a good job protecting the movement as it looks pristine and free from the ham-fisted butchers from the sub-continent. It is an FL111 calibre which at first glance looks like the ubiquitous ETA1080 but I believe it has some slight differences.

The stem come off by unscrewing the stem-release a little bit, no surprises here.Then there are two half screws which brace the movement and dial against the inner case, to remove the movement these screws need to be screwed 'in' to release pressure on the case, when the cut-off part of the screw is on the outside the movement and dial can be removed

 

 

 

 

Dial-side of the movement.. quite clean, even the set-lever bridge is intact. These are quite often broken.

 

 

 

The minute wheel plate has a scratch on in. Looks like there was someone in here before? Or possibly a distracted worker in Switzerland?

 

 

 

A view of the bottom of the movement, The escape jewels are capped, these are fiddly to clean but they aid smooth running as the oil is contained better. These are not for shock-protection and purely serve to aid better running. The screw on the winding wheel has three stripes to indicate that this is a left hand screw  (screws in counter-clockwise). Some manufacturers do not mark them and that is a pain. It is common for the winding wheel to have left-handed screws so most watchmakers know this anyway but it's when left-handed screws are used elsewhere that it gets challenging!

\

 

 

With the ratchet and winding-wheels off we see the first sign of wear... the barrel bridge has some marks where the ratchet wheel has rubbed against it. This is because the hole for the barrel arbor is probably worn. I will stake this and close the hole a bit,

 

 

 

With the mainspring barrel and train wheels off.

 

 

 

A naked mainplate and the disassembled barrel. The watch has a modern alloy mainspring instead of a blued steel one. This will last longer.

 

 

 

Here the movement has been serviced and reinstalled in the cleaned case. I just cleaned the case and crystal and gave some light polishing.

 

 

 

The watch is performing well.

 

 

 

Here is the picture of the correct tool used to close up the watch. The case holder was given to me by my late father-in-law along with some other tools, he used to repair watches but his main job was repairing TVs and Radio etc.

 

 

 A view of the faded FL crown.

 

Here is the final product, fitted with a period 'bonklip' bracelet. At around 30mm it wears a bit small but not as bad as some others I've got!

 

 Anil Nair

19th January 2022