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

 

 

002 / Citizen automatic 7470 movement

 #002 Citizen Automatic

Movement            : 7470

Year                      : March '71

Condition              : Dial   8/10

                              : Case  8/10

                              : Movement 9/10 

Bracelet                 : Non-original

Crown                    :Original Citizen

Crystal                   : Original Citizen

Serial no.               : Case 10304548

                              : Movement - none

Today I'm wearing a Citizen automatic with a blue dial. I'm really a fan of Citizen (and also Seiko) watches and this example is a good example. I pulled it apart and after cleaning and oiling its s running well and loosing around 5 seconds a day. The movement is a Citizen 7470 and while some of the design shows its age, specifically the setting and winding works as well as the quickset, the timekeeping aspect is very good. In fact I prefer this model compared to the latter 82xx series of movements as it is easier to get running well due to its larger balance. 

For a watch that's 50 years old, I am pleasantly surprised that it has still managed to keep its original crown and crystal. The dial is also in remarkably good shape with no damage whatsoever. It is common to find some water damage or lifting lacquer on older watches but this watch has survived well.

Original CTZ marked crown

Citizen and Seiko both have serial numbers on the caseback and this allows us to date the watch fairly accurately. In this case, the watch has a serial that starts with 103xxx. Here the number 1 denotes the year of the appropriate decade. As this watch dates from the early 70s it would indicate the watch was made in 1971. The numbers '03' denote the month of manufacture. So this was was made in March 1971. For Citizen, the 2nd and 3rd digit will run from 01 to 12 to denote the month. On Seiko watches, only the second digit is used with Oct, Nov and December being indicated by 'O', 'N' and 'D' respectively.

Caseback

While not being a high value watch, it is very much a well designed and constructed bit of horology. The only issue I had with this watch was a slightly worn automatic weight bearing and some wear on the plastic date quickset gear. Both do not affect the operating of the watch but I will be looking out for a better automatic weight, so far the wear is minimal and the weight has not started to hit the mainplate but this watch deserves to have a good one! 

Some movement pictures from Ranfft's invaluable website where you can find more information on this and other movements.

001 / Omega Constellation 168.0044

prelude :  One question that I am usually asked is how many watches do I have? Well that's a really tough question as I frankly don't have any clue? I try to keep a record on an excel sheet and that already has more than 300 listed, my guess is the actual number is probably closer to 400! Anyway I thought it would be fun to start listing down some watches as I wear them and share some details of them. They will not be in any particular order and some may have some movement pictures if I am servicing them at the time. 

So let's start off with ...

# 001 / Omega Constellation 168.0044 (?)

Movement            : 1001 (?)

Year                      : 1970 (?)

Condition              : Dial   7/10

                              : Case  4/10

                              : Movement 6/10 (?)

Bracelet                 : Original Omega. My wrist diameter is 17cms (6 3/4inches) and there's still one hole to go.

Crown                    :Original Omega

Crystal                   : Original Omega

Serial no.               : Case (?)

                              : Movement (?)

Well this Connie is a bit of a sad story. I bought it cheap knowing it had some issues..

Issue 1. Caseback is held on by 4 screws which push the caseback onto the gasket as the screws are tightened. Problem with this (and any other watch case which uses small screws on the back of the watch) is that sweat gets in and the screw gets jammed. On this watch there is traces of araldite or similar around the edges, I suspect when someone needed to get in, they could not get the screws to unscrew so they just forced the back off and once they were done they just glued the caseback back on. Sad.     

Issue 2. The watch should hack, currently it does not. 

Issue 3. The quickset for the date does not work. I usually find the parts missing on thiese watches as some components break and are quite hard to source locally.

Issue 4. The seconds hand has play and judders. This can be solved by adjusting the seconds pinion spring.. hopefully it's still there!     

I will eventually get around to opening it up and see if I can solve some of the issues above but as it is now it performs well, running around +13 to 15 seconds a day, so I'll leave it as it is for now.

Since I haven't got round to opening the caseback, the case reference quoted (168.0044) is based on similar models I've seen on the internet... there may be some variation and I'll only be sure when I get around to getting the back off! Similarly I believe it has a 1001 movement as that seems to be what this reference is supposed to have. I will only know if it still has its original movement when I open it up, there were a lot of versions of the Omega 10xx series and most of them will fit in this case. Ranfft's excellent reference page   has details of the various versions of this movement.

The band/bracelet is an original Omega and luckily fits me with one hole to spare! There are some pictures on the web of these models with leather straps and to be honest this case does not really go well with straps. The dial is not pristine but at least all the minute hash marks are present, in the Constellation script the 's' is missing its upper portion and there seems to be a blob of glue at the base of the 7 o'clock marker.

Some other pictures.

Full frontal shot

Original crystal with Omega logo in the middle 

(barely visible in the middle)

Original band

Original Omega Crown

12th Jan 2022

Photobucket stupidity..FIX

If you find that you are unable to view pictures, its because Photobucket recently changed its policy and started to charge for hosting pictures. It costs something like USD100 a year and that is USD100 I can find a better use for.

Good news though is the guys at Google have come up with a fix, you can find it here (edit - you may need to copy and paste the link below).

http://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/photobucket-hotlink-fix/kegnjbncdcliihbemealioapbifiaedg?hl=en

If the link goes dead for some reason or other just google 'google photobucket extension'.

I may try to upload the images elsewhere but it may take some time.

Anilv