Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Posted

Been distracted with other things and on another site. Got this 6309-7040 and replaced the crystal (Klein Watches) and strap (Uncle Seiko). The seconds and minute hands have corrosion but the dial is about perfect for a May 1979 piece. I may or may not replace rhe hands. Some marks on the bezel but I kind of like the look as is...20250222_1626562.thumb.jpg.e2e9cf8acee286d16056f0147770bdcd.jpg

  • Like 3
  • 3 weeks later...
Posted (edited)

Wine-red HMT Kohinoor I got on a new bracelet for $25. The watch isn't supposed to be new, but it looks and performs like it is. It runs well enough that I am not going to bother servicing it, as had been desperately needed with my other 4 or 5 HMTs. For all I know the bracelet was molded out of tin foil but it was still in plastic, looks nice, and the package took under 2 weeks to get from India. They even upgraded it to a display caseback.

PXL_20250317_161817538.thumb.jpg.8bbce69029855acbe32ab21f015fc348.jpg

Edited by mbwatch
  • Like 2
Posted
17 minutes ago, mbwatch said:

Wine-red HMT Kohinoor I got on a new bracelet for $25. The watch isn't supposed to be new, but it looks and performs like it is. It runs well enough that I am not going to bother servicing it, as had been desperately needed with my other 4 or 5 HMTs. For all I know the bracelet was molded out of tin foil but it was still in plastic, looks nice, and the package took under 2 weeks to get from India. They even upgraded it to a display caseback.

PXL_20250317_161817538.thumb.jpg.8bbce69029855acbe32ab21f015fc348.jpg

Lovely red iridescent dial Michael,  how are these movements to work on ? I've never tried one. 

Posted
10 minutes ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

how are these movements to work on ? I've never tried one. 

They have a few surprises. First, the ratchet wheel screw is left hand thread in addition to the crown wheel, but there is almost never a 3-slot screw to indicate that. You learn by breaking one. The mainspring is lefthand wound like a lot of Japanese movements (which ancestrally this is). The newer ones (as opposed to one from the 1960's or 70's) are made from extremely soft metals. The screws are like butter so it is very easy to twist the head off that ratchet wheel screw or to strip out other screws. The stems are also very soft. Twice I have tried to unscrew a crown and just twisted a stem in half.

And because of that, the watches can be in all kinds of crazy states. This one is pristine, but my others all had workarounds like shellacked hairspring studs, stripped or missing plate screws, the dials are often redials on other models, badly painted onto brass blanks having no dial feet, missing movement rings, missing case tubes, etc, etc, etc.

The "Parashock" system is nice. It has a hole jewel set into a tiny spiral spring, offering both lateral and axial protection, and then an end stone set in a thing with only two tabs. Drop in the hole jewel then insert one tab of the end stone and align the other with the slot, turn. It is the easiest of any type I have had to install and even managed not to break or lose any on one of my first watch services.

  • Like 1
Posted
18 minutes ago, mbwatch said:

They have a few surprises. First, the ratchet wheel screw is left hand thread in addition to the crown wheel, but there is almost never a 3-slot screw to indicate that. You learn by breaking one. The mainspring is lefthand wound like a lot of Japanese movements (which ancestrally this is). The newer ones (as opposed to one from the 1960's or 70's) are made from extremely soft metals. The screws are like butter so it is very easy to twist the head off that ratchet wheel screw or to strip out other screws. The stems are also very soft. Twice I have tried to unscrew a crown and just twisted a stem in half.

And because of that, the watches can be in all kinds of crazy states. This one is pristine, but my others all had workarounds like shellacked hairspring studs, stripped or missing plate screws, the dials are often redials on other models, badly painted onto brass blanks having no dial feet, missing movement rings, missing case tubes, etc, etc, etc.

The "Parashock" system is nice. It has a hole jewel set into a tiny spiral spring, offering both lateral and axial protection, and then an end stone set in a thing with only two tabs. Drop in the hole jewel then insert one tab of the end stone and align the other with the slot, turn. It is the easiest of any type I have had to install and even managed not to break or lose any on one of my first watch services.

Interesting and challenging movements.

  • Like 1
Posted
4 minutes ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

Interesting and challenging movements.

They're very simple and straightforward as long as you make no assumptions and take nothing for granted.

  • Like 1
Posted

This 1970 Sea King 'FD' has a stunning blue sunburst dial that changes through different shades of blue as the light hits it. It's on its original stainless steel expansion bracelet with dark blue corfam inserts.

Front.thumb.jpg.dd7e7dd5276ebcc3189e90346103376d.jpg

 

Movement.thumb.jpg.a6d710d860f1dd39574ee158607b0c83.jpg

  • Like 6
Posted
2 hours ago, mbwatch said:

They even upgraded it to a display caseback.

Any chance we could get a glimpse of that? What movement? Citizen, Miyota?

Posted
59 minutes ago, VWatchie said:

Any chance we could get a glimpse of that? What movement? Citizen, Miyota?

Sure - as far as I am aware, all manual wind HMT use the HMT 0231 which is based on the Citizen 0201. They bought the tooling from Citizen in the 1960s.

This example has the nicer ratchet and crown wheels. Most have plain unpolished, undecorated metal. I can't open the case back now but you can find other pictures of the 0231.

PXL_20250317_201903719.thumb.jpg.146d4dc147fcf1d865cd19ea47c17f48.jpg

 

  • Thanks 1
Posted (edited)
43 minutes ago, mbwatch said:

Sure - as far as I am aware, all manual wind HMT use the HMT 0231 which is based on the Citizen 0201. They bought the tooling from Citizen in the 1960s.

This example has the nicer ratchet and crown wheels. Most have plain unpolished, undecorated metal. I can't open the case back now but you can find other pictures of the 0231.

PXL_20250317_201903719.thumb.jpg.146d4dc147fcf1d865cd19ea47c17f48.jpg

 

Looks like the Caravelle 11DP, which is also based on the 0231. Bulova was nice enough to indicate the left handed threads on the crown and ratchet wheels though. I really like working on this movement, very straight forward. The spring on the setting lever can be a little tricky but once you know how it's straight forward.

11dpmovement.thumb.jpg.6b57844fa3be0b80e4aabe8ddbfb184d.jpg

 

Edited by GuyMontag
  • Like 1
Posted
56 minutes ago, mbwatch said:

Sure - as far as I am aware, all manual wind HMT use the HMT 0231 which is based on the Citizen 0201. They bought the tooling from Citizen in the 1960s.

Interesting, thanks! Yes, it sure looks like a Citizen/Miyota and of course the Parashock jewels.

14 minutes ago, GuyMontag said:

Looks like the Caravelle 11DP, which is also based on the 0231. Bulova was nice enough to indicate the left handed threads on the crown and ratchet wheels though. I really like working on this movement, very straight forward.

I only have the best experience of working on Citizen and Miyota movements. They are, as you put it, straightforward (for the most part), especially compared to Seiko's movements which I find to be pretty quirky.

  • Like 1
Posted
27 minutes ago, GuyMontag said:

The spring on the setting lever can be a little tricky but once you know how it's straight forward.

Yes, that is an odd design on these movements. I really like working with the Parashock system though. Just be careful with the HMT movements, as they are the flimsiest metal.

  • Like 1
Posted

Another HMT, posting mainly to contrast with the one I posted last week. I paid about $14 for this watch and it is the nicest Pilot dial I've had (lots of them can be really, really terrible). HMT 0231 manual wind same as last week's Kohinoor. But where that one was great out of the box, this one was all problems inside.

It was clean for a start, as many times you'll find soil inside. But it ran like a roller coaster on the timegrapher. 120° of amplitude horizontal and rate fluctuations between +200 and -300. In the movement, the hairspring stud was shellacked into the balance cock, the hairspring was out of flat, cannon pinion had no friction, the center wheel pinion was badly rusted, every wheel in the train had zero end shake - none. And the barrel arbor was a tight fit into the lid without free movement. The mainspring was fine. One by one I went though all of these, dissolved the shellac and put in a hairspring stud screw and center wheel from a spare movement, improved all the end shakes, broached open the barrel lid arbor hole, got it to about 1.0ms beat error.

Now it runs about 220° which is as good as I ever get on this caliber. The dial does look better than I could capture with a camera, a rich textured black. Also this was $14.

image.thumb.png.b771b4f2fb1ccd10d3a8dfe08f7cc43c.png

  • Like 5
Posted
On 3/17/2025 at 9:07 PM, GuyMontag said:

Bulova was nice enough to indicate the left handed threads on the crown and ratchet wheels though.

Some of the (older?) HMTs also have the left hand thread indicated, but quite a few (most?) do not.

I'm a bit if an HMT fan, so more HMTs please!

 

  • Like 1
Posted

Bought the mother-in-law a newish sewing machine, just finished servicing her old one.  Going to offer it for free to anyone who wants it.  

A couple of left hand threads, not indicated, only experience told me to try the opposite way.

  • Like 1
Posted

I just finished up this early 1970's Roamer electronic with an ESA 9154 movement. I really dig that deep blue dial in the square SS case.

Roamer-606.jpg.acf849480be61a724d34ea36a8eb0e0b.jpg

  • Like 3
  • 3 weeks later...
Posted

The end of the month is our 5 year anniversary so the wife surprised me with a new watch with a wood inlay (wood is the traditional 5 year gift) Ive become a fan of the affordability of Sea Gulls automatic movements, and always loved the skeleton design (this will be my 3rd skeleton automatic). This has the Sea Gull ST1701 20 jewel automatic movement, which apparently is a Venus 175 clone.

 

 

1000001844.jpg

1000001845.jpg

1000001847.jpg

  • Like 3

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.




  • Recently Browsing

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Topics

  • Posts

    • Web sites are cheap. Message board are easy. Hosting both is less than 100 usd a year and small advertising would cover most of that.  In the discord group we did some 15 min poc and threw up a couple of different message boards on a domain i host.   The real value is the data / information / hive mind While I'm a rank amateur in watch repair the information and assistance on this board is invaluable. The members on here are friendly, entertaining and a wealth of knowledge This is what needs to be preserved  --Jeff
    • The post below contains the link. If you don't already have a discord account it will take you to the registration screen.  Registration is free.   https://www.watchrepairtalk.com/topic/31653-mark/?do=findComment&comment=279066
    • HWGIKE#57 Valex FEF 190 15 jewels Swiss lever full service and repair This one was waiting for a balance staff replacement in my cabinet parts and case cleaned up with a new balance staff and a 4th wheel as the original 4th wheel had a broken pivot for the off center second hand. I never attempted a balance staff replacement before however I received a Bergeon Molfres (i was hunting it for about 2 years) and with the help of it I managed to remove the old staff and riveted the new one in. It also received a new MS, crystal and the hole for the MS arbor was also tightened. With the new MS now it has an acceptable performance meaning that the amplitude goes up to 280 fully wound, has an acceptable beat error and I have the two nice lines but only dial up, dial down is not as nice and I could not figure out as why. I have the two lines but the amplitude is dropping to around 230 and the lines are a bit hairy. Both dial up and dial down the lines just go up and down without seemingly any pattern. I cleaned the movement two times, and then a 3rd time pegged out the main plate and train bridge holes but made no change. Both the HS collet and the roller table was too lose on the new staff... I did not count how many times I took the balance cock off to sort out the HS collet, the roller table and the beat error, somebody before me also shortened the HS by pushing it out a bit and it seems every time somebody is messing with the end of the HS the protruding bit is most of the time twisted bent etc. This one was probably one of the most challenging repair and service. I might take the new MS out and clean it lubricate it as I just pushed the new one in to the barrel from the retaining ring. Plus started to re-read the theory of the escapement and how to analyse the graph on the timing machine: Greiner Chronografic Record manual. I am also thinking to put the watch on a 24 hour long run with the eTimer SW it once helped me to figure out what was wrong with a watch. There is an interesting part of the Greiner record manual talking about the pallets and the end shake of the balance and pallet staff. Maybe this is my issue? Who could that possibly identify? After a few years now I am still without a clue how could watchmakers make parts I can only see with my microscope or how could/can they carry out complicated services impossible to do.. real magic..... .... ..... before I sent this post while the pics were uploading I had an idea, i was browsing the possible outcomes on the timing machine I had one for magnetism..... so I demagnetized the movement and it is not hairy now.... two really nice lines 0.2 ms beat error still a bit wavy, but a lot lot better..... argh....  
    • Hi there, welcome here.  
    • yes the advertising revenue should generate money. The question is how much money? Then as far as the cost of the website goes that's relatively easy to determine? all you would have to do to grasp costs and profitability would be to go to the link below and you can actually get a website for free try it out for free I believe you get no advertising initially. They also talk about that they'll help you out they have marketing tools and some sort of paid subscription or something. So I guess were shopping for a whatever just ask them what would a maybe could use this one as an example in other words it's going to look basically identical to this is going to have advertising a paid subscriptions what's it going to cost? After all they want to sell or give us a message board like this they should bill answer the questions as they're the people who did the software for this. Yes they really said you can have a free discussion group at least to start. https://invisioncommunity.com/ I was curious about the monthly supporter thing where exactly do we find that on this message board? A quick search I'm not finding it so obviously I'm not looking in the right place?
×
×
  • Create New...