Watch of Today

[Razz]

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...

[mbwatch]

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.

Edited March 17 by mbwatch

[Neverenoughwatches]

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.

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

[mbwatch]

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.

[Neverenoughwatches]

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.

[mbwatch]

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.

[SwissSeiko]

Today I'm wearing my Oceaneva Damascus dive watch. And supporting actor, my Tiffany carriage clock

[GuyMontag]

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.

 

[VWatchie]

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?

[mbwatch]

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.

 

[GuyMontag]

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.

 

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.



 

Edited March 17 by GuyMontag

[VWatchie]

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.

[mbwatch]

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.

[mbwatch]

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.

[AndyHull]

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!

 

[RichardHarris123]

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.

[Elijah987]

On 10/6/2015 at 11:16 PM, Gryf said:

I wore the Sekonda today. This is one of two watches I ordered from Etsy a few months ago, the other being a Slava that shares the same movement and case, but with a different dial.

 

https://i.imgur.com/TSaeiBj.jpg

 

Gryf

Looks awesome, man!

[GuyMontag]

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.

[rehajm]

That blue is great and is coming back strong. Not just for the 1970s...also, that thing is a beast!

[GuyMontag]

Yeah, I'm a sucker for a nice blue dial, especially one with red accents.

[zx6rfool]

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.