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With the indispensable help from my buddy J Trenalone on the West coast, this ~80 year old monopusher chronograph is back in working order. There were a multitude of issues getting this working. The balance staff, escape wheel and mainspring all gave their share of headaches. I also have to mention that I bought TWO new mainsprings from Cousins that broke one after another when tested. The mainsprings are listed as GR5032 and are supposed to be correct for the Landeron cal 2, the cost 11.80 each and after shipping £22.64. I think they were no good to begin with because of age. I finally had to buy one from Borel using the measurements form the original, which had set and needed to be changed. Finally it has come together. I you try to find these, you'll quickly discover they are difficult to come by. Its someone else's watch, and I appreciate the opportunity to work on this type of early column wheel chronograph J

Got my new Hamilton GMT Traveller 2. Beautiful watch with an ETA 2893-2 Movement. Sent from my GT-N5110 using Tapatalk

Fine looking bit of hardware mate. There's plenty of good reasons to wear a Hamilton watch.

Have you considered simply re-stitching the existing one. It has a certain veteran charm of its own. Its not a particularly difficult job. You just need a couple of needles, some suitable waxed thread, and a little patience. Start by removing the existing thread, then remove the fold over metal tabs, clean those and check for damage, if necessary cut replacements from thin brass sheet. Clean the leather, use ordinary soap and water for this, then nourish it with the leather treatment of your choice (beeswax based, rather than silicone, I would say, just to keep with the vintage spirit). Replace any internal cotton or other damaged or worn out spacer material, sew it back to together neatly. More about the technique can be found in a number of videos on youtube. Here for example. Those Hirsch ones do look good though. Maybe get one for "Sunday best" for it too.

There are a bunch of options here: https://www.watch-band-center.com/watchstrap-h175-Open-End-Watch-Bands.html I'd be inclined to go with one of the Hirsch though. You know you're getting quality, and it's got to be worth $40 to have something proper for an heirloom you've already put so much effort into.

And I'm there with a clock mob on Thursday afternoons. First joined over 10 years ago but, after a year, work commitments changed and I hadn't time to carry on. When I retired last year I joined up again and I'm thoroughly enjoying myself.

You have to be careful when you look at a chart like that in that it doesn't explain the numbers? A better source of information is the manufacturing info sheet for the watch which I'm attaching. So specifically the minimum amplitude is after running 24 hours. ETA 2892-A2 of manufacturing info.pdf

This has been addresses in another thread, see here => https://www.watchrepairtalk.com/topic/10086-radon-hazards-of-luminous-timepieces/?tab=comments#comment-91769 The short answer, is no, you should not be worried. However, you should take a little extra care in future. There was a very small risk when handling that single watch, but that risk is not worth loosing any sleep over. You almost certainly got more exposure to radiation that day, from simply going about your daily business. The trouble comes from cumulative exposure without protection. Read the thread I linked above, and you will get a better idea of what I mean. It is true, that any exposure is not a good idea, but nor is exposure to lead, asbestos, mercury, benzine and other similar hydrocarbons, chlorine.. I could go on, but in all of these cases, the biggest risk when dealing with low levels of exposure is from the cumulative effect of repeated exposure. The more you come in to contact with hazardous materials (especially things like heavy metals, which your body finds difficult to remove, or radioactive materials which can be absorbed into some body tissues), the greater the risk. Radiation exposure is generally poorly understood by most of us. This chart may give you a better idea of doses. https://xkcd.com/radiation/ In summary, the more you handle without protection, or the more you ingest small quantities of these materials, the more cumulative dose you receive, and the more likely that is to cause health problems. Your body is designed to deal with the constant damage from small levels of background radiation. One brief, small exposure is therefore of little consequence. Multiple exposures over the long term, or large exposure to highly radioactive material (like the core of a nuclear power plant) over a very small period on the other hand are a bad thing. So use gloves, keep exposure risk to a minimum, and clean up any loose material you find. Dispose of it carefully and wash your hands with soap and water afterwards, and you should be fine. For the same reason you shouldn't cross the road without looking, you shouldn't handle potentially dangerous materials without understanding and mitigating the risks either.

I have both : - crystal press (since a few months) - crystal claw (since this morning) I use crystal press to fit all plexis that come "over a rehaut" (vintage Rolex & Tudor style), fixed bezel, retaining rings and crystals fitted with a gasket. Until today I managed to remove other plexis with a press and to put them back using the hot/cold method (watch case in a cool oven and plexi in the freezer) ... but I cracked some plexi and I even had problem with armored crystals. So I ordered a crystal claw, received it today and tried it on a vintage diver with an armoured plexi. It worked perfectly (the crack you can see on the plexi was already there when I got the watch) so I'm really happy with that new tool.

I've now been wearing my red and black radio room Amphibia/Albatros (first picture of the first post in this thread) for exactly one month since I last regulated it (Vostok cal. 2409 manual). December 27th it was 29.5 seconds late, and today it's 32.5 seconds late. It has lost three seconds in a month! It's been a long time since I wore a quartz watch, but as I remember it, those weren't much better than that over time. Of course, it largely depends on how the watch is worn, stored and wound, but nevertheless, I'm "blown away"! Who said Russians weren't up to the Swiss!?

I love Russian watches. I would love to see Mark do a tear-down on a Vostok movement like he did recently with the Chinese clone 2824.