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Watch of Today


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6 hours ago, AndyHull said:

Lovely looking watch.:biggrin: That is the sort of thing I might be tempted to ignore my budget for. 

The trouble with my self imposed budget is that I often miss very nice watches by a few pennies.

This for example went for £4.20, but since my fixed bid is only £4.04 I missed out. :(

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Admittedly is is not something I would wear often, but it was interesting as it has a Waltham branded movement.


However, on the plus side, the £4.04 limit means that I haven't gone bankrupt (yet). There are a huge number of watches at pocket money prices, if you have the time and energy to invest in fixing them.

I have blown the budget a couple of times, when something particularly tempting has come on the scene, but my steely resolve to stick to the rules has normally been sound.


At the moment, I'm giving a couple of Timex automatic movements some TLC and a much needed a bath. They have been sitting in lighter fluid overnight. I'll re-assemble them and see if they run, later today if I have the time.

One looked brand new, but the balance wheel was flapping in the breeze, so it has clearly had a hefty knock and the other was filthy, and the auto-winder "clutch" gear slips. If I get one or the other to run, or indeed both, I'll be a very happy bunny. Both are missing the winder stem and crown.

If they both turn out to be too worn out or damaged to be reliable, then I've not lost much on the deal, and I'll need to start digging around for parts for them. Speaking of which, does anybody have a ready supply of winder stems, crowns and other parts for Timex automatics?

Hi AndyHull ,  your enthusiasm is to be commended .

That is how I , and I am sure many others on this forum , got started with this addiction . 

I started by getting a bag of cheap watches and parts from India to make steampunk jewelry from the watch parts . Then after I saw a couple of watches in that bag trying to run I decided to try and take one apart and see if I could re-assemble it to run again . After 3 or 4 attempts full of parts pinging off to the Moon , and stretching out of shape a couple of hairsprings , I succeeded ....and was hooked .

Riding the wave of my success , I graduated to Inexpensive Timex watches to collect and operate on . Hand wind , automatics , electrics , and any thing else they produced to throw my pennies at . 

Then very slowly , but with consistency , came the Seiko and Citizens , Then the Invictas , then the other American brands followed by the vintage Swiss watches , then the more affordable more contemporary Swiss watches . I can always find or make up justification to get my next watch .

Now I have addicted to Longines , Breitling , Omega , and Rolexes ....whew .......Watch Your Step .....and enjoy your path wherever it takes you .

 

I think Jersy Mo can steer you in a direction for things Timex ....Good Luck .

 

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Just for fun today, two watches (or more) in one. This animal from the subcontinent,  was purchased in the full knowledge of its franken genes, and obviously it came well within the self imposed budget. Free shipping from Mumbia too. What's not to like.

Its a Seiko 5, well sort of, and its an Alwyn at heart.. kind of.. and its.. well who knows what else its Indian creator stirred in to the mix.

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One surprising thing is that it is actually quite an accurate little piece. Perhaps we can put that down to hybrid vigor,  a product of its  many origins.

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I'm sure that is not how you spell Seiko.. and I'm sure the rust wasn't factory fitted.

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That doesn't look right to me either.

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5 hours ago, ricardopalamino said:

...

Now I have addicted to Longines , Breitling , Omega , and Rolexes ....whew .......Watch Your Step .....and enjoy your path wherever it takes you .

 

I think Jersy Mo can steer you in a direction for things Timex ....Good Luck .

I'm trying not to look too longingly at all of the really tempting stuff that is well outside of the self imposed budget. I'm sure my steely resolve will buckle an a few more occasions in the future, but I'm actually having a lot of fun with the surprising number of very interesting pieces that do come under the hammer at this budget level. 

HSL has generously offered me the winders I need for those  twoTimexes, for which I am very grateful. With a little luck and a bit more TLC, you may see them here as Watch of Today, some time in the near future. 

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Another from the same seller as the Wenger Commando. This is a brand new, Casio Edifice Chronograph. I'm pretty sure that I'm the first person to even have it on my wrist as all of the tags were still on it including the hang tag on the bracelet. I sized the bracelet by removing 3 links. I can't find a mark on this watch anywhere. The seller purchased it, placed it in his safe and let it sit until he noticed that the battery had perished. He listed it for sale on another forum. Cost to me? $30 delivered to my door.

These are excellent watches for the price. They aren't rare or collectible. Japanese movement, China 316L stainless steel case, stainless steel bracelet with deployant clasp, signed crown. It's a lot of watch for not much money.

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Today we have a Voken Automatic.  Another member of the 404 club.

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The crystal has a couple of minor scratches which I will attend to later, but other than that, it is pretty well immaculate. So far it is running well, having just come off the "operating table" about a couple of hours ago.

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Andy,

I noticed a 5 tucked into the day window adjacent to Fri. Obviously this is to denote the 5th day of the week but is that a standard marking on some watches in Japan or Europe? I've never seen this on a watch originally intended for sale in the US. Additionally, my brief research indicates that this brand is somewhat rare. It has been produced with Japanese, Russian and Chinese internals. What did you find when you opened it up?

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4 hours ago, TexasDon said:

Andy,

I noticed a 5 tucked into the day window adjacent to Fri. Obviously this is to denote the 5th day of the week but is that a standard marking on some watches in Japan or Europe? I've never seen this on a watch originally intended for sale in the US. Additionally, my brief research indicates that this brand is somewhat rare. It has been produced with Japanese, Russian and Chinese internals. What did you find when you opened it up?

It appears to be probably a Q&Q automatic movement, but I am struggling to find out much more about this brand. Lots of speculation, but not much of substance. It has 4V-00006 and V67-W on the back, and  64-0020 Japan on the dial.

All in all, its a bit of a strange beast.

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7 hours ago, TexasDon said:

Andy,

I noticed a 5 tucked into the day window adjacent to Fri. Obviously this is to denote the 5th day of the week but is that a standard marking on some watches in Japan or Europe? I've never seen this on a watch originally intended for sale in the US. Additionally, my brief research indicates that this brand is somewhat rare. It has been produced with Japanese, Russian and Chinese internals. What did you find when you opened it up?

The day number is a strange option too. I've seen it on a number of far east watches, and very occasionally on Swiss movements. Orients sometimes have it as far as I recall, and some of the "Indian Specials" too, which are often bitsa movements...  bitsa this and bitsa that.

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The Q&Q movement doesn't surprise me as at least one reference that I read associated the brand with Citizen. I don't think that I quite buy that as Citizen might provide movements but any complete watches produced by them wouldn't likely rely on movements from Russia or China. I like odd things, just not with "bitsa" movements so I'll look for this make in the future. Currently, I'm awaiting a microbrand Pilot type watch. I'll post it with the obligatory wrist shot when it arrives.

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Continuing with my HMT theme. When looking for suitable donors to fix the beat up Avinash, I bid on a number of HMTs.

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The prices vary wildly, but I stuck rigidly to my usual budget, and as a result of my scatter gun bidding, I picked up four. 

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I bought three 17 jewel movements and one automatic.

One with a fake dial became the main donor for the repair, and also contributed some of its parts to fix a Chetan, which I will show you all at some future date, once it is fully regulated, has had its case rejuvenated, has a new strap  and is fully tested.

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The other 17 jewel was this rather attractive "Sandeep". It looks to me like it has either been completely rejuvenated by someone else, or has never been worn. It even came on a brand new genuine leather band (that is actually made of genuine leather, not "fully vegan, cardboard based genuine Chinese leather"). My winning bid was £3.20 (plus £1.20 shipping).

HMT are to my mind a much under valued brand. They are quality watches (until some backstreet vendor in Delhi gets at them, at least), with steel cases and a Citizen level of production control. Its just a shame that they appear to have finally stopped any large scale production of them. I think there is one plant remaining, partially mothballed, that produces the odd batch now and then, which are sold on the official HMT website.

I suspect that my £3.20 investment is more likely to double my money in 10 years than any high end watch. Its just a shame that I cant retire on £6.40 :P

Edited by AndyHull
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Thanks to HSL I now have the bits I need to (hopefully) fix those two Timex automatics.

The parts came with a lucky bag of Timex stuff, so I spent this afternoon learning about the various Electronic mechanisms.

None of the luck bag contents yielded to my efforts, but it was an interesting and educational way to spend an afternoon while wrestling with my internet service providers "support" system (designed to keep you from bothering their engineers on a Sunday it seems).

I then grabbed one of the more familiar mechanical Timexes from the bag and gave it the treatment.

Here is the result.

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Its keeping pretty reasonable time too. (About +/- 20 sec/day according to the time grapher).

The crystal still needs a little more work, but it is a very welcome new member of the 404 club, given that it has cost me the princely sum of absolutely nothing. Thanks once again Heikki  a.k.a. HSL.

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I wore Timex watches for years. Actually, I wore them until my eyesight began to fade a bit, so now I wear watches the size of salad plates strapped to my wrist. I'm personally delighted to see so many reissues of old Timex models. Did anyone think that they would ever see the day when a new Timex, manual wind watch would fetch upwards of $160 at full retail? Perhaps I've been concentrating a bit too much on other brands! Very nice watch Andy. You certainly can't beat the price.

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23 minutes ago, TexasDon said:

I wore Timex watches for years. Actually, I wore them until my eyesight began to fade a bit, so now I wear watches the size of salad plates strapped to my wrist. I'm personally delighted to see so many reissues of old Timex models. Did anyone think that they would ever see the day when a new Timex, manual wind watch would fetch upwards of $160 at full retail? Perhaps I've been concentrating a bit too much on other brands! Very nice watch Andy. You certainly can't beat the price.

My first watch was a Timex, and I had several others over the years. As far as I recall,  the first watch I ever took fiddled with and took apart, when I was a kid was also a Timex, picked up from a jumble sale. 

The one above has a dial code ending in 65, so I suspect that makes it 54 years old. The fact that all it needed was cleaning and lubricating says a lot for the design. It may not have the elegance of a bejewelled Swiss movement, but this one at least has proved the doubters wrong about their robustness and longevity.

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Looking good Andy one can Think of less fun things to do on a sunday! I'we been preparing my garden the whole day but it's still kind of Cold here in the North. Should have stayed in and tinkered with watches instead.
Keep up the good work!

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Another Timex anyone? Again this is one from the HSL goody bag.

Thanks HSL, this little lot are good fun to mess about with.

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This time we have a simple white dialed Mercury (correct me if I am wrong) from 1978, which I paired with a plain black strap with no stitching. 

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It needed a little mechanical attention, and the usual collection of cosmetic problems needed addressing.

The trickiest part was persuading the crystal to come out, due to the build up of gunk.  Mole grips were indirectly involved in the less than delicate process. It survived unscathed due to the care taken to protect the crystal and case from marring. The crystal popped back in without any fuss after everything was spotless. 

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I may take out a few more crystal scratches later if I have the time.  You can still see a couple so I may have to go back up a few grits and smooth those out. 

It got a full clean and service and is beating away strongly.

The case and crystal got the full 0.5u diamond buffing, and while there are still inevitably a few dings and scratches remaining, it looks pretty good after 41 years of taking a licking.

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This is a bit of a departure from my usual mechanical obsession.

Curiosity got the better of me and I pulled the trigger on an MSF radio controlled watch.

It was described as "In box, not working", and was well within budget.

There seem to be quite a lot of these on ebay, but they usually go for a lot more than this.

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Its not particularly elegant, but certainly functional. Date wise, I think it is probably around 2007.

All it needed was a CR2015 cell and some serious head scratching as none of the online instructions matched this particular watch. So there we have it, a radio controlled member for the 404 club. 

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I'm glad that you took this particular plunge Andy. I've been looking at a somewhat similar version labeled, E. Howard & Co. Instead of pushers, it has an indented button on the side opposite the crown. I haven't looked for instructions yet but I'm considering it. the E. Howard version has Arabic numbers rather than Roman numerals but otherwise the dials are very similar. Curiosity may yet win out again. Nice job of getting yours operating again.

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If you look closely, you can see the module has two other pusher tabs on the opposite side to the working ones.
One appears to do a full reset, but the other doesn't actually make contact with a track on the PCB.

I suspect there are Chinese manufacturers that produces multiple variants of these module, with different features. 

The version I have seems to be a MSF 60kHz only version, but there appears to be a German 77.5kHz DCF77 version, or at least a similar watch. 

The large coil you can see in the picture looks like the receiver coil, rather than the movement coil. There appear to be pads for a second capacitor next to it, so perhaps if you add that, it changes the operating frequency (but you would also need the 77.5kHz firmware presumably).

It obviously keeps very good time, agreeing with my laptop (which is on Internet/NTP time), to the second. It took a couple of hours to get a decent "fix", and it appears that the only way to set the date is to actually get an MSF fix.

You can set the time and time zone, and the hands without actually syncing with MSF. It also has an alarm, which I may try to figure out later.

After it sync'ed up with MSF it seems to be working fine. It will be interesting to see how long the battery lasts.

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More from the pile of random that I have accumulated in my search for interesting time pieces.

This was in the "throw it in the bin" pile, as fitting a fresh battery earlier did nothing.

I thought I'd give it one last chance, and applied a tiny amount of oil to the ends of the pinions I could see next to the battery. I turned it over and off it went, so I freshened it up and stuck it on a vintage strap (also freshened up and looking like new).

The 404 club welcomes another member.  Now I think I'll go back to trying to fix the Citizen Crystron that came with it..

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I'm slowly working my way through all of the recent accusations. 

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Today's watch of today a USSR Sekonda, which needed some major hairspring massaging, and the removal of every bodies favorite bicycle chain restorer (WD40). It says USSR, so it is clearly pre-1991 but its exact age, I don't know.

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It will need a crystal, but it is now ticking along nicely. Another one for the club.

I seem to be monopolizing this thread somewhat, has anybody else recently picked up something nice to inspire us with?

Edited by AndyHull
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