Two and a half years ago, I won a Yahoo Japan auction for a lot of seven watches, all but one of which at least of passing interest to me.  Regular readers of this blog may recognise three of this magnificent seven as having received some attention from me, the results of which have been posted as entries here (and here and here).  Two of the three finished projects have since found new owners (the King Seiko 5626 and the Seikomatic) and the one watch from this group that held no real interest for me, the 8T63 quartz chronograph in the centre, I sold on eBay in the same (working) con ..read more

Anyone who has experience working with a variety of different watch movement calibres will be familiar with the benefits and shortcomings of the universal watch movement holder.  For many of the modern Swiss movements, such as those made by ETA, Omega, Unitas and Rolex, dedicated movement holders are available that properly support the movement in either of its dial up or dial down orientations.  Whether the investment in such tools is worthwhile will depend on how frequently you find yourself working on a particular calibre and so for many watchmakers, tinkerers and fettlers, a conv ..read more

In sweeping up a few loose ends from the past few months of behind-the-scenes activity, this brief entry documents a point of arguably insignificant interest but which may provide some useful enlightenment to folk employing the services of the Seiko Instruments NH36 workhorse in self-build or modified watch projects.  My recent experiences with the day/date NH36 and date-only NH35 movements have highlighted a singular hazard of adapting the former for use with date-only dials.  In one or two of my recent self-build projects, I have modified NH36’s by removing the day disk along with ..read more

This past year has been a particularly busy one in my day job, leaving less disposable time to spend footling around with watches.  However, I have been able to keep things ticking along, with one serious project generally on the go at any one time and a post documenting what I’ve been up to every two or three (or four!) months.  With less time to spend on the serious stuff, some of you may have noticed that I have been keeping myself amused by indulging my long-dormant interest in watch-modding.  Where my interest in the early days lay in the modification of (mostly) vintage wa ..read more

The heart of every mechanical watch movement is the balance, whose purpose is to dispense, piecemeal, the energy stored by the mainspring to the gear train.  It performs this task in a highly regulated fashion, each quantum of energy delivering a precisely-timed incremental motion.  It is vital to the task of marking the progress of time accurately but its role as a regulating middleman is singular.  This basic function has been served in every lever escapement mechanical watch and clock movement from the mid-1800s to the present day.  However, for a brief period between ab ..read more

One of my longest-lived watches is a grab ‘n’ go beater, a bastardised aggregation of disconnected parts that came together over 10 years ago to yield a pretty coherent watch.  In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that it’s a beautiful thing, exuding the kind of delicious soft patina that engenders warm glows of satisfaction.  The various components derived from an assortment of mismatched junkers whose confused identities included affiliations with four different Seiko models: 6309-8019; 6309-7150; 7009-8590 (maybe); and 6319-8000. The standout component was the dial, a starburst ..read more

If you have ever used a timegrapher to measure the timing of a mechanical watch, you will have come across the term ‘lift angle’. In a Swiss lever escapement, the lift angle defines the arc that the balance impulse jewel sweeps between its initial contact with the notch in the pallet fork and the point that it breaks contact on the other side. The timegrapher measures the rate at which the watch is running by recording the timing of the sounds that the escapement makes as the balance wheel, pallet fork and escape wheel perform their synchronised dance.   The machine has a sensitive ..read more

I currently have comfortably more than 50 completed projects, quite a number of which rarely worn. 50+ watches is frankly far too many and something has to give. What you see below are nine that I’ve selected for sale, with probably at least as many again that I could be persuaded to part with. The photographs below link to the original blog posts and the condition as shown in the ‘after’ shots in those articles is in every case, representative of the condition of the watches today. More information (now including prices and updates on availability) can be found in the ‘For Sale’ tab found at ..read more

In part 1, we made our introductions and rendered one rather beautiful Citizen Ace Parawater into its constituent parts.  Most of our attention in part 1 has concerned the movement and so let us now turn our spotlight onto the case.  This being an early example of a Parawater, Citizen’s first waterproof watch, it seems fitting that we should attempt to imbue it with some degree of water resistance, at the very least sufficient to resist day-to-day splashes and unintentional dunks.  To achieve this, we need to attend to two areas:  shoring up the defences against water ingre ..read more

Although the title of this blog does not identify its main source of horological inspiration, it is fair to say that by a comfortable, indeed overwhelming, margin, the focus of attention for this watch fettler has been vintage Seiko watches dating from the period 1959 to about 1979.  The documented exploration herein of the riches of Seiko output from this wonderful period is saved from complete one-track-mindedness by regular forays into other pastures that have included content featuring watches from Breitling, CWC, Girard-Perregaux, Omega, Rolex, Silvana, Tudor, Orient and Citizen as w ..read more