The unanswered question - 6309 bezel grip types

[seikoholic]

A while ago at TOF I posted about this subject, but got almost no traction on it.

6309 divers have two kinds of milling on their rotating rings (aka "bezels") - the standard kind I call "pointy" bezels, and then the other kind which has more shallow indents and as such you can really see that the starting shape of the initial cut - two rings.  I call these "ring" bezels.  Does anyone have any information or speculation about the two kinds?  Early?  Late?  Different productions eg Suwa or Hong Kong?  Anyone? 

Stoph has this well-photographed example, so I thought I'd borrow his shots to talk about it.  

[WatchDawg]

I'm so far from an expert witness but I've been of the impression that one of them has more of a taper between the upper and lower ring . . . I thought this was an example of the taper, now I look it again, I might just be on drugs . . . or need to get back on them.

[lucilinburhuc]

If I find the time, I will dive into my 6309 parts and try to take some pics, I have used and nos ones. If we have the different ones documented, we can try to check first owner 6309's and see in which year Seiko used what kind of bezel I once created a topic about this on another forum   but so many nice information created by members was lost there. We also had topics about original boxes/papers, straps etc, most of it hasn't been saved.

Ron

[seikoholic]

the difference is how deeply the vertical cuts are made in the horizontal rings.  In the "ring" variety, the cut is only deep enough to be level with the bottom of the gap between the two horizontal rings.  In the "Point" variety, the vertical machining is deep enough to create a single channel that goes below the level of the bottom of the gap.  They're clearly two different designs - one is a tweak of the other.  I suspect the first "ring" type is earlier but I don't have any info to back that up.

[estrickland]

Damn it.

I have a beautiful example of the second type, with the slightly beveled and shallow cut rings, and I FAR prefer the OP's version.

The bezel edge has always been the one thing I don't like about the 6309, and lo and behold there is another verison which is awesome.

I think my watch is now ruined. Aaargh.



A question for the group, this bezel looks like the OP's type - agree?


While this top shot looks like the second type -