Post by takesalickin on Oct 10, 2014 6:50:57 GMT -8
This is - I think - the end of the line for my ongoing watch mod project involving the remains of a couple of watches that have been in my watch box for years.
It all started with a Seiko "poor man's Seamaster" that I bought and gifted to my wife after discovering that it was too small at 36mm for my liking. She, being the Grim Reaper of Watches, only needed a couple of weeks before she sent the PM Seamaster crashing to the sidewalk in an accident that pretty much destroyed the watch's bezel. Amazingly, it still kept time, so into the parts bin it went, in the event that I might someday be able to cannibalize parts from it.
Flash forward a few years, and I happened to buy a Seiko SKX173 at a watch get together from a guy who I am pretty sure thought he was pulling a fast one - because he never mentioned that the 173 wouldn't keep time. When I opened the watch to try to figure out the problem, I could see that the balance spring was out of round and could not be put right. What followed was my first "open heart surgery" as I transplanted the balance spring and bridge from the PM Seamaster into the movement of the 173. I now had one complete watch that ran - and actually ran surprisingly well, considering that the two movements that had supplied parts had suffered from neglect and abuse.
But I've never been a fan of the looks of the 173 even though I acknowledge that it's a classic tool watch. The dial elements just seemed disharmonious with a mishmash of dots and dashes and circles and squares and triangles. I thought I could eventually create a watch that looked, well... more integrated. Like the design elements belonged together. That I was able to do this mostly with parts that I had lying around is a testament to the concept of serendipity. But I think it all worked out very well.
The first thing I did was to transplant the PM Seamaster dial and hour/minute hand into the 173 case. I had an assortment of hands that I had been given by the late Noah Fuller and I found a second hand in there that I thought was a better match to the dial markers than the second hands that had come with either the 173 or the PM Seamaster. The first Iteration of the mod looked like this:
But I still didn't like the bezel insert with its dots matched against the hash marks of the dial and rehaut. I ordered a replacement insert from Jake. That got me to this:
Better, but now it seemed like the whole combination looked too hash mark-y. I toyed with the idea of removing the rehaut and painting it flat black. I photo-shopped my picture to see what that would look like:
When I floated a trial balloon over on the Wallet Friendly forum, DaveM and Johann encouraged me to rethink my next move, suggesting that a plain stainless steel rehaut was the way to go. Fortunately, Noah had given me one of those as well. Now all I needed was a case back/crystal press to get the indexed rehaut out and the new stainless one in. Presses can be had on Ebay pretty cheap and a couple of weeks later, this arrived at my house.
Last night after getting home from work I learned a little about how a Seiko case and crystal all goes together. I got the SS rehaut installed, realized it was polished while most of my watches with SS rehauts have brushed finishes, took everything apart again, brushed the finish on the rehaut, started to put everything together, managed to knock the minute hand loose, took everything apart again, reattached the minute hand, reassembled everything, noticed the second hand was binding on the minute hand (but only very occasionally), took everything apart again, freed up the second hand, and reassembled everything one last time (I really hoped!).
As of this morning the watch seems to be running well and looks to be complete without any hand binding or dust under the crystal or fingerprints on the rotor. I've even installed the old display back from the original PM Seamaster case so the the WR rating on the dial matches that of the case back.
Gentlemen, I give you the result of years of fiddling and tinkering: The Seiko poor man's SKX Seamaster-ish "5" 100M WR sports watch. I'm done. ;-)
*some images shamelessly pilfered from the interwebs
