Seiko 7A38 - by the numbers

It's not as if I didn't already have enough of a backlog, in the way of part-finished projects, dismantled watches awaiting re-builds. 

So I've just gone and taken on another one.  

I bought this Lassale 7A54-7009 pocket watch on eBay last week:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/261162371572

Montre de gousset LASSALE 7A54-7009

Montre de gousset dans son coffret LASSALE mouvement a quartz 7a54-7009

chrono ,dateur, phase de lune...chaine et etiquette du 25/6/1986 prix 6800francs

etat neuf ,mais ne fonctionne pas

dimension: hors beliere 4,3 cm sur 4,3 epaisseur 0,9 environ

The 30 minute sub-dial hand is missing (there may possibly be some hand removal tool marks) and the seller stated that it didn't work.

You only needed to look at the previous sales in the French seller's feedback (and recently ended auctions) to see that he deals in pocket watches. I suspected he'd attempted to repair it himself (and failed), so I asked the $64K question - Had the movement ever suffered from damage by a leaking battery ? His reply was straight-forward enough.

"il y a bien une pile qui a fuit qui a fait des degats a l'interieur."

So why did I knowingly buy a 7Axx with potentially unrepairable battery acid damage ?

.... especially when (as some of you may have read) I already owned one of these obscure Lassale branded Seiko 7Axx curios:

http://www.thewatchforum.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=69340

Which unless you are a pocket watch / albert aficionado and waistcoat wearer are about as much use as a Christmas tree decoration:

Well there were a couple of reasons. 

Firstly, it came in the original two-tone alcantara covered (very 1980's) Lassale presentation box, complete with its price tag, which is always nice to have. My first 7A54-7009 currently lives in a (cotton wool padded) cardboard trinket box and I'd been on the lookout for something better to keep it in. What better than an original box ? I'd already noticed from the seller's photos, that things didn't look quite right in the area of the hinge - they're not. The back part of the box has come unglued. But that should be easily remedied.

Secondly, although not working, the one I've just bought is fitted with the correct short (6" long) chain and belt clip - Seiko p/n B1296C.

I had my suspicions that the chain on my first one wasn't original confirmed, when I saw another on eBay in the States in May last year.

The listing (item #150817204259) has long since disappeared into the ether, but I managed to find the feedback left by the buyer:

Mine has the correct belt clip, but had been fitted with a much longer (17") chain - for reasons best known to the previous owner.

Thirdly, my first one, although in very well cared for condition, complete with case-back sticker still in place, had obviously been worn.

You need to look closely, but there are one or two minor nicks on the bezel and some chain link marks on the underside of the bow.

So worst case, if I'm unable to repair the movement in the new one, which externally is mint, I can swap the movement from my first.

This thread may turn out to be rather shorter than I thought. 

The watch was delivered to my place of work, earlier today and I hadn't really had a chance to look at it closely.

I wasn't planning to tackle it till the weekend. But the prospect of finding irreparable battery acid damage inside was too much to bear.

I don't think I've posted any photos of a Seiko 7A54A movement before on this forum, but like the Jean Lassale Thalassa 7A74 ....

The movement back-plate, chrono' sweep second bridge and positive battery terminal plate in the Lassale 7A54 are all gold anodized.

After what the seller had told me, in reply to my eBay question, I had visions of finding a horrible corroded mess inside. 

So impatience got the better of me and earlier this evening I tentatively unscrewed the six screws which hold on the back cover, to find:

There's some tarnishing of the battery positive plate and the negative terminal has some battery acid sulphate deposits on it. That's it.

It doesn't look like he's made any attempt to clean the negative terminal, nor is there any evidence of any previous clean-up operation.

Rather than risk cleaning up the battery connections in situ and the chance of the tiniest bit of gunge dropping into the movement, I removed the back-plate and battery terminals and cleaned them separately. The PCB underneath was spotless, incidentally. I used a tiny piece of (dried out) Brasso 'Duraglit' wadding to carefully rub away the tarnish marks from the battery positive plate - working very gently so as to lose the minimum of gold plating. The finished result was slightly more polished than original. But as no-one else is ever going to see it but me, I can live with that. Note the 7A54A battery terminal plate is stamped SEIKO TIME CORP - not (Jean) LASSALE.

Fitted it all back together, and popped in a new Renata #394 battery and away it went.

Probably the easiest clean-up operation / fix (if you can call it that) I've ever had to do.

Needless to say it ran faultlessly through the night, without losing a second. Result ? 

This morning I turned my attention to the other side. I couldn't understand why the 30 minute counting sub-dial hand was missing, but there was evidence (light marks on the dial) which clearly show that it had been removed, as opposed to having fallen off. To facilitate removal of the front bezel, there is a 'thumbnail slot' on its underside near 9 o'clock, where you can insert a tool. There are light case knife marks on the gold plating of the main case body in this area. So I suspect the French seller may have tried to open the case this way, from the front (as one might with a 'traditional' pocket watch). Nothing that won't 'buff right out', with a bit of dry Brasso, methinks. 

I'll openly admit that I was mildly panicking (quite needlessly, as it turned out) before I opened up the watch - in case I needed to order any parts. Yes the 7A54A is, in effect, nothing more than a lightly modified 7A48A movement in a pocket watch case, but if you actually needed to find part numbers for specific spares, you might run into difficulties. Sadly, like quite a few other 7Axx's on Seiko Oceania's database, the 7A54-7009 is another model where most of the parts data has 'gone walkabout'.

Fortunately the missing sub-dial hand isn't a 'special', nor particularly difficult to identify. It's a Seiko p/n 04E14AL - as used on the 7A48-5000 and also a good number of 7A38 models, from the 7A38-6090 right through to the 7A38-7289. I've got a few spare. 

Unfortunately, it isn't going to be just a simple matter of replacing the missing hand. 

Whoever removed it (and I use that term advisedly) has broken off the tiny hand mounting spigot on the end of the gear shaft ! 

It wasn't until I came to try and fit the hand, that I realized all I could see left of the gear shaft was below the level of the dial face. 

So tomorrow, I'll be dismantling the 30 minute chrono' bridge. Hopefully there won't be any other damage as the result of his efforts.

Bloody ham-fisted amateurs !! 

Which of course takes me back to 3 weekends ago, when I was working on a 7A48-7000 (my first 7A48) belonging to a work colleague.

http://www.seiko7a38.com/apps/forums/topics/show/8569376-this-weekend-s-7a48-beater-restoration-project-

The gear wheel (with the broken hand spigot) which I'm going to need to replace on my 7A54 is the brass coloured wheel above the 30 minute stator (where the coil has been removed), with (approximately) 40 teeth and two rectangular slots stamped in it. I'd left it in situ when I was replacing the damaged rotor on this 7A48, because the minute counting sub-dial hand was still attached to the other end.

Very much a case of 'Déjà vu' - been there (almost); done that; got the T-shirt.  So it should be fairly easy to identify. Right ? 

I know that I've pointed out some anomolies in the Seiko 7Axx parts lists before. Though it may actually have been in a thread on RLT.

Indeed it was. Found it:  http://www.thewatchforum.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=69105&view=findpost&p=696134 (post #38 on page 4).

So when I was looking up the part number for this gear wheel which I needed to replace, I came across it once again:

The descriptions given in the parts list conflict with part numbers under the illustrations of the two gears. They've been interposed. 

Seiko Oceania's parts list for the 7A48A  movement gives different descriptions again, so is no more help in resolving the anomoly:

It's academic in my case, because I have a spare gear (whichever part number it is 888.731 or 888.732) in my movement bits box.

As you can see, underneath the fancy gold anodised backplate (and the same PCB and '710' spacer), it's pretty much standard 7A48:

Right down to being 'missing' the same date changeover gear (used in a 7A38) which I thought I'd lost when working on that 7A48. 

Here's the two bridges removed, exposing the 30 minute counting gear train (and by default, because you have to remove that bridge first - the 1/10s gear train). As you can see, I also removed the 30 minute coil - two reasons: as a precaution in case of a screwdriver slip and also because it gives improved access to poke the gears into place, when replacing the bridge. This one proved tricky, too.

The 30 minute gear wheel with the broken hand mounting spigot came out cleanly. Here it is on the left, next to one from my bits box. 

I didn't actually use that; I found a better one, but it serves to show the shorter broken shaft. The gear wheel is a shade over 3.0mm Ø.

The backdrop is normal office quality printer paper. I've mentioned to Simon before, it's quite useful as a very mild polishing abrasive.

Here's the 7A54 dial with the 'missing' hand now replaced. It is hitting the marks - it's just a parallax error in my photo, honestly. 

The 7A54 dial / movement measures the normal 7Axx overall diameter of 31.20 millimeters (unlike the 7A07-0010 stop watch).

That's what the 'Customization ?' in my original topic title aluded to. Had I not been able to repair the 7A54's original movement ....

I was considering buying a beater 7A48-7000 / -7009 (much like the one I worked on recently) and fitting one of those into this case.

Then again .... what about a 7A38 pocket watch ? Hmm. 

As there's some decent natural (sun)light this morning, I thought I'd rattle off a few photos of my repaired Lassale 7A54-7009. 

In it's presentation box:

With my previous example (on a non-original chain, to the right):

This one has a 4Nxxx case-back serial number (November 1984), whereas my previous example is 4Dxxxx (December 1984).

This bears out what I'd written previously in the Jean Lassale Thalassa Quartz Chronograph - the missing 7Axx thread about:

However, although Seiko used the Lassale brand name to manufacture and market 'higher end' dressy quartz watches themselves,

it would appear that a Jean Lassale (Genève) branding / operation continued in parallel - producing 'seriously upmarket' watches.

Others have written elsewhere that Seiko created the LASSALE brand in response to the failure of their Jean 'L' Lassale brand to meet expectations. But the Jean Lassale Thalassa 7A74's didn't go on sale until the mid-1980's. So it's clear they were running production of both at the same time and in the case of at least one part - the gold anodised chrono' seconds bridge, using shared components.

The Seiko LASSALE brand was pitched to be more affordable than their luxury Jean 'L' Lassale, however they were still expensive -

carrying a hefty premium in retail pricing over the equivalent Seiko models.

Excuse the bits of lint it picked up (from being in the presentation box for a previous shot) that I couldn't be arsed to brush off.

Note the bulk of the stampings are towards the bottom part of the case-back - leaving the upper two thirds clear for engraving.

Here's the price tag that came with it:

Note the hand-written date: 25-6-86 and price 6800F.

Now if that faded handwriting is genuine, IIRC, in the 1980's there were 10 French Francs to the Pound - so that would be £680 !! 

France fixed the value of the Franc against the Euro at 6.55957 on December 31 1998, which equates to over 1000 Euros today. 

No wonder Seiko didn't sell many of these quirky quartz pocket watch chrono's.