Long time lurker and have been after one a while now. In a late night fit of "want that one" I threw in a lowish offer and surprisingly won
Was then worried it might not work despite the vague description saying it did. Often a seller isn't aware of all the potential failures...
While it was making its way I said I'd try to be an optimist and ordered a sapphire crystal and gaskets.
I was happily surprised when it arrived as everything was as described with crisp buttons and full functionality.
Nice! No leaky battery or corrosion and thankfully free of fingerprints. Case back was finger tight tho
Gasket was nipped.
Immaculate beautiful dial. Puts Seiko of today to shame imo with their pressed indices and somewhat garish designs.
I was tempted to pull and re-lume the hr and min hand as despite it not appearing degraded its performance in terms of lume is pants, almost nill in fact.
After thinking about I decided I need to chill, it's nearly 39 years old and besides, I'm not going to go at the indices so there would be an obvious mismatch there. Leave the dial and hands original.
While I was faffing trying to get a nice even start with placing the crystal I had the bracelet fizzing out a gross ooze of the previous owners ample dna
He included a single spare link so that made a total of 22 links. I put ten links off 6 o'clock side and twelve off the 12 o'clock side if you get me. Unfortunately I also had to add a 16mm clasp extender as I've a thick wrist, but the main thing is the watch head and clasp were nicely placed.
Despite my best efforts the crystal was very slightly crooked by the time I was half way installed. I like to do small incremental presses and rotate the watch head 90 degrees to combat this and have a great record using this method but I resorted to using a much smaller die to locally press the high point slowly to flush. Once corrected I used the 29mm die and brought her home flat as a pancake.
Excuse the terminator propping it up but here's the fruits of my fifteen minutes of flapping. I'll press it one last press again tomo for final seating. This crystal is 0.05mm thinner than stock I believe. I specd a small chamfer on top and a micro one on the bottom to aid seating it.
Now began the torturous dust eradication palaver. I''m full blown rainman re this craic using a bright torch underneath to identify microscopic dust particles and various methods of ridding the crystal of them. Cousins do a nice Bergeon rip off cleaning pen that I use with some lint free cloths straight from the washing machine and of course, mister squeezie blowie. Dial gets the same treatment with them sticky stick dohickeys.
I aligned the chapter ring and cased the movement, new lubed seal and gave it the back and forth as it just seating (to not nip it) and tightened her home.
It's a beauty imo. Delighted to finally have one, even if it's not luming!
I asked for lots of clear AR coats on the underside and tbh the only way I can improve it in these stakes is if I got him to coat both sides for that spooky invisible crystal effect, but the coating is prone to scratching on the top side so that'll do pig as he says.
I don't mind the clasp extender as it's no longer than the folding part of the clasp, have them on most my watches.
How bad have you been bitten by the bug? 