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So this is a special watch, my buddy bought it for his Dad while in Afghanistan, one of the last watches he purchased while over there. His dad loves this watch, has worn it probably every single day for the last 10yrs. So when he noticed it was not happy, losing a few minutes every day he figured he needed to get it serviced and mentioned it to his son and he suggested that I might do it for him.

He was right! lol This is one of the first serious watches I've gotten my hands on. I say serious, I've had a number of ETA, FHF, and the like but never someone elses watch. I take that back, I did "service" a coworkers Omega Dive quartz, not quite the same, but a nice watch none the less. This being a full on mechanical automatic was really cool though. I loved that it wasn't complicated, I mean it was but not in a bad way, the thing I appreciated the most was no evil springs in "what the actual...!?" places, nothing escaped to Narnia, it was thoroughly enjoyable from my perspective. I got to spend about 8-10 hours total on this. The bracelet was particularly grungy and required some effort to get all the schmutz out of it and between the links. The spring bars were shot so I've ordered new ones. Thats a monday problem, for now tho, its back together, we're seeing about 280 amplitude, we're now loosing 0-8 seconds a day vs 120 and 0- beat error. I'd say this thing is really happy now and his Dad will get another 5-10 years of service before it needs another spa day lol.

Finally finished my Hamilton, I came across a case on eBay recently and well... the rest is history. I'm sure I upset someone that day but I completed this thing and I'm thrilled to be able to wear it now. It keeps amazing time, as well as any of my regular automatics.

My 1920s Hamilton 986A

This little tank is built around Hamilton’s 986A, a 6/0‑size, 17‑jewel hand‑wind movement that Hamilton used in its first generation of non‑military wristwatches in the mid‑1920s. The 986/986A started life as a small pendant‑watch calibre and then got cased up as ladies’ and early unisex wristwatches when Hamilton realized the wristwatch fad wasn’t going away.

Production on the 986A runs roughly from the early 1920s to about 1926, before Hamilton replaced it in new models with the 987 family. It’s a compact movement—about 6/0s / 11¼ lignes—so most cases are small cushion or tank shapes that wear like today’s “vintage dress” pieces rather than modern sport watches.

My watch is a bit of a Frankenstein‑in‑spirit but period‑correct:

The movement started as a dead 986A I pulled from a batch of junk for a few bucks, then I scavenged missing parts from a cheap 986 donor and brought it back to life.

The case is a late‑1920s Hamilton tank originally meant for a 987, but the 986A fits perfectly and keeps the whole thing in the right era.

After a full strip‑down, clean, oil, and regulation, it now runs consistently within roughly 0–10 seconds per day with low beat error and strong amplitude in multiple positions—better than plenty of modern watches.

I kept the original aged crystal—polished from 1500 up to 12,000 grit and finished with Novus—to preserve the soft crazing and slight yellowing instead of making it look brand new. The dial has gentle patina, the hands are original and imperfect, and that’s kind of the point: it looks like a 1920s watch that’s actually lived, not a museum piece.

So I recently purchased a lovely basket case Benrus Sea Lord, it was part of a lot which was actually cool. most of the watches in the lot are rubbish but still, worth cracking open to see what makes them go. I serviced my first ever pin lever from this batch, and that brings us to the Sovereign. This is quite honestly the cheapest watch I think I've ever seen, the housing is aluminum and feels toyish. It's old, the lacqure has yellowed quite a bit as well as the crystal which has a large crack in it and its open exposing the dial. This thing had not been treated well in it's past life. That makes me a little sad, it's still a watch and it's quite obvious that nobody loved it. Someone had tried to revive it at some point and well doused it with oil that ultimately turned to varnish, cleaning this thing was a chore. Several trips through the ultrasonic and I still had to scrub some things by hand. The movement was completely frozen. At least there was no corrosion. The thing that surprised me, this was a Swiss pin lever with a single jewel, which I believe is on the balance. The other thing that didn't bode well for the little swiss pin lever… the hair spring was grenaded, like… toasty toast. So what we have here is a totally wrecked swiss pin lever with a ruined balance, sounds perfect!

I must be seriously crazed. I spent a good portion of last night painstakingly straightening this hairspring which was also horribly out of flat. I struggle to fix out of flat because if my brain understands this, you have a twist in the spring, and trying to twist a hairspring… you might as well try to give your cat a bath. If your cat likes water, that's not a good analogy but you get my drift. Anyhow just about the time I got the hairspring fairly straightened the end broke off… not to be deterred… I pulled it apart further, cut off half a loop? basically I cut off the seriously damaged section and then tried to reattach the hairspring anchor and pin it. That was a fiasco, needless to say the tiny and I do mean tiny pin used to pin the spring in place launched from my tweezers never to be seen again, so I grabbed the only thing I could find that I had on hand to work with, about 1/4" of copper resister leg from a very small bag of resistors. Needless to say it was about 3x too thick so I stoned it down till it fit. I got it in and pinned and well here we are.

So I had a reaaaaaly long day. I woke up at about 2:30am and couldn't sleep. Got up around 3:30 because T wanted scrambled eggs and she hasn't been sleeping either so there ya go.

Tonight after working out and feeding all the critters I needed something I could just kind of mindlessly work on. So from the pile of mystery junk I grabbed what I determined was probably a Timex pin lever and sure enough that's exactly what it is. It matches the movement from another little Timex that I worked on the other day, the movement is unmistakable, unremarkable and honestly, I'm shocked that they work.

So I pulled it all apart, tossed it in the ultrasound with some liquinox and let her rip. I pulled the dial after a few minutes because it's already badly faded nobody needs a blank dial. I was surprised that nothing more had come off of it, I fully expected it to go from bad to well, it was a watch... but essentially no change other than the corrosion on the back of the dial was now gone. I blew it off and dried it, set it aside, pulled everything out of the ultrasonic after 10min, rinsed, isopropyl dunk and warm air dried everything. Polished the crystal for a few moments with just what was on the cloth, wow, the crystal is actually really clear now, the image basically shows the dial in all its glory, or what's left of it. The ultrasonic did a fantastic job removing the wrist cheese from the case, it's nearly spotless. There is some corrosion on the back but it's not visible and doesn't affect wear so we'll run with it. The striking thing for me is the sunburst dial... is shockingly in tact, yeah the printing is wrecked but you can still kinda see the numerals. The date wheel totally self destructed so I just pitched it. I lubricated everything, gave what passes for keyless works some grease and put it all back together.

I wanted to include this in the other post but I guess you can't do that, oh well. Here's my refreshed Belforte Automatic, sporting what is essentially a Seiko 6619, which was Seiko's first movement with a quickset date adjuster. Belforte's internal model for these guys is 12D1B8, so if you happen to have one and can't find much info, fear not, the 6619's are virtually identical.

So I finished the service and put it back in the case, confirmed that the quickset for the date is working properly now and figured out why it wasn't working before so that was cool. Everything is back together and in the case, I re-attached the bracelet that came with it since its not in bad shape other than the plating is worn off quite a bit down the middle which mutes the two tone-ness of it which I don't mind.

I sent pictures to my buddy who has basically claimed it lol. So a bit of info about this watch, This is a Belforte, a Benrus house brand. This is likely 60's - 70's vintage and in fantastic shape for its age and market placement. The movement, an automatic with day and date wheels and quickset for the date wheel. The movement is a 12D1B8, which... is a very very (nearly identical) close cousin of the Seiko 6619. I originally got this for myself as I think it's quite handsome, but my buddy can't live without it so I guess I'll sell it to him. If I can find a pallet fork I will rebuild the donor that I purchased for this that ended up not needing parts, so I have another one almost exactly like this one except it's branded Olympian. Same 12D1B8 movement. One of the tines on the pallet fork is broken off but that seems to be the only thing wrong with the donor so, I don't know we'll see, I do really like this watch, if I can find another one with a nice dial I might just grab it, or a wrecked one with a serviceable pallet fork I will save the Olympian. Well see.

Hope you're staying warm out there!

Just a quick post today, no pictures, maybe tomorrow. I had a decent weekend at the bench. One of the movements I was working on the shock jewel escaped from the balance cock and I had no idea where it went to grabbed my light and went looking for it and ...found the spring for the Belforte, woohoo, now I have all the parts for that AND a full donor so I may have to see about re-casing the donor, we'll see how well it runs.

Yesterday my ratchet wheel springs for the Omega 484's came in so today I finished the keyless side and what not on the first one, running well, and then assembled the second one, cleaning the parts, polishing a few bits and that one is running too. Seems to be really in good shape so I will finish the keyless tomorrow and see what's what. I may start on the other Omegas I have a 481 and 483 that are complete Ladies cocktail watches. The wife was eyeballing them when I opened the package so she knows what's up.

I plan to give her the nicer of the two and probably see if I can flip the other one and recoup some tool $. I also have a super nice stainless steel Elgin ladies cocktail that I got for my daughter that I want to service and give her because she's the best.

Watch thoughts...

I started working on my Belforte this week. This is a very pretty automatic with day and date wheels. It's got a 12D1B8 movement in it which even under my microscope I initially thought it was 12D188. Took me a minute to find any meaningful data on it but once I figured out this is actually a Seiko 6619 well... now we're onto something.

The quickset doesn't work, the crown pulls out to the normal positions but it doesn't seem to do anything. It ran fine but it was losing time so I knew I was going to be working on it sooner or later. I decided to see if there was a movement stamp under the date wheels since I wasn't finding much on the misread movement number. Removing the day wheel showed me that evil springs were lurking, but worse... they weren't in a position that I could readily see how they were held down. Needless to say due to my lack of familiarity with the movement, the date adjust spring escaped to Narnia. I was so upset about it because I really like this watch, I don't know what happened but all sense was lost and I just stripped it down the rest of the way, I only took a couple pictures. What was I thinking?!

Well after a couple days I went back to it, I actually found the spring about 7ft from my bench, what are the odds? Still didn't know what movement I was dealing with at this point I thought I've had my hands on enough watches I can do this. Sure enough miracle of miracles I got it back together, taking my time, thinking through each part of the watch, at least I didn't completely tear it down to every last screw. I did leave the automatic winder in one piece. I did a quick clean in lighter fluid, quick inspection of pivots and what not, things looked reasonable. I'm still surprised I got it back together but of course the very last spring to go into the movement is the day wheel centering lever spring, just a little horseshoe shaped SOB. I almost had it and in the blink of an eye... gone. I swept the room with my magnet and found 4 other tiny screws but no spring. Oh well life goes on. I managed to source another movement that is whole and complete so I should be able to document that one very carefully and worst case steal the spring from that one, or more likely I've got a flat spring from another movement that gave it's life to science that will work. I also got an assortment of similar shaped watch springs from eBay so one way or another I'm going to have this guy back together and running.

I guess it just shows that with every successful tear down and reassembly I'm getting better. I'm not always successful at resolving issues, but I learn something from each movement. Every time I have to pull those tiny shock jewel retainers off and clean and oil the jewels and I don't lose them, confidence builds. A buddy of mine recently showed me something that I might have to try to build, an assembly tent to work in and catch springs and things trying to escape. Might be worth the effort if it stops things from escaping my bench.

My little Benrus is back together fully serviced and lubricated. I love that moment when you slip the balance in and it springs to life. Seeing this little guy running once again makes me happy. Maybe Ill find a case for it and actually be able to wear it someday.

This was likely made in the 1940-1950’s. 17 jewel ETA 467 based AX movement with sub seconds at 6 o’clock.

I was asking GPT about something as I assembled this Benrus this afternoon and my cats won't leave me alone so in jest I asked it to tell my cats the following; would you please tell my cats that I can't pet them right now, cat hair in my work isn't helping :P

This was it's reply, I had a good laugh.

You two fuzzy goblins need to listen up: the human’s hands are off‑limits for a bit.

Message to the cats

There are tiny, shiny, extremely losable parts on the bench right now that do not mix well with murder‑mittens.

Cat hair is not an approved horological lubricant, shock system, or balance spring upgrade, no matter how much you shed it.

Practical truce proposal

You get: a warm human lap and maximum scritches after the balance is ticking and the caseback is on.

Human gets: 60–90 minutes of no tails, no paws, and no stealth jumps onto the work mat.

I recently purchased what I thought would be a fun project on ebay. The seller couldn't find it after I paid for it so they refunded me the purchase price and gifted me a Lord Elgin 770 as a "sorry about that" along with another movement that I will crack open later. I wanted to get into this Elgin sooner than later because it has water damage and well... it's not good.

At first I thought I was going to save it but at this point its more about finding a donor movement with better guts. I will say that I did manage to save the balance and a number of the gear train but the destruction is pretty extensive. There is a screw in the keyless works that is fused to the plate, I destroyed several screw driver tips trying to get it loose. The barrel arbor is toast, the bottom of it was fused to the main plate. No idea if the mainspring is salvageable that would be nice. Some of the gems will become spares and what not. I'll post up pictures of what it looks like once I get the gear train separated from the center section. The stem, and keyless works, clutch and all are pretty well toast. I soaked it in rust remover, 2 trips to the ultrasonic cleaner and a lot of the schmutz is gone but that just revealed more cancer and missing teeth and other damage.

At this point I'm looking for a donor movement. There are a few on ebay, I went a little nuts the other day and bought a couple lady's Omega's with 48x movements because I murdered my 484 but that's a post for another day. Suffice it to say, ladies movements are frickin insanely small. I thought the pallet fork was in and slowly tightened the little bridge down that holds it and *crunch* pivot smashed :( If you have never taken apart a movement of this size, I don't know if you can appreciate the smallness. We're talking stuff so small that fleas be like "it's too small I can't see it..." like screws half the size of a sesame seed. Like impossibly small. The 484 makes the bigger mens size movements feel massive in comparison.

Anyhow, that's all for today. Happy New Years! I hope to turn over a new leaf this year and actually post more stuff.