Hummingbird: A Citizen Tuning Fork Hisonic 3711A from January 1973
Arguably, the two most important innovations in watchmaking are the mechanical lever escapement and the quartz oscillator. The second of …
Author Archives: Martin
A 60’s Seiko/Breitling Chrono Face-off
Two ‘60’s chronographs born two years apart: the older of the two, a youthful upstart; the younger an experienced older …
A 3d-printed watch-cleaning machine
For ten years, watch-parts-cleaning duties have fallen to my trusty Indian-made Pearl-branded watch cleaning machine, a clone of the Elma …
A waterlogged Seiko SKX007 from 2017
The following provides a disappointing insight into the risks of entrusting even the most trivial of tasks to ‘throughput-biased’ service …
Seiko 7016-5000 Monaco Fly-back Chronograph
The mechanical chronograph is arguably the most anachronistic variation on the theme of the mechanical wristwatch and yet it evokes …
A Grand Seiko 5646-7000 from June 1970: the third generation automatic Grand Seiko
The first automatic Grand Seiko was fitted with a refined evolution of the 603 calibre, first introduced with the Seikomatic …
LM Special: a Seiko 5216-8010 from April 1975
The Lord Matic is a very peculiarly ‘of its era’ Japanese name for a sub-brand, and in the absence of …
12 years, 175 posts, 2 million page views
A little over four and a half years ago, I marked the occasion of the one millionth page view of …
A Citizen Promaster 3802-451732 Y Quartz Diver
This is a Citizen Promaster 3802-451732 Y quartz divers watch, probably from 1988. Or 1998 (see discussion below). I am not …
A box fresh Seiko Instruments NH34: unfit for purpose
A reasonable expectation when buying a new movement from a watch materials house is that it will be fit for …
Part 3: A King Seiko J14102E from May 1962
We begin this third instalment with the intake photographs showing the front and rear of the second of our two …
Adventures in Amateur Watch Fettling 