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noelekal
··Home For Wayward Watches
I joined the Forum a couple of days back and took delivery on this Ebay purchase the next day. This Zodiac Sea Wolf was acquired for not much cash outlay, a victim of both neglect and murky auction photography, as may be seen in the three photos above.
I've been intrigued by the Zodiac Sea Wolf for a long time. A Zodiac Rotographic resides here and has been a good, dependable automatic watch for many years. A second Rotographic was acquired for cheap as a spare for parts but it also runs fine, though not serviced. It would appear that the various vintage Zodiac models are good choices for a collection, dependable and with their own characteristic styling. After owning a couple and giving a third Rotographic acquisition to a watch collecting friend, the Zodiac became a watch for me to pay attention to.
Ongoing internet research had me hoping an early Sea Wolf would come up some day and this one does meet the characteristics of a really early one if the internet information may be believed. It has no date feature, something I heartily cheer as I don't like date features. It has no hacking feature, the hacking feature said to have been added not too long after the model was originally introduced. The hour and minute hand do not feature the characteristic line running the length of these hands, dividing the illumination feature. The bulk of the 50's-60's Sea Wolf production features the split lumed hands except for the really early ones.
This Sea Wolf came in a gray, grimy condition with a battered, scratched, and dull crystal but running and keeping time (probably 5 minutes slow over 24 hours). This movement is loud and sounds like a threshing machine but also sounds purposeful. Some time was spent carefully going over the watch, polishing the crystal which came out much improved. After rehab'ing the surface of the crystal the dial looked much better in person. It's surfaces are quite nice. The original lume is deader 'n a door nail though. The watch was set out in the sun for 10 minutes while I was doing a chore. A dark interior bathroom revealed no glow whatsoever.
I had thought that perhaps the dial might be re-lum'ed but apparently the 12, 3, 6, and 9 numerals are printed over the original lume so that there is no really good way to go about re-luming an original Sea Wolf dial.
After spending perhaps 45 minutes on the crystal I was pleased with the results. I've about determined to just leave the dial original. The watch gives a nice appearance as it is when viewed in person. It's not perfect but it's a survivor. I'm delighted with the size of this Sea Wolf diver. Though I'm fairly big, 6'3" and big boned, I don't like large watches; watches having wide bezels, busy with markings, knurling, or numerals. I've never much looked at divers but wanted to add one example to the collection. Because of its size, which is not so gargantuan as modern divers, the original Sea Wolf is endearing to me.
I've not made a decision on what to do for a band. Of course I'll keep an eye out for an original bracelet if I can determine which Zodiac Sea Wolf bracelet would have been sold on this watch. Whether or not the original bracelet would end up on this watch would be at my whim. I'm not too keen on bracelets, only having one watch on a bracelet. If a person went deep sea diving, it wouldn't seem that a bracelet would offer the best security for retaining the watch.
If y'all have any notions about various diving straps and what might look nice and would be serviceable I would welcome the input.
I've never dived, won't be starting now, but would like to have the watch serviced. It would be fun to know that it could operate at 660 foot depths if it needed to.
