Hi all,

My name is Melvin, 36 years old, from the Netherlands. A teacher and translator during the day and a watch/comics/baseball geek during my free time. I'm not much of a collector though I have some watches that I love, including the watch from my late granddad and an '84 Speedy 145.002.

I like the technical aspect of watches the most and I'm also a passionate hobby watchmaker. I don't think I'll post a lot but I'll try to chime in every now and then and post about an Omega that I pulled to bits.

This is an Omega dress watch from 1975. It was gifted to a Mr. Ray H. Cline to commemorate his 35 years of service at the Edison Institute.



It has an Omega 625 under the hood which is only 17.5 mm in diameter. The ref is 511.0404 and the 5 at the beginning suggests a ladies' piece but it was a gift for a man. I suppose it had the same dimensions as a Cartier tank at the time so it's not that strange.

The movement didn't run at all so it needed to be serviced and possibly repaired.

Here, you can see the wheel train and the barrel. When I lifted the center wheel, I noticed that it was stuck to the third wheel with a drop of hardened oil or grease. That'll jam the wheels and stop the movement from running.



This the empty bottom plate/dial side and you can see some sort of caked dirt around the edges. It looks to be some sort of oil as well. Looks like someone overoiled it at some point and lubrication started to leak and form puddles.



This is the movement after I cleaned all parts in the watch cleaning machine and placed the wheel train and the 3/4 plate bridge back in position.



There were no further problems although the Inca spring of the bottom plate did ping away after I opened it. I searched online for a bit and it seems that the spring of the 625 is notorious for doing this so, lesson learned for the next time. I was able to reinstall it with a cocktail stick and my tweezers.

I hope it's ok to include a link to a clip on YouTube that shows the running movement after the service. It's quite small but it's still quite powerful with an amplitude of 307 degrees and accurate with a rate of -2 sec a day.

Till next time!

 

Welcome to the Forum!

I too service my watches, and really enjoy it. There are members that are really knowledgeable in servicing watches and also very generous with their time (groan... pun) in providing help to amateurs like us.

In the first picture there appears to be some dust getting inside the case and landing on the dial. Was this before service?

Your watch is not common on the forum -it's a refreshing change from all the Seamasters and Speedmasters. The strap is a perfect fit too!

 

Thanks! What you see is some sort of tarnishing of the varnish which was already there when I got it. It's more obvious in certain light angles.