New 'Life' for an old GLOWING Sturmanskie!

A fellow local enthusiast entrusted me with seeing what could be done with his dad's old 'First Moscow Watch Co.' Sturmanskie. It looked rather rough, and would only run intermittently:



Oh, and, BTW, it's most definitely a '50s. My Geiger counter has never screamed so loud 😲...

I guess those cold-war Russian watch-makers loved their radium!

Anyway, I grabbed a lead-lined vault 😉, threw it in there, and drove to my watchmaker in Atlanta:

Pretty amazing what a new crystal can do, especially on a visually interesting dialed watch.

He also did a complete service, lube, and regulation, and it's running quite nicely, with amplitudes in the 200's and timekeeping within 25s/day.

This watch is a bit interesting, as it seems to depend on who you talk to as to whether this was truly the watch that cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin wore during his 'First Manned Flight in Space', April 12, 1961.

According to one article in Wikipedia, The Moscow Cosmonaut Museum claims it has the correct watch, which is a Pobeda; then another Wiki article says Gagarin wore the Sturmanskie, and the Pobeda was the one sent up on a dog's collar in the test before Gagarin's flight.

Seems most internet references mention the Sturmanskie as correct, like this one:

http://watchescorner.blogspot.com/2007/08/first-watch-in-space.html

Wanted to add that I updated my original post with the mention that this Sturmanskie set a new 'Dude' record for Geiger counter readings :

This watch beat out all of the readings of the other 35 radium-dialed watches that I own.

This includes (in descending order of intensity) Enicar Seapearls, Zodiac SeaWolfs, West End, Rolex, Cyma WWW, Hamilton, Mido, Zenith, Longines, Omega, Marvin, JLC, Benrus, Movado, and others...

Off the scale in coolness factor as well. 🥰