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KaiseRRuby
·Everyone experiences the watch hobby in their own way, and for me, the most fun is finding watches on the Internet or offline that appeal to me and could use some love. And so it was that I came across a watch I had been looking at for a while but rarely offered in good condition, an Omega Seamaster Cosmic reference 196.0196.
The watch eventually ended up on my desk in Utrecht, the Netherlands via Maracay - Caracas- Maiquetia - Panama - Miami - Cincinnati - Brussels - Amsterdam. So: from Venezuela it suddenly got a view like this:
The watch was sold as not working, date and day no longer turning, purely for parts. We'll see about that. This is what the watch looked like when it came in:
So bought it as not working but it does run. Day and date was defective only. Plate looked ugly due to water but it wasn't too bad in the end, so that was lucky. Opened watch together with a watchmaker friend and he quickly saw things were wrong. Crown and tube had been filed off and sort of fitted by a local Venozolan watchmaker, but there should be a screw-down crown on it.
[photo of old non-original crown]
Tirette spring was loose in it. That was repaired (new tube, new screw crown, new tirette spring) but the date disc was pretty worn down, so the teeth didn't grip properly at some adjustment moments. Decided to replace that one and installed it this morning. Small color difference between the day and date but yes, there is also 30 years difference between them. Nice to see was that the old discs are all plastic but then the newly ordered one was metal, apparently in a new batch Omega once decided to opt for metal.
The biggest problem is/was the strap. Very, very, very much dirt and wear at the start:
So links are missing, many links are re-attached in the wrong way, like upside down. How? Really no idea, the upper part is really pressed together. That must have been done with good tools. So it took quite a bit to get this tire back in good shape. In Brussels I was able to buy half of a bracelet. That solved half the problem. We started to refurbish the other part of the tire. The attachment to the case had become loose and had a lot of wear. There we filed, sanded and glued with two component glue. To loosen the links of the strap we used a dremel but also water and ultrasonic cleaner. The result was pitch black water and stuck links. I suspect that the previous owner worked somewhere in the oil industry or at least somewhere where a lot of dust was the order of the day, because it is really stuck. The reversed links were sawn off and there it turned out that it was not attached with push pins but pressed together. So no possibility of re-use. The bracelet has special push pins, which fortunately are still available. With normal pins it hangs together like loose sand:
[the special bracelet pins]
And then the watch finally looks like this again, after cleaning the watch, refurbishing and fitting the strap:
There is a possibility that I will still replace the glass and the brown bezel, so that it will be completely clean again. And i still need to clean the band more thoroughly, because there is still black dirt on it. Only thing else needed is 1 link for the 1257/220 strap, so I can wear it a little bit better.
Thanks for reading! (if you don't like these kind of posts, let me know and i will delete it)
The watch eventually ended up on my desk in Utrecht, the Netherlands via Maracay - Caracas- Maiquetia - Panama - Miami - Cincinnati - Brussels - Amsterdam. So: from Venezuela it suddenly got a view like this:
The watch was sold as not working, date and day no longer turning, purely for parts. We'll see about that. This is what the watch looked like when it came in:
So bought it as not working but it does run. Day and date was defective only. Plate looked ugly due to water but it wasn't too bad in the end, so that was lucky. Opened watch together with a watchmaker friend and he quickly saw things were wrong. Crown and tube had been filed off and sort of fitted by a local Venozolan watchmaker, but there should be a screw-down crown on it.
[photo of old non-original crown]
Tirette spring was loose in it. That was repaired (new tube, new screw crown, new tirette spring) but the date disc was pretty worn down, so the teeth didn't grip properly at some adjustment moments. Decided to replace that one and installed it this morning. Small color difference between the day and date but yes, there is also 30 years difference between them. Nice to see was that the old discs are all plastic but then the newly ordered one was metal, apparently in a new batch Omega once decided to opt for metal.
The biggest problem is/was the strap. Very, very, very much dirt and wear at the start:
So links are missing, many links are re-attached in the wrong way, like upside down. How? Really no idea, the upper part is really pressed together. That must have been done with good tools. So it took quite a bit to get this tire back in good shape. In Brussels I was able to buy half of a bracelet. That solved half the problem. We started to refurbish the other part of the tire. The attachment to the case had become loose and had a lot of wear. There we filed, sanded and glued with two component glue. To loosen the links of the strap we used a dremel but also water and ultrasonic cleaner. The result was pitch black water and stuck links. I suspect that the previous owner worked somewhere in the oil industry or at least somewhere where a lot of dust was the order of the day, because it is really stuck. The reversed links were sawn off and there it turned out that it was not attached with push pins but pressed together. So no possibility of re-use. The bracelet has special push pins, which fortunately are still available. With normal pins it hangs together like loose sand:
[the special bracelet pins]
And then the watch finally looks like this again, after cleaning the watch, refurbishing and fitting the strap:
There is a possibility that I will still replace the glass and the brown bezel, so that it will be completely clean again. And i still need to clean the band more thoroughly, because there is still black dirt on it. Only thing else needed is 1 link for the 1257/220 strap, so I can wear it a little bit better.
Thanks for reading! (if you don't like these kind of posts, let me know and i will delete it)
