SMP 300 Hour Hand Alignment

Hey folks - I've been collecting watches for years (and restoring antique American watches), but I'm looking to buy my first Omega - a gray-dial, blue-bezel Seamaster 300M.

I have visited a few ADs to check them out in person, and wow they are nice pieces! The one concern I had (as you may have guessed from the post title) is that on two of the three examples I have now seen in person the hour hand is off by 3-4 minutes - meaning that when the minute hand is at exactly 12:00, the hour hand is a little ahead or a little behind the hour marker. Inversely, when the hour hand is centered on an hour marker, the minute hand is about 3-4 minutes away from 12:00.

As someone who works on watches frequently, I know it's important to let the hands run naturally to check alignment, as trying to set the hands to a specific time will add or remove a little bit of slack/slop in the keyless works. To check alignment I always set the time to 5:55, then let the watch run until 6:00 and check that the hands form a straight vertical line.

Are my expectations of hour hand alignment (less than 1 minute off) too high for Omega? I find this hard to believe, as tens of other watches I have owned, including those in the ballpark of 1/10th the cost of an SMP, have perfect (or at least sub-one-minute) alignment of the hour hand. I guess what I'm asking here is, is this normal for Omega, or have I just been spectacularly unlucky at my ADs? For all the cutting edge tech in these watches (coaxial escapement, silicon balance, etc.) I was a little surprised to see the hand alignment so imprecise on multiple units.

As a side note, one of the new watches at one AD had two noticeable scuffs on the crown side of the case, which the AD rep brushed off as "residue from the clear packaging" as if I have never seen or felt a scuffed/scratched watch before.

Thanks for this! I have read elsewhere as well about Omega's alleged +/- 3-minute tolerance for hand alignment, however any sort of definitive statement is hard to come by.

For a highly-touted precision instrument, I personally think a 10% tolerance for alignment is laughable, but it is slightly better than the +/- 5-minutes some brands hold to. As Al says in the thread you linked, watchmakers can and do align hands much better than that all the time (including myself on my antique pieces).

What I don't want to happen is to get the watch then immediately have to send it in for service (would Omega even adjust them for me, if it's within their spec?) or take it to a 3rd-party watchmaker and immediately void the warranty just to have the hands aligned. Is it realistic for me to find an SMP 300 with fully aligned hands or is this just not something Omega does? I understand that what I personally look for is tighter than their factory spec, but I'm sure you can understand the silliness of having a couple-hundred dollar Shinola with better hand alignment that an a several-thousand dollar Omega.

That's weird - never noticed/observed this with any of my Omega's or even among several "beater" watches.

Do you wear glasses- parralax issue perhaps?

As I’ve exhausted my local ADs (the one with good alignment only had the watch on a strap, and I want the bracelet) I’ll have to play the long distance AD game which makes it even harder to validate fit and finish 🙁.

No glasses. In fact I have rather keen eyesight so that might be working against me here 😉. Like I said, I restore antique watches as a hobby/passion project so I know how to check hand alignment. That is part of what’s frustrating; something I (as a self-taught amateur) can do in my home office in 10 minutes perfectly every time seems to be out of reach of these premium brands. You would think they could find room in their $6700 asking price to pay someone to spend a few minutes with the watches and make sure the hands are lined up.

Yes, I have heard of gear lash. I work on watches basically daily and have installed perhaps hundreds of hand sets.

Gear lash in the motion works does not preclude the hands from being installed in an aligned fashion. I even stated in my original post that when checking hand alignment that I set the watch to 5:55, then let it run itself to 6:00, and only then do I check the alignment. This is done to ensure that any lash/slop from setting the time is taken up by the motion works and what you see at 6:00 is what you will see every time the watch shows 6:00.

A typical motion works operates as follows: the cannon pinion meshes with the minute wheel teeth (opportunity #1 for lash), then the minute wheel pinion meshes with the hour wheel teeth (opportunity #2 for lash). The hour hand is then friction fit to the pipe rising from the center of the hour wheel. Letting the watch run for 5 minutes on its own will allow both of these wheel-pinion interactions to take up any slack left by the setting process. From what I can tell based on limited photos of the dial side of the 8800 movement, the intermediate setting wheel interacts with the minute wheel teeth, so setting the time in a clockwise direction should result in almost no lash needing to be taken up - though still best to let the watch run a few minutes before checking alignment to be sure.