Hi all, I've been curious to know the intimate details of the correct vintage drop tail chrono seconds hand vs. the modern one. I haven't found a good comparison of the two hands side by side at this point, so I thought I would see what the hive has to say. My understanding is that the tip of the vintage one should reach the seconds marks on the outter edge of the dial. Another collector shared with me that the flat bottom chrono hand is the correct lenght, so you can compare a flat bottom hand to a drop second hand to determine if it is the correct length. the modern versions will be ever so slightly shorter. For the purpose of the comparison, we are measuring from the center of the hole to the very tip of the hand. As you can see in the images below, it appears that all 3 of the drop tail chrono hands below are too short as compared to the flat bottom hand. Does anyone have a proper vintage hand side by side with a modern one? Does this rule hold true? Are there any other notable differences between to two iterations of this style of hands? Edit: and for clarity, the drop tail hand with the white lume IS a modern one. It's mainly the other two I was curious about (as well as the general rules for identifying the correct ones).
Interesting how vintage number 1 is close to modern 4, but 3 has got a much thicker neck. A Speedy hand? Steroids?
Hi, I really appreciated this thread. It is difficult to remove the chrono hands from my Speeds (105.003-66, 145.012-67, 145.022-69) to compare them. Do you have pictures of the front side? Thank you.
The difference between the two old hands looks to be around 1/5 of a mm and won't be noticeable viewing one hand alone on the watch. The 1/5 second track printing also varies quite a bit from model to model and with rather large tolerances. The drop tail is for older models and the flat tail is for newer ones. Not sure how one could say the flat tail was correct for older watches. Any basis for this statement?
Not that it correct for the older models, but that it is the correct length. So is the only difference between modern drop tail and vintage one the 1/5 of a mm? Edit, and thank you @TNTwatch !
Are the minute/second track diameter for 105.002 and earlier a bit narrower than later ones or is it just the tension ring that is thicker?
My question is what is the basis to say correct length or correct anything if it's not correct for the model to begin with? From your pictures the length difference between the two older drop tail hands appears to be just about 1/5 of a mm. This is not much info to conclude anything, so you'd probably need to persuade Gemini4 or Spacefruit to remove all of their drop tail hands to have a large enough dataset... Not sure if I was of any help, but you're most welcome anyways...
Thought I'd add this pic to the thread for more context. Edit: though via a couple of PMs, I hear the one on the left may not be a speedy hand...? I guess we will never know .
Yes, I agree with them. It should be the seconds hand that I have seen on some Seamaster 300. Here the pics of my SM300s, you can see the 166.024 has the same seconds hand.
