The Omega 131.176: A pocket watch made way too late...

Alright, as back story: I've been on a watch servicing journey, and have done a TON of 550/601 family of watches, in part because they tend to be cheap in 'not really working' condition.

However, I have wanted a 1010-family movement for a while. Unfortunately, they are nearly 2x the price of the 601s! I've been keeping an eye out for one for a while on/off, and besides one dogs-breakfast that keeps being listed (don't worry about the broken balance/hairspring, it comes with a SECOND angled one!), not much was listed.

Then, THIS dropped into my ebay suggestions: A 131.1746 POCKET watch, powered by a 1035. It was literal minutes from expiring, so I put a minimum bid in, and took this home for less than $150! My cheapest Omega by half at least!

BUT... WHAT IS the 1035? My quick research/an embellishment of the story goes: Omega was making pocket watches WAY past the "people want pocket watches" part of the 20th century. They made PLENTY of 601 powered pocket watches, which themselves are silly in their own way.

However, along comes the 1000/1010 movements in the late-60s/early-70s, and the retirement of the 601. Apparently, without a 3 handed hand-wind movement, there was trouble afoot! See, a pocket watch with an automatic would be crazy!

Instead, they took a 1010, removed the automatic works, replaced it with a ridiculous logo'ed fake plate, and shipped it as the 1030 (in what looks like a handful of watches). THIS watch has the 1035, where they also snatched the date off of it, because who wants a date on a pocket watch?

SO, thats what this is, a 1010 minus date, minus automatic works put into a cheap Gold Plated case. Stainless cases are perhaps more attractive, but are significantly more expensive than this. This case is a bit of a 6/10 with some wear through the plating in a couple of spots, 1 watchmaker mark, and a heavily scratched crystal (1 VERY deep one that might be troublesome to polish out!). The movement itself runs, but not particularly well. BEST I can tell, this has an automatic mainspring in it (as it doesn't stop!), but at full wind I'm getting -40s/day, 0.7ms beat error, but only 137 degrees amplitude.

Its next step is into my queue (currently down in single digits!) of future watches to start, then hopefully a nice service that can make this at least run well.

Anyway, thanks for paying attention! IF you have one, please share!

Ok, managed to pull this apart today. The big plate is comical if anything. That said, the 3rd wheel/cannon pinion thing is... absurd and awful. @Archer has warned me/us about offset cannon pinions before, but this is somehow WORSE than any I've ever dealt with before.

USUALLY you clean them and oil them without having to disassemble. THIS one has a pressed-on cannon pinion on top of the 3rd wheel that is micro and on the dial side. I managed to destroy the 3rd wheel (I broke one of the spokes) trying to remove it with the 3-prong presto tool. It LOOKED like I was supposed to use it for this, but it is Juuuuuust too big to get through the holes in the spokes, which I didn't realize until it was too late.

Fortunately it is shared with the 1010 (as are MOST of the parts here, hilariously the main plate is STILL a 1010 main plate, and the date parts are just .... not populated!), so I can get it easy enough, but annoying to need to wait for parts on what was supposed to be an 'easy' project.

I've done a disassembly only on this. The movement is still pretty high quality with some obvious cost cutting. The metal finishing isn't as nice, and the printing is obviously a sticker. The design and the jewels/etc all seem really nice, so in general its still a nice movement.

This has a pretty unique keyless works , but otherwise it is a pretty solid movement. Of course, the 3rd wheel/cannon pinion design leaves a lot to be desired, and it still doesn't have a 'full' seconds wheel (just the little pinion design). It IS seemingly unsupported though, so i'm a little frightened about how pressing the seconds hand on is going to go.

Finished assembling the movement, and it is rock solid! It has a SLIGHT upward(so probably ~0.25s/day) and a beat error between 0.0 and 0.1 (which is the jagged lines I think), but a great amplitude. I'm thrilled! The only real challenge left is getting the crystal reinstalled and getting the second hand mounted without busting it. Hopefully one of my hand-set-movement holders can get it right.

Oh joy, the 712 I got is like this and the wheels are tiny. There is also a tiny fly away friction spring that provides tension on the motion works.

This was real popular on the pin levers of the 1960s and 1970s. Often they are riveted on.