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My Watch Making Journey: Part 4 - The Watch

 After a few more hours of tinkering, I finally gave up on the movement and busted out my backup movement. Eventually, I was able to put the watch together, but without the second hand.

The completed watch without the second hand.

It was quite bothersome for me to have a watch without a second hand. Since I had no indication whether or not the watch was still running.

I wore this for a few days without any problems. Even my wife showed some interest in the watch and I can see she wanted it so i gave it to her. A few days later the watch just died.

The watch before the movement replacement.

 I had to buy another movement and this time I did my best to look for one that was advertised as being made by Seagull. I picked the Seagull 2813, assembled the watch all over again and the watch was resurrected.

Here is the watch now with a new movement, new strap, and finally a second hand.

Sterile white dial, mercedes hands, oyster case.

I opted for a NATO strap because it is easy to install and replace.

The second hand came from a set of hands I ordered that was missing the hour hand. Although the seller sent the replacement hour hand I had no longer a need for it and opted to just use the second hand for this build. The only thing is that the second hand has green lume, but the dial and other hands have blue lume.

 

Blue lume on the dial indexes, on the hour and minute hands, green on the second hand.

Though this belongs to my wife, I still wear this occasionally. For a first build, I am quite happy with the end result, but I had quite the experience and I know I can do better. I also gained a new found respect to the people who make and repair watches. It's easy to just buy a mechanical watch without appreciating the skill and hard work put into it.

Doing it is very different from watching someone else do it. While some online sources make it look very easy, I assure you it is not that easy especially on the first try. The challenge is mostly in the fitting of the hands to the movement. I also learned a few tricks that I will share in a future post. I will try to document my next build better and hopefully it will be a benefit for someone else.

Since this build, I already did a few more and I can say I have gained some confidence. I still made a few mistakes, destroyed a few more movements and bent some more hands. I hope to improve my skills more and the next step would be to purchase better tools. With better tools, I'm sure the build quality will also improve.

My thanks go to the people who share their skills in watchmaking for free on the internet. And to the watch reviewers, modders, and enthusiasts, more power to you!

Enjoy!


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