An homage to a watch that never was

Some time ago, I came across a picture of a rather lovely Omega dress watch on the Watchcat website. The watch in question was cited as a cautionary example of the importance of knowing your stuff when buying old watches. Regardless of the unlikely combination of a Seamaster 300 dial in an Omega dress watch case, I rather liked it and it has stuck in my mind since. Here it is:



Let's fast forward a year or so, and I snag for a pittance a Seiko 6119-8080 dress watch off Ebay. I bought it mainly for the dial which I thought might go well in some mod or other down the road. Here's the dodgy photo provided by the seller:



As it turned out, the dial was ruined and unusable so I set the watch aside but an inkling formed at that point that perhaps the case might form the basis of a little project to get some small way towards the imaginary Omega. About this time, Yobokies started selling his PO dials in 6309 fit and I pounced on one. A set of steel MOD hands from Motorcitywatchworks and we were potentially in business. I also bought a black day wheel from Pete Kuhn in Australia because I thought black on white would detract too much from the look I was after (you notice my obsession with having a date over-rides aesthetics for the moment!). The volcano fiasco held things up by a week or two but eventually everything arrived and we were set.

The movement fitted to the 6119-8080 is the B variant of the 6119 which has a date quickset, achieved by pushing in the crown but no day quickset, nor the hacking facility that was to come on the later C variant. Also, as it turns out, it comes only with a single language day wheel which means that my black day wheel from Oz would be incompatible. By the time I discovered this, I was already well advanced into the servicing of the movement, which held some other, rather unpleasant surprises. I had heard from others that it is not uncommon for unscrupulous sellers/watchmakers, to 'service' a movement by dunking it in watch oil. When I stripped down mine, I discovered that it was swimming in oil. Unbelievable. Here is the back of the day wheel:



and the top of the movement with the autowinding mechanism removed:



I ended up cleaning, oiling and rebuilding this one, but the day wheel problem meant that I would not be using it for this project. Happily I had a 6119C from another watch knocking about. This one did not work but looked in decent nick and probably just needed a service. So a strip down, clean and oil followed, including both diashock jewels, and a refit with the date wheel from the 6119B and the 6309 black English/Roman day wheel. Here is a comparison of the centre wheel bridge on the 6119B



with that on the 6119C



Notice the presence of the hacking level on the latter. Nice!

Anyway, the rest all came together without the usual dramas. On with Harold's dial, and the really very nice hands from Detroit, plus a new old stock, domed Seiko acrylic crystal and we have a rather loose approximation to that old fraudulant Omega:







Martin