[rfortson]

Orbit around my wrist! Found a nice 6139 at an NAWCC show and decided to have it serviced. Picked it up this weekend after a nice COA and it's running great. Chronograph and day/date functions are very snappy. He polished the case (too much), which I didn't really want, but it doesn't bother me that much. Overall, I'm happy with the work. Got a new acrylic crystal per my request (I don't like Hardlex), but I kept the (original?) crystal and will try to polish it up at some point.

So, here are the current pictures. I'll try to add some "before" pictures for comparison.

 

[rfortson]

Thanks gang. I'll probably give the case a brush at some point. The dial, bezel, hands are really outstanding on this 37 year old watch. I can only guess it was worn a while and then wound up in a drawer. The original crystal (which I kept) was pretty beat up, and the case showed a little wear (but no corrosion at all).

To me, it's amazing that you can find this piece of horological history for just a couple of bills. It's hard to time without a second hand (and I'm not really an accuracy freak anyway), but it seems like it gained about 20-130 seconds in a couple of days, which is fine by me. I suspect it could be better, but why bother? It goes into the regular rotation and probably won't live on a winder, so I'll be setting it regularly anyway.

As for the case polishing, I don't hold any ill will with my watchmaker. He doesn't restore, he takes broken watches and fixes them. He did know not to mess with the dial, hands and bezel, but I didn't tell him to not polish the case. He knew I was going to wear it, and to his way of thinking, he was making it look nice for me. Next time, I'll be more explicit. To me, not a big killer, though I suspect it will affect collector's value should I ever sell it.

Now, to find a nice Bullhead and a nice Bellmatic. And to think, I was trying to pare down my collection....