The Brass Watch
This Seiko 6119-8430 has been lying in the drawer since i picked it up as part of a bulk lot on eBay in early 2009. The gold plating was completely wrecked so I stripped it back to the brass underneath with the idea to replate, probably with black chrome, In the end the cost of replating was more than I was willing to spend, so into the drawer it went, and there it stayed for the next nine years!
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With the current trend for bronze and brass watches, and the great patina they develop, I remembered this case and decided to see what it could become...
The case, stripped of gold plating and polished:
The case, stripped of gold plating and polished:
Playing with the look, here are some of the dial options I considered:
After forcing a bit of patina onto the brass case in a vinegar sauna and ruling out a few of the dials due to missing or misplaced dial feet, or dial tabs on the two diver style dials, I was left with the following two options:
After force-ageing the case in a sauna of vinegar, the dial choice became a bit clearer. The diver dials both had the tab that helps align them with the chapter ring, and whilst I could have filed this off they're both in very good nick and i didn't want to wreck them. The dress dials both looked OK, but didn't really work with the newly aged case, so 'The Wreck' style was the winner. However, the LM dial had a missing dial foot and the other was not a fit for the 6119 movement I was planning to use, so back to the parts bin for something similar... Whist the brown dial could have worked, I liked the distressed SS Actus dial that I had found after another look in the parts bin. Now to hands, there were a few options:
In the end I settled on set 3, suitably aged and the black went with the hour plots, they could even have been the originals, I'll have to check...
Add one movement, a parts 6119 that was given a bit of TLC and a worn kanji day wheel from a parts 6309 movement, and put it all back together, loaded onto a brown 18mm vintage perlon, this is the finished result:
Add one movement, a parts 6119 that was given a bit of TLC and a worn kanji day wheel from a parts 6309 movement, and put it all back together, loaded onto a brown 18mm vintage perlon, this is the finished result: