A 1960s Seiko Automatic 6216A Restoration and Full Service Watch Repair Tutorial

this very unloved Seca watch is really quite beaten up I'm fairly certain that it was manufactured in the late 1960s this watch is older than me it does not run for any length of time and judging from these service marks inside the watch back I suspect it's only been serviced a couple of times and have no doubt that this is mostly due to the actual value of the watch well these models are very low cost and quite often would be much cheaper to replace than to contract a watch repairer to service the movement at regular intervals unless of course the watch was of particular sentimental value this watch has simply been sitting in my scrap drawer for many years and whilst I was looking for something else I noticed it and decided that it would be a nice enjoyable project to put the watch back into service right off the bat I can clearly see that the dial is in extremely poor condition it looks as if the lacquer has started lifting away from the dial and indeed the dial is pretty stained I would suspect that the watch may have had moisture ingress and was possibly steaming up over a long period of time it is quite possible that the reason the movement is not running aside from the obvious lack of lubrication is the dial lacquer flaking and Lodging itself under the dial the movement is a Seiko manufactured caliber six to one six a an automatic winding module with a day and date calendar mechanism the goal here will be to restore the watch to a fairly good standard without breaking the bank as the watch is simply not worth much financial investment but in order to achieve even a fairly good standard there are several hoops which need to be jumped through the dial being the most obvious hoop the perspex crystal in the watch case are very rough looking so well there's another hoop and of course the movement will need to be stripped down and cleaned now I'm not a professional tile restorer by any means I have been playing with water slight laser printed decals recently which is not perfect but affords acceptable results but anyway let's get cracking first I need to strip the watch down and see if there's any broken parts that I need to replace you so I've stripped down the movement and whilst it is in the cleaning machine I can work on the watch case I can see there are no cracks in the crystal so I'm going to give the case and glass a really good polish up on the motor you the dial is in very bad condition I can see the lacquer is peeling away from the dial and the silver finish is rather stained I can place the dial in some acetone to remove the old lacquer and loosen any glue which may be holding the dial chapters and the logo and now I can remove all those chapters the calendar window and the Seiko logo you now I can remove the old silver finish and sand in a fine grain ready for fresh silvering you and now I have a nice grain I can clean the dial with acetone and then apply silver powder which deposits a fine amount of silver to the brass now as I've already admitted I'm not a tile restorer by any stretch of the imagination I have worked on watch movements since I was in my late teens but I've only recently become interested in learning processes to create finishes on watch dials I will confess that this is actually my very first attempt at dial silvering you and now the dial is prepared I can recreate the original printing which had the wording Seiko mattock and daya shock 39 joules just above the six o'clock position to do this I can use these papers made by Sonny scopa there's a link in the description of this video these papers allow you to print waterslide decals on a laser printer and for best results the DPI of the printer should be at least 1200 you I can load a sheet of the deckle paper in my printer tray and using a photograph of the original dial I can recreate the wording in Adobe Illustrator that I understand Inkscape is a good free alternative to this software you now I can apply the decal to dial first I cut the printout to a manageable size I placed the pace in some clean water and allow it to soak for a few moments this loosens their decal from its backing paper I can drop a little bit of water on the dial and place the decal facedown and then slide the backing paper fully away the drop of water provides a little lubrication to allow me to position the decal correctly and at this stage I wish I'd printed some guidelines onto my design I made a mental note to do this next time when I'm happy with the position I can then carefully squeegee the excess water and any air bubbles trapped from under the decal and now I can place the dial in an oven at a temperature of 100 degrees C for around 15 minutes when the dial has cooled down I can carefully peel away the plastic and if all has gone well the laser toner will have softened in the heat and adhered to the dial surface you I'm not happy with the thickness of the line art for the sake o matic wording and also there are a few issues with toner scattered around the dial I believe this is because I cut through some toner with my scissors which was a mistake in short it worked but I'm not happy with the result so I modified my design in Illustrator and re prepared the dial to try again I'll get rid of the black ring in the design and use guidelines at the 12 6 and 9 positions instead and with the dial cleaned up and prepared I can go through the whole process of applying the decal again and I can use the guides at 12 6 & 9 to better position the decal I can already see that the lineup looks much cleaner all good so far you after another 15-minute bake had a hundred see the moment of truth I peeled the plastic away and well although it's better it seems the number free has not adhered to the dial correctly now this is a pain because cleaning up and preparing the dial takes a very long time and have already done this twice so far if I simply look at the dial without magnification though it is hardly noticeable due to the fact that the lettering is very small so I was inclined to chalk this up to experience and get on with the next stage I made a mental note to experiment with applying two coats of decal next time should the first coat have any issues so I lacquered the dial and turned my attention to the dial decorations using some polishing compound and some pegwood I polished the ease of the dial chapters and the calendar window you and after cleaning them I reapplied them to the tile and I thought it all looked rather good a massive improvement and that the hen I made a mistake I loaded up some of the footage I shot of the process so far on my computer I filmed these videos with a macro lens and in 4k when I reviewed my footage I could not stop looking at that number three it just bugged me too much so I whipped off the dial decorations and I started all over again and this time I was absolutely determined to get it right I placed the dial into some acetone and said goodbye to several hours of work and after sanding and then re silvering the dial I was ready to apply the deckle again I bait the dial and removed the film and although I did not capture this on camera sure enough some toner came away again from the dial but I decided to apply another decal on top by lining up the guides and making sure that the lettering was exactly on top of the previously applied toner I baked the dial one more time and here we have another moment of truth well it seems that applying the same deck held twice has produced a much improved result that's it I'm happy with that let's move on after lacquering I reapplied the dial decorations and after all these attempts decided that enough was enough under magnification it's not perfect by any stretch but in all fairness it looks very nice regardless we're not using a 90 millimeter macro lens and magnifying it on a high resolution computer monitor all right then let's get the movement reassembled I have had all the components in the cleaning machine with the end caps still in place as is my usual method I now need to remove these and manually clean them in a degreaser so that I can apply lubrication I do this for all the end stones on the main plate the train bridge and the balance you and now I can replace the train of wheels you turning my attention to the dial side I can now install the calendar driving wheel and now I can install the keyless works you and now I can install the Ballon and escapement you it's always a good sign when the heart starts beating now I can test a movement and after a little bit of tweaking the movement seems to perform quite well the beat error is within tolerance as is the average rate between positions and the amplitude is where I would expect it to be at around 260 degrees for a watch which is almost half a century old I will take that apologies for my handheld footage here I was just a bit lazy to set up a tripod you now I can continue and reassemble the calendar works you and we've that done I can turn my attention to the automatic mechanism you now that the movement is reassembled I can replace the dial in hands you these hands look pretty rough under magnification they are chrome-plated brass and so polishing them is not an option you and now for the final job putting it all back together you and with that I'm happy to say that this job is complete was it worth it well from a financial point of view absolutely not but I didn't do this for money it was a nice little project and a very old and tired wristwatch has been plucked out the scrap drawer and placed back into service is a good feeling and it looks a lot better to boo I'm glad I did so that's it thanks for watching and if you like my content and want to see more then please subscribe if you're not already done so it's free and if you click the bell you'll be informed whenever I publish new videos and check out my Facebook and Instagram for details of upcoming projects this video was made possible by all those who supported me via patreon thank you so so much and with that said I'll see you next time

Channel: Watch Repair Channel

Views: 736,440

Rating: 4.9263067 out of 5

Keywords: watch repair channel, watch repairs, watch repair lessons, watch service, mark lovick, watchrepairtalk.com, watchrepairlessons.com, seiko 6216a, seiko automatic, watch restoration, restoration, project, diy, watches, automatic, wristwatch, dial restoration, watch dial, seikomatic, diashock, sunnyscopa, decal papers, film free

Id: D6R-uNqjfjc

Length: 33min 51sec (2031 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 08 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/50StatePiss]

Wasn't prepared for the level of anxiety I experienced watching him take it all apart. Nice restoration vid though!

[u/PoopDig]

I think that word is supposed to be restoration but bc of the little squiggle above the E it makes me think its a fancy watchmakers word that i dont know.

[u/stutterstep1]

Aww, this was interesting! My gma gave me her Seiko 40 years ago and I wore it to work daily. I noticed orange color appearing around the center of the dial and water clouding the crystal too. So, it wasn't waterproof anymore, if it ever was. When I got older, I regretted using it as an everyday watch and ruining it.

[u/chrisgedrim]

Watching 1.25x made it more more enjoyable

[u/Mitoni]

Using laser printer toner and water decals as a poor man's silkscreen process. Genius!

[u/SnootyMehman]

Marks a great guy. He's got loads of servicing videos, hints and tips and such.

[u/defloof]

This was a very enjoyable video. I played spotify's chill lofi study beats playlist in the background and it really worked well with the aesthetic of the video haha.

[u/dying_to_be_vain]

r/watches would probably love to see this.

[u/psilokan]

As someone who likes to take things apart and put them back together, I'd say there's about a 0% chance this would still work after I was done with it.