Restoration of 1970s Seiko Bellmatic, Rusted Solid and broken - Lets get this watch working!

a word of advice to those who purchase fix me up watches off eBay take a good look at the pictures in order for you to determine whether it would be good value as a restoration project is the price low enough what kind of work might be involved and how much time would you estimate the project to last these are good questions to ask yourself well it seems I don't take my own advice I was looking for a vintage Seiko Bell Matic on eBay something which I might score at a good price do a little bit of work on it and enjoy the product of my Labour's I found this one the pricing good at 85 euros plus another 17 for delivery so all in around 100 euros not bad at all viewing the picture on my phone the case looked a little bit beaten up well that's no problem that's easily sorted the glass had a nice crack in it again no issues there aftermarket glasses for these models they're fairly easily to obtain looks like the alarm button is missing well that's easy I have one in stock no strap I like to choose my own straps anyway okey-dokey let's get this thing ordered but wait mark I hear you ask don't you think is a good idea to look further through the auction description before buying who has the fun in there how bad could it possibly be what though and here she is my new pride and joy isn't she gorgeous this thing has been treated like a golden egg as you can clearly see notice the attention to detail when the alarm button fell off the hole was plugged with epoxy perfect the crown pulls out to the handset position but it can't be turned this means the keyless works her likely to be rusted up solid and opening the back reveals a lot of rust and corrosion I suppose if I had looked at the pictures I would have known this I have no idea what happened to this what but it was clearly used and abused I can only guess discard it may be lost outside and found years later do you have any idea it's a hunter's in the comments below anyway for those who've been watching my channel for anything for time I think you know by now I really enjoy taking watches which have absolutely no business being alive anymore I mean complete Junkers which should be consigned to the recycle bin and I take those and I like making something good out of them without spending too much money in the process it gives me a certain sense of satisfaction it helps to keep my job interesting these projects rarely end up perfect but we do usually end up we will work in watch keeping reasonable time and we have a bit of a story behind it at this stage I don't know how this watch will end up obviously I paid a bit too much for it considering the condition and indefinitely not going to be spending much more on it I do however have a few spare parts so I will use those where I can and a small disclaimer during the process I actually stripped and rebuilt this movement and claimed the part several times in order to get the final result this would have been tedious to film and probably tedious for you to watch so in order to keep this video to a reasonable length I've created a montage of the stripped down and rebuilt with the footage shot at various stages and so there may well be slight continuty errors in one scene you may see rust staining and the next scene the staining is missing and then it comes back again well I'm sorry about that this took me a long time to film and with literally hundreds of clips totaling over 200 gigabyte having said that I was not able to remove all the stains left by the corrosion from all the parts if this triggers you then I can only apologize but it is what it is for those who are interested I've uploaded a service sheet to the file section of our watch repair Facebook group there's a link in the description but for now I'm gonna strip this down and try to remove as much rust as possible the alarm indicator dial should be retained by two clips and a one is missing [Music] these hands are scratched up really bad but they are chrome-plated brass and cannot really be polished the dial indices are in rough shape also but again they are chrome-plated brass and the yellow of the brass is actually showing through in places I guess it just adds to the what is charm and we can see that this watch was previously worked on by a graffiti artist I used to know a guy who used to do this it's really really terrible practice removing the automatic bridge I can see one screw is missing and the water has caused corrosion to the automatic component looks like I'll need to replace the bowl race and here's another shot of that graffiti oh it really does add to the character of this movement and we here we have even more graffiti these arrows are obviously lined up with the cran and alarm buttons I guess the graffiti helped them to line up the plate correctly saving them oh maybe a minute or two nice and this our wheel was rusted firmly in place for those who do not know regarding these screws with the free lines on the head the lines are actually an indication that the thread is reversed or in other words they have a left-hand thread here this plate should be held with free screws but this is the wrong screw here and it actually looks like the head is too small not even holding the plate at all and yes the plate just comes away after removing two of the free screws I'll replace the third one later [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] and that's it fully stripped down now I can start D rusting and cleaning and this is literally hours of work [Music] [Music] there are two steel posts embedded into this main plate which are corroded quite badly I'm going to remove and replace them they are well just friction fitted so the best way is to use a staking set [Music] [Music] and with that done I can do an assembly and see if I can get this thing working you [Music] now I found this alarm button in my stock it's not a new one but it will do for now [Music] let me explain for those who are curious off-camera I've applied an extremely frugal amount of 8,200 grease along the length of the mainspring and since this is an automatic barrel I'm applying a special braking grease to the barrel wall which helps the automatic performance [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] the alarm button release was missing before and luckily I had a spare one [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you you [Music] [Music] you and we seem to have life but I can see the amplitude is really quite low now off camera I did record this to be in the region of a hundred and forty five degrees and the unfortunate thing is the alarm components are not even fitted yet I know these will cause a small further drop in performance and so this will need to be investigated and dealt with at this stage I've only cleaned the past once and without too much very close attention later I will strip this and deeply inspect all the t f-- opinion leaves and if it holds but for now I want to continue rebuilding to see if there's any other fault [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] and as you can see I found a suitable third screw to secure the plate with first test of the alarm hammer and all seems fine [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I have found an issue here when pressing down the hour wheel it should effectively push the disconnecting lever to fouled hammer thus disabling the alarm this is not happening so the alarm is engaged constantly as a result now the reason is this divot emboss'd into the lever and it's worn down I can cause the divot to become more proud by gently tapping it with a pointed punch on my staking set and this has solved the issue [Music] but now is the next day and I can see that the watch stopped on my bench and this coupled with the low amplitude observed yesterday I believe the issue is most likely power transmission so I need to inspect the train of wheels very closely and whilst I did find some corrosion on the leaves of the escape wheel opinion I believe this small nugget of rust lodged between the two teeth on the barrel is the cause of the stoppage I cleaned those up and rebuilt the watch again and now we have what looks to be a much healthier amplitude [Music] you now under this macro lens the indices and the hands are really going to look terrible but please please trust me when the glasses fitted and just looking at the watch normally I can say it looks a million times better I'm not tempted in the least to replace this dial in hands even though I do actually have a spare set which are in much better condition as these in short it doesn't really look so good under a 90 millimeter one to one magnification macro lens but it looks great otherwise considering its age and the abuse is received I've seen worse what do you think comment below the video you so that's it let's look at the performance so a bit of positional Arab a good amplitude and perfectly acceptable in my book and with that I can say that this project is complete I put some new sails fitted a new class and tarted-up the case a bit and I fitted a new strap and I think that watch looks great and it functions reasonably well to boot I'm going to enjoy wearing this watch as I remember how it was when I received it it was a complete piece of junk and now it has life again now it is always good to hear from you so let me know what you think in the comments below in my previous video I announced a draw for one lucky winner to receive this palette warmer made by yours truly I mentioned that people can enter the draw by commenting with the words palette warmer on my last video and additionally palette warmer patron if you are a patron giving well patrons two chances effectively to enter so I'm going to use my youtube plug in a tube buddy it has a pick a winner feature and I'll enter the keyword palette warmer and the winner is that Freedy print and watch guy congratulations to the 3d print and watch guy I see you are a patron and so if you'd kindly message me via the patreon messaging system with your full name and address I'll package up the palette warmer and have it teleported to your address and I can see that you've got a youtube channel here I'll definitely take a look at that later so well done that free D print and watch guy [Music] but that's it for now if you like my content and would like to see more then consider subscribing to the channel is free and if you hit the bell icon you will be notified whenever I publish new content and thank you to all my patrons who helped to keep this channel alive you guys are amazing and thanks for watching and I'll see you next time bye bye [Music] you

Channel: Watch Repair Channel

Views: 427,627

Keywords: watchrepairtalk.com, watch repair channel, watch repair lessons, mark lovick, watchrepairlessons.com, seiko bellmatic, seiko bellmatic 4006, seiko bell matic repair, watch restoration, seiko watch repair, seiko bell matic, bell matic, seiko watch, seiko bell matic 4006, bell-matic, 4006 seiko, 4006 bellmatic, seiko bellmatic service, seiko bell matic alarm, seiko watches, watch restoration videos, watch repairs, watch service, seiko automatic, restoration videos

Id: mgNuOiW4pmE

Length: 37min 44sec (2264 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 09 2019