Are the Seikos easier or harder to work on ? The way you put it, it sounds like they are more industrial/robust and less ornate than the swiss movements. I guess that translates into reliability….

Most of my seikos all have movements made in malaysia or vietnam. Hardly see one made in japan other than the Grand seikos

This one is a bit less user friendly, because they place some of the automatic winding components onto the train wheel bridge. So you have take that bridge off, flip it over and take more parts off of it, including some pretty fiddly components, and the tiniest shock jewels you'll see instead of simple cups. The "Swiss" movements I have worked on have placed the winding works on its own module that sits on the underside of the movement. Also a lot of the gear train is stacked on top of each other, so you have to get your oiling done in order during assembly, whereas with more human-friendly designs you can generally do the oiling once the train is assembled. That's been my very short experience with ETA and Rolex and Omega at least

But it's good in that there aren't a bunch of tiny springs in there. Only a couple springs, and they're attached to other, bigger parts

The calendar has a lot of parts too, but that's pretty common.

The most annoying part was getting the winding stem in with the pinion, clutch, AND another setting wheel, with nothing to set them on. This guy makes it look easy here (timestamped)

Watching that shaky-handed assembly gives me anxiety.

Does he have particularly trembly hands, or does it look like that for basically everybody when it's at this scale?

I think it's like that when it's at this scale.

Yeah I don't think he's particularly stable, but anyone who would be rock solid doing that fiddly procedure at that magnification would probably have become a surgeon instead of a watchmaker LUL

Wait a minute…. 69style sent you something to work on ? His seiko? Whats wrong with his seiko?

Dont you have to pay taxes or something if the customs retards find it? They might think youre trying to import a grey market watch and/or counterfit.

He's sending his 70's Seiko for me to look at. Except for alcohol and tobacco there's no duties in Hong Kong, you should know that!

Aiya.. 68Style bought an eBay India special?

Old 7s movements parts are harder to find so I usually just upgrade them to nh35/36 movements if the case can fit it. NH35/36 movements are getting pricey so beware of knockoffs now.

Oh yeah you're right. I bought this NH36 for ￥230 RMB and now it's listed for ￥280. A Miyota 8215 I got also went up, from ￥140 to ￥152

I've seen the China NH35's listed on AliExpress, but not taobao yet. At least they're labeling them properly. It's really easy to tell anyway, assuming the pictures are accurate.

I've found a few shops on taobao that have been reliable for me, even buying Swiss stuff. I've found so far that in general you get what you pay for. Choose the cheapest stuff, you'll get the cheapest stuff. Pay a bit more, and you'll get better products and service.

I guess we can look into swapping the movement if 68 is interested. I haven't looked into that yet, is it pretty straight forward?

Back to that VS 3135, like many Chinese shock springs, these things fall out so easily. They are like KIF springs, so I stupidly tried to use the same method to reinstall, and it broke the spring. Nobody seems to carry the 'domestic' springs, so the choice was to either buy an original Rolex spring, or just get a new balance complete for the same price. So I did the latter

Wouldn't you believe it, another spring came out during installation, even though I had Rodico over it! Will be extra extra careful next time. This time I used a different method to reinstall it, and had no problem getting it back in. I was lucky too - it flew onto the ground, and I found it pretty much right away. It really pays to keep the workshop clean and clutter free as possible.

On top of that, one of the screwed broke (it's as soft as plastic) so I replaced that as well, buying a spare just in case. Good thing I did, because the other similar screw broke as well.

Anyway it runs well now. I'll regulate it tomorrow; it should be a bit better than when it came in.

Here's it is being recorded in slow motion to determine lift angle. You can see the mark I made on the balance to measure how much it rotates. Lift angle confirmed at 52 degrees.

no no no, not for HK, i mean when you send it back to him.

It's a $5 watch, how much taxes would there be!

I live in AB anyway, nothing's ever more than 5% so who cares.

Yah it was from eBay but the seller had their location as USA and then suddenly I get tracking# it's coming from India. Lame. I knew there'd be problems as soon as I saw that.

Ebay's money back guarantee is pretty good for buyers. For sellers, It completely sucks as I've been burned a few times