[TECH] - GRAND SEIKO 3180 Teardown - The FIRST GRAND SEIKO

[@chrisdahlman8170]

Looks great Adrian. I bought a lemon of a case, but the movement's looking solid!

[@markirvin2809]

Another great one Adrian

[@user-pl7lr5dn8q]

Awesome so far

[@eatpeach2355]

To be honest, the jewel on the barrel is much more useful than those jewel on barrel bridge. Think about this: when you dont wind the movement, the barrel arbor is basically sit still. what is moving however is the mainspring and the barrel. so accutally for hand wind movement what affect the timing is the fiction between the barrel and the barrel arbor.

[@mickomega]

Curious, couldn't the damaged brass lip on the case top be resolved by soldering in a graft of curved brass? Also, similarly with the case back, could the hole be drilled out to the minimum diameter to solder in a brass rod? Unsure if that's a good repair for watch making, since it would be visible in this case as it won't be replated, but much better than epoxy.

[@hal0eight]

Not really. I got 3rd and 4th opinions from jewellers and other colleagues, because of the different metals involved, it makes the repair very difficult/impossible. Gold has a higher melting temperature than brass, so when you try to weld anything to it, there's a likelihood the brass in the middle will melt before the gold and you have a worse problem than before. Until a better repair method comes along, I took the approach of conserving what's there. The moral of the story here is to avoid any gold plated/rolled gold/gold cap watches that need case repair as repair is difficult to impossible.

[@mickomega]

@hal0eight makes sense. Thanks for that and enjoying your content, well done.

[@adrianbirkett594]

Lovely watch!, so classic. Shame bout case. Thanks👍