1959 Golden Tempus II

Hamilton had some pretty funky designs in the 1950s.  The asymmetric models are probably the best known examples, but there are other interesting designs too.  One of them is the 1959 Golden Tempus II.

The Golden Tempus II was made for two years and there's no easy way to identify which year a particular example is from, unless it has a presentation.  The model is cased in a 10K yellow gold filled case.  What makes it unique is the dial has two parts... the portion with the markers is a shiny textured gold ring and is integral to the bezel.  The other portion of the dial is a golden disc that is secured to the movement.

This is a design concept deployed on some other models too, like the Time Zone / Transcontinental, among others.

The crystal on the Golden Tempus II extends all the way to the edge of the case, appearing to almost have no boundary.  The lugs on the case are very slender and pin-like.  It appears to be a very delicate design, in my opinion.  

There's a Golden Tempus,  introduced in 1957 and made through 1959 that is similar, but cased in solid gold and is easily distinguished by it's hooded, bowtie-shaped lugs.

Both models utilize the 18 jewel 735 movement, which was the shock jeweled replacement for the 748 movement introduced in 1948.

My project watch appears to be in decent condition overall.  The hands are interesting, I've done one other Golden Tempus II in the past, and it has silver hands with a gold second hand, and this one does too.  That's seems unusual to me but maybe that's part of the design.  I'm not a huge fan of the "disc within a ring" design.  Anytime I see this concept, if the movement has any amount of play in the case back, the dial seems a little wobbly.  But, I guess that's just the nature of the beast. 

The strap on the watch is a Hamilton design, which is cool.  The case back has a lot of wear to the area by the crown but it otherwise looks solid.

There's a slightly worn gap between the case back and the bezel where I can apply my case knife to open the case.

In the photo below you can see the dial ring in the case and the disc is retained on the movement in the case back.  Now I can just lift the movement out of the case back.

The 735 movement is essentially the same as the 748 with the exception of the shock jewels supporting the balance.  Notice there's no serial number on the movement.  That practice ended in 1955.  It's also interesting to note that the barrel bridge is one piece.  Initially the 748 had a one piece barrel bridge.  That required taking the train bridge off to get to the mainspring barrel... basically disassembling the movement.  Hamilton changed the design after a year or so to split the barrel bridge into two parts, enabling access to the barrel without disassembling the movement.  Once white alloy Dynavar "lifetime" mainsprings were introduced, the two piece bridge was no longer needed and the design went back to a one piece design like below.

Everything get's disassembled and cleaned... it's now ready to be reassembled.

With the balance jewels reinstalled, the balance is now ticking away with a nice motion.  It's off to the timer.

Wow!  Not too shabby.  It's an easy adjustment to slow it down a smidgeon.

There... pretty much right on the money now.  It should settle down a little further after a while.

The finished watch looks great and runs as good as it looks.  I'm surprised that the lugs look so good considering all the wear to the case back.  However, although they are very skinny, they are thick when you look at the watch from the side - so they're sturdier than you think.

1965 M-65-2

One of the interesting niches of vintage Hamilton watches is the M-series.  M stands for Men's and there's an F series as well, for the fairer sex.  They're known to exist but not well documented.  However, they do show up in the 1964 catalog... or at least 12 of them do. 

The M series is believed to have been introduced in 1961 and produced through 1969.  As far as I'm aware, there are 26 M-series models and you can see the 12 that were available in 1964.

Conventional wisdom, or at least my opinion, is the model line was intended for a nation-wide distribution partner.  If you're old enough, you might recall the pre-internet days of catalog stores like Service Merchandise or Best, among others.  These nation-wide chains sold fine jewelry, and the like, through both catalogs and physical stores where you could shop the catalogs and the staff would pull the items from their storeroom.   I have yet to find any advertisements that prove this theory or identify the retail partner, but you can spot an M (or F) series model in the wild when it comes with it's original box - as the box is red.

The nomenclature behind the M series models is not very complicated.  M is for mens and the numbers represent the retail price and the count of that model at that price.  So for example, the first M series model offered at $59 was the M 59-1, the next model at that price would be the M 59-2.

My most recent M series project is an M 65-2.  It's known to be shown in the 1965 price lists but not in the regular retail catalog.  It's artistic rendering leaves a little to the imagination.

The M 65-2 was the second model priced at $65.  It was offered in a 10K RGP bezel with a stainless steel back.

My real life version is true to the rendering, as you can see below.  It looks pretty good but it's not running.  It is fully wound and that brings up an interesting term... "over wound".  That term gets used a LOT and it's a bit of a pet peeve of mine.  The term is valid in certain time pieces, like clocks, when it's wound a little too far to actually release power through the train... like it's jammed.  However, in watches, the "click" prevents the mainspring from jamming like that.  

So an "over wound" watch isn't running because it's been wound too much, it's just not running for some other reason.  I would liken it to a car that won't start, even though the gas tank is full.  It's not "over filled", it just won't start for some reason.

Anyway, there's lots of reasons for a watch to not run... it could be as simple as the minute hand touching the 1 marker or the second hand touching the hour hand.  (that's not the cause for this watch though).

Looking closely at the stainless steel back, I can see a seam between the back and the front so I suspect this case separates.  You have to be really careful though, as often this sort of design opens through the crystal.

My instincts were correct, and the two halves separated easily.  The dial and movement rests within the case back and I should be able to simply lift it out at this point.

Tucked behind the dial is a Hamilton 686 movement.  This is a pretty common Hamilton caliber for entry-level Hamiltons in the 1960s for models with sub seconds hands.  $65 wasn't "cheap" in 1965.  Adjusted for inflation, that's about $700 in today's dollars... pretty much in line with today's Hamilton entry-level models.

There was a little bit of a rattle inside the case.  I think it was simply the movement assembly wigging in the case.  A new crystal is a little thicker then what came with the watch (right), so I'll see if that helps to tighten things up after reassembly.

Everything is cleaned and dried.  Well.... almost everything.  After I took this photo I realized the pallet fork was missing.  After a few minutes of searching, I found the pallet fork on the floor.  It must have dropped during the transfer process from rinse to rinse.

I've got the movement reassembled to the point that power flows smoothly through the wheel train.  Next step is to wind it up and reinstall the balance.

I installed the balance and it wouldn't come back to life.  I realized it's way out of beat... meaning the impulse jewel isn't lined up with the pallet for.  Check out the photo below and the position of the impulse jewel (at 9 o'clock) and the hairspring stud at about 11:30.

Installed on the movement, note the hairspring stud is almost in alignment with the pallet arbor and escape wheel.  Instead, the impulse jewel should be aligned with them, so this balance needs to be rotated counterclockwise about 45 degrees.  That would definitely explain why this watch was not running.

In the photo below I made a best-guess adjustment to put me in the ball park.  The only way to tell for sure will be with the timer.

With the balance closer to being in beat, the watch comes back to life and is ticking away with a good motion.  Now I can install the balance jewels in the balance cock and then check the timing.

Well... it's running really slow but the beat error is good and the amplitude is fine too.  Fortunately that's an easy adjustment, I just have to move the regulator and "shorten" the hairspring.

A tweak here and a tweak there... eventually I bring the beat rate in line.  Note the difference in position of the regulator relative to the hairspring stud.  I moved it quite a way.

Now the beat rate is fine but I moved the balance out of beat a little.  So now I just have to tweak the hairspring stud again.

It didn't take too much, as you can see if you compare the photo below with the one above.   I have no idea why this balance was so far out of adjustment.

Regardless, now everything is looking good to go... a couple of further tweaks brought the beat error down to near-zero.

Welp... I went to install the dial and hands and the balance stopped.  I took the balance off and the gear train was locked up.  What happened?

Looking closely, I could see the escape wheel was out of position.  Did I break a pivot?  Is one of the jewel broken?  It was a good opportunity to use a new tool I recently acquired... it's microscope with a large screen so I can see what I'm doing with great ease.

Looking at the escape wheel jewel on the main plate, everything looks fine.

Looking at the jewel on the train bridge, I can see it's not cracked but then I realized it's missing the cap jewel.  This is another great reason why the watch would be dead on arrival and not running.

I pulled out a donor 686 and you can see there should be a shock spring and cap jewel on the escape wheel jewel.  At this point I can swap jewels or just swap bridges.  I'll go the easier route and just swap jewels.

Alrighty then... back to the drawing board and after cleaning the new bridge, I start the reassembly process.

The reassembled movement is now running again.

The performance is the same as it was before - that's not surprising though, it's the balance that counts the most and the train bridge was nice and clean.

It was smooth sailing from this point and the reassembled watch looks great behind the fresh crystal.  It still had a tiny bit of rattle though so I put a teensy dollop of rodico putty between the dial and case back to dampen any movement.  Now it's as tight as a drum, and it runs as good as it looks.

1956 Accumatic

Sometimes Hamilton watches come with a bit of a mystery... especially when come across two of them.  

This post gets to a good example of a mystery model.  Back in 2015 I had the same situation and I called it the 1956 Accumatic.

The Accumatic introduced a new line of automatic models to supplement the K-series that was introduced earlier.  The Accumatic model line really was a continuation of the Illinois automatics that were introduced even earlier - so you could say the Accumatic line came first, depending on what you called the starting point.

The Accumatic was followed initially by the Accumatic II, Accumatic III, etc. all the way up to the Accumatic XI before being continued with numbers like the Accumatic A-501 starting in 1961.  The Accumatic line continued on into the 1970s, long after the K-series ended.

The original Accumatic was produced from 1956 through 1958.  It was distinctive because of the "flying saucer" case but also because of the dial options.  And here is where it gets interesting.

Here's a photo of the Accumatic with the all-numeral dial option shown in the catalog depiction.  If the case looks familiar, it should.  A similar lug shape was used on the design of the 1955 K-503. 

The similarities are definitely there but as you can see in the photo below of a K-503, the bezel isn't an exact match. 

So what is it that makes the Accumatic so different?  Mainly it's the movement inside... the Accumatic line uses ETA movements while the Automatic K series used Kurth Freres movements (primarily).  That means that if you have a mystery watch with an ETA movement, it's going to be an Accumatic of some ilk.

Of course, ETA made different versions of automatic calibers and continues to do so to power today's modern Hamilton watches.  I suppose you could safely argue that the Accumatic is the great great grandpappy of all Hamilton automatics today.

So onto my project watch.  As I said above, it's the exact same setup as my 2015 watch.  It's an Accumatic dial and movement in a case with slightly different lugs.  The Speidel bracelet is a 1970s aftermarket add on and can be safely disposed of, although it does have one of those funny analog calendar scroll do-dads, which is interesting.

The case back is the same setup as the 1958 Sea-Glo I recently did.  It's a pie-pan disc held in place with a screw-on ring.  They can be tricky to remove if they are secured by layer after layer of "old man funk".  This one is engraved with a presentation from 1958... in keeping with the time frame for Accumatics.  If you peruse the catalogs, there are no other options that utilize this case.  Having now found two examples in the wild, I think you can safely say that this is an Accumatic variation.

Tucked inside the case is a Hamilton 672 movement.  This is the same caliber Illinois models used and clearly dates this watch to 1958 or earlier.  Again, by 1958 you only had a small handful of Accumatic models to choose from and this doesn't match the Accumatic II through V.

Black dialed watches are interesting.  The green lume is an obvious add on.  The appropriate color would be white.  The black dots at the numerals are spent radium lume paint.   Part of the challenge with black dials is if you attempt to clean them they usually turn gray - so you have to be really careful with them.

With the dial out of the way, you can see the business end of the movement.  It's a classic ETA design.

Once the automatic framework is removed, you're left with essentially a Hamilton 671 like what was in the Sea Glo.  The difference would be the mainspring and mainspring barrel.  

Everything is cleaned and ready to reassemble.  I relumed the hands with white lume and the dial too.  Before doing the dial, I treated it to a "poor man's refinish" and gave it a light spritz of lacquer after removing the old radium in my watch rinse.

Like the 671, the trick to this movement is to get the train bridge back in place.  It's not as difficult and the later ETA movements with four wheel pivots to align - but it still takes some finesse to get the bridge to drop on place so all the wheels spin freely.

Once the movement is reassembled and wound up a bit, the balance comes back to life and it can go on the timer.

Not too shabby at all.  I can tweak it a smidgeon from here.

The finished watch looks great with a fresh strap and a new crystal.  The new lume looks a little like new shoelaces on old sneakers but it's a load better than what I started with.  Applying lume, especially to dials, is very challenging.  At least it will glow in the dark again.