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.