Saturday, August 22, 2009

New no date black Seawolf for the end of summer



Got this very nice no date early black Seawolf back from a friend who serviced it and relumed the hands. Its an early beauty with the telltale "Swiss" on the dial and the chunkier lume. Really clean considering the age. I had to sacrifice a parts watch to get this one running as the mainspring, barrel and barrel bridge were shot on the original watch. I love the clean, no nonsense look of the dateless dial. Easy to see why these were the choice of so many military personnnel, these must've glowed like the dickens when new.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Happy almost end of summer



Long time between posts, some outstanding news though which has rekindled my love of Zodiacs. Butch Dunn has brought back his Zodiac forum and the world of WISdom is a better place for it. Check it out.

http://www.vintagezodiacs.com/zforums/index.php

An update on my long forgotten orange Seawolf which I sent off to get repaired. It was an ebay pickup that I paid too much for, as the patented fuzzy ebay pic had me rolling the dice. Well it was nothing short of a wreck when I got it. Didn't run, rust in the movement, dial flaking and bezel shot. I finally got it back a few months ago, and its a mixed bag. Cosmetically, it looks real nice, I sent off a NOS orange/black dial with it and it looks spectacular, crisp and vibrant orange and black to offset it. The repair guy redid the hands and even painted the seconds hand metallic orange (!). He also installed a nice NOS burgundy bezel, the orange bezel that originally came with these watches is impossible to find. However I can't get the watch to run. Its obvious that he put a good bit of work into it but the watch still doesn't run. I don't want to send it back because lord knows when I'll get it back, the initial run took over a year and a half. Live and learn my friends.

One more observation, there have been several of these orange Seawolves on ebay recently, including a couple of fixer uppers that were really cheap. I think these are wonderful watches. In their heyday, top notch professional diving equipment with that extra panache/flair offered by the beautifully colored minute track and pastel orange bezel. I'm still looking for the silver dial variant in decent shape.