Adventures in Amateur Watch Fettling

In 1968, Seiko established a new project team whose blank-sheet brief was to produce a shock-resistant, corrosion proof, anti-magnetic watch designed from the outset for saturation diving.

Time for a change of scene as I turn my attention to the case and the four completely seized pushers.

We have reached the end of the beginning, the point at which the summit has been reached but the mountain is far from conquered.

In part 1, we met the subject of this latest project and learned a little bit about its history and what makes it such a special watch.

This a tale of high-stakes adventure, technical challenge, agonising dilemmas and a degree of inevitable misadventure.

In working on my own watches, the question of whether a repair or restoration is justified rarely elbows its way into the conversation because by and large, I am driven by whimsical considerations such as: do I like it?

Just as the birth of the Marvel in 1956 marked the beginning of a long line of Suwa-conceived models that was to define the main navigational course of Seiko’s development as one of the most important watchmakers in the world, so the Cronos two years later

Where the Seiko Marvel might be seen as providing a melodic motif to the Lord Marvel, and the Lord Marvel, the overture to the Grand Seiko, so the Grand Seiko must therefore assume the horological equivalent of a piece of Grand Opera.

With a little more time on my hands this past year, some regularly-conceived flights of fancy that might previously have withered as precisely that, have found themselves transforming to intent and then action.

In 1963, Seiko’s luxury goods line-up spanned no fewer than seven sub-brands within a pricing structure in which the most expensive model was more than three times the price of the cheapest.

Two years before the introduction of the first Grand Seiko, the pinnacle of the Seiko product tree was occupied by the Lord Marvel, introduced in 1958 as a luxurious refinement of the Marvel.