This is a lovely Seiko dating from January 1970. Powered by a 6106 movement that when in a watch from the 70s is often marked on the dial as a DX. The DX range offer a higher jewelled movement that also has a hacking complication. From working on so many of these movements I can say its almost the same as a 6119.
This watch had been rattling around my draw for a year or more before I decided to attempt a restoration. It was actually given to me by a good friend in the watch world. As he does not repair watches and it was a non runner he thought the best person to have it would be me. Very kind of him.
Here is the watch.
As you can see its had a good life and has been well used. I like the separate day window with the full wording displayed. You don’t often see these on Seiko’s which is why it makes them a bit more collectible.
First thing to note on this watch is that it can only be accessed by removing the crystal, its a closed caseback meaning access is only from the front.
No problem as I have a tool called a crystal lift that will deal with this. I found the crystal was in really firm possibly from all the decades of use with all the dirt and grime finding their way into all the crevices.
With the crystal out of the way it reveals a lovely and unmarked dial. Brilliant news.
This was where all the fun stopped though and all the problems would lay ahead.
To remove the movement from the case I first need to remove the stem and crown. To do this I have to push a little lever down and pull on the crown. The lever is just visible on the right of the date window with a drilled indent in it. That it what I push.
The problem is the crown is stuck. I knew this beforehand but just hoped that by then pushing the stem release it would pop out. This was not to be the case. It would not budge no matter how hard I pulled. I was frustrated but I have had experience with a watch like this before. Not because a stem was stuck but because the lever was missing / fell off. As this is the only way to safely remove you have to think out of the box a little.
As I know the 6106 movement I know that the dial is held on by dial screws on the sides of the main plate. I also know I can lever up the movement enough to just access them if I am careful. I must first remove the hands and then pry, hold and undo the screws to release the dial. With the dial off I can then strip down the dial side of the movement to reveal the keyless works which hold the stem in place.
What I could clearly see was rust on the lever. This meant that the watch had water ingress at some point at its weakest point the crown. I stripped the movement down further to see what I was dealing with.
A you can see that is some rust! even with all the parts removed the stem would still not budge, it was stuck in the clutch. I had to oil like crazy and leave to soak. Some time later and it still would not come out and I ended up forcing it out which in turn bent the crown. I knew I could replace that part along with other parts from donor watch movements I have.
Finally the movement was released from the case. Inside the caseback I could not find any service marks at all, could I be the first person in here since it left the factory some 50+ years previous!
Now my attention turned to the movement side. Stripdown was simple enough I found no surprises and no damaged or rusty parts. It would seem the water ingress did not penetrate that far in much to my good fortune.
Here are some strip down photos.
I found the diafix jewels to be really dirty. I clean all parts in the watch cleaning machine first and then remove shock jewels and clean them after in a solvent. When I removed these Diashock I could not believe they could still be so dirty.
All cleaned up I was ready for the rebuild. I then decided as it had been so eventful so far that I would film the rebuild for my Youtube channel. For entertainment and also a possible tutorial for others tackling the 6106 movement.
If you are interested in this story so far then please give it a watch.
So here it is the finished watch. I was always unsure of how this one would look until I fitted a strap. Now I really like this watch. Vintage is such a rewarding genre.
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