My first Zodiac!! After working on a friends Seawolf see my Youtube channel Videos https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1QqBaAlwtP4pyON_xdJwyyE64iDL6J4v
I snagged this specimen for £40! With a cheeky offer on eBay. Possibly the cheapest Zodiac out there at the time .. I had been watching them for weeks and generally they are £60-100+ all day long
This one is now without its problems as possibly why my offer was taken. It’s the wrong crown sadly . I could see that before my offer but I am unlikely to find the nice signed gold crown easily.
Crystal is glued in and badly done… case is gold plated and in fair condition . It will polish nice hopefully .
Dial is scratched so my guess is it’s sat for years without a crystal .
However it’s a Zodiac! So I’m happy to add to the collection and a watch that I think is worth way more than I paid once I’ve worked on it.
It was clear this watch was unloved and required some considerable work to get it back into a usable condition. The first problem was that it would not wind. The crown would turn and I would hear a clicking sound but no resistance. At first I thought it could be a broken mainspring but the watch would hold a little power and run so I ruled that out pretty quickly.
A look under the caseback revealed the issue. a loose crown wheel screw. I have seen this before, with the crown wheel screw loose the teeth don’t always mesh to wind the ratchet wheel on the barrel. Once tightened it would wind fine. Either way this watch would need a service. First now I can wind I put it on the timegrapher to see the health of the watch.
Reading does not look too bad. Okay the beat is out and rate is slow but the lines suggest that its fairly healthy.
Here are the teardown photos of the movement.
An interesting movement made up of many layers but what I did find was the hairspring was not centric. Most likely someone had damaged it with a screwdriver or some tweezers. I am not good at hairspring shaping but I guess I will have a go.
here is the result of what was probably many hours of work. on the left you can see that some of the coils are touching. This was not magnetised nor was it stuck by old oil and dirt. To carry out this work I must first remove the spring entirely from the balance wheel taking note of its position as this is needed when reassembling so you get the impulse jewel in roughly the same place. I manipulate the spring using two very fine pairs of tweezers and slowly work around the coils until it looks something like the middle photo. I find they get worse before they get better so you have to blindly believe that your are doing the right thing before seeing the results.
once in shape you have to work on the terminal curve. To do this I place the spring back in the stud without the wheel and make sure the spring is in between the regulator pins. Once in place first look at the centre of the spring, you need to manipulate the terminal curve part so the centre collet is centred on the balance cock jewel hole. Now I can fit back on to the balance wheel knowing its all lined up. Once on check that the regulator arm can move and that it does not touch the pins. Its all very tricky and not something I enjoy..
So with all that done I rebuild the watch movement and then when putting the crown wheel screw in I sheer the head off ! fortunately it was not through tightening it too much. These are left handed threads so it can be quite easy to do this. I was able to tickle the broken thread from the hole using oilers and then a pin vice. Lucky escape. What was then even luckier was that the only left handed thread screws I have are from Seiko movements and on fit perfectly into the Zodiac!
Once all back together I then hit another problem, the date would not change over when winding through 24 hours. After a bit of head scratching it turned out one of the Sheppard’s crook springs this movement uses was in the wrong way around. My photos that I took for reference on the disassembly were not so clear which prevented me from seeing the orientation of the spring. In my defence if went in the opposite way to all others I am used to working with.
Finally assembled I then changed the crystal and used some metal polish on the gold plating. This is the end result of all my hard work.
I really like this watch . To summarise I believe that this watch was made up from someone’s spare parts, perhaps it was used as a donor for a balance and the crown, signed gold Zodiac crowns cost £50 + then just flipped onto eBay.
I have tested my skills and learnt a lot from this movement and have a working watch at the end of it. Possibly the cheapest Zodiac out there at the time.
Here is the final timegraper results.
Thanks for reading my blog. I will end here with the original eBay listing photo and my finished watch comparison. what you can learn from this is to make your photos look good for eBay to maximise your chances of a good sale!
