I’ve been on the lookout for a ‘World Time’ project watch for a while now and finally managed to find one, a first generation World Time model from 1964…
(Click pictures to enlarge)
On the plus side, the case, crown and hands were in superb shape. The movement too, although not running was clean and corrosion free. On the minus side, some of the dial markers showed their age and someone had tried (and failed) to lever the Seiko logo off the dial damaging the dial print. And just to make life a bit more errr… interesting, the 24hr hand had been snapped off and there was some damage to the city bezel.
This is quite a rare watch these days so I was prepared for a lengthy search for parts, but was surprised to find a complete donor watch after just a couple of weeks. Although the city bezel was worse, it had an excellent dial and the 24hr hand I needed to get started.
The movement in this watch is the 6217A calibre which was also used in Seiko’s first ever Diver’s watch the 62MAS. To incorporate the 24hr function, another wheel is added that slips over the hour wheel, and the minute wheel has another fixed pinion on top of it (inset). The 24hr hand is mounted on the new wheel, whose tooth ratios have been calculated so that it rotates once a day.
Here’s the watch back in service after a good clean up and a new crystal…
The watch is called a ‘World Time’ because it can be used to determine the time in any one of 24 time zones around the world. The city bezel is rotated using the crown until the 24hr hand points to a city in your current time zone, then the 24 hour scale can be used to reference the other time zones. For example, in the picture above, if I’m currently in Santiago (I wish!), I can see that the current time is 08:00 in Chicago, 21:00 in Bangkok and so on. A pretty useful feature for the world traveller.
Rich
I have a Seiko world time watch which i have just had a new winder and stalk fitted by a Hatton garden watchmaker, I have had to return it as it will not wind the mainspring, I believe this is because the original (flat) winder button was replaced with one that has a 2mm collar. I am hoping that the watchmaker can replace it with the correct one s that I am able to wind the watch. At the moment, I can rock the the watch gently and it will work for about one minute, so I do not believe there is anything major wrong with the watch. If it does not fix the problem, I will sell the watch as is, and I wondered if you could give me an estimate as to how much and where (not ebay) I could put it up for sale. Any help would be much appreciated, Graham.