For MS: Seiko 6138-0011 3/71 Speedtimer restoration, May 26, 2026

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:10]Okay, it is it is yachtman day.

[00:00:16]So, we have our yachtman. I I already have the strap open. The thing about the bracelet is that I have to hand clean it because it still has its that's the original sticker uh instruction sticker for resizing a JDM strap.

[00:00:36]So, I'm not really going to be able to get like this stuff. I can I I can, you know, I'm going to have to go in here and physically remove that's that stuff to clean out around it the clasp and everything else.

[00:01:03]What I can do is I can clean the clasp by hand and then actually run the bracelet through the ultrasonic.

[00:01:22]Yikes.

[00:01:24]Yucky. Gross.

[00:01:27]So, I will I will pull all this apart.

[00:01:37]So, On the top, I've got two.

[00:01:44]On the bottom, I've got four.

[00:01:52]I will get some paper down here and get that taken care of.

[00:02:40]All right.

[00:02:42]These are not these spring bars are not retractable.

[00:02:50]I have to to bend that up. I'm not going to do that yet.

[00:03:18]Okay.

[00:04:10]Look at that. That is a lot of bracelet pieces.

[00:04:14]There's that.

[00:04:51]We had a uh had a spring bar come apart.

[00:05:02]Went. That was the end of that. Okay.

[00:05:05]I'll be replacing the spring bar, which is not a big deal.

[00:05:15]It's interesting. Spring bars don't fail that often. They really don't. So, that's kind of wild.

[00:05:23]Okay, I will deal with this over here. Here's that.

[00:05:34]This goes away.

[00:05:38]Hold on.

[00:05:47]Okay.

[00:06:09]Okay, that is already loose.

[00:06:44]pretty stiff, but I've seen worse.

[00:07:32]Yeah, it's nice looking movement.

[00:08:03]This spring is in the wrong place. That tab is supposed to be over here.

[00:08:26]I'll get this gaskets off those buttons in just a minute.

[00:08:31]Meanwhile, Oh, oops. That's not what I wanted to do.

[00:09:57]You come here.

[00:10:03]And you go back in there.

[00:11:38]Get this crown gasket off of here. It's absolutely flattened.

[00:11:44]Just going to be hard as plastic and it's going to snap right off here. Do you hear that click? That was the plastic. That was the the seal breaking. That wasn't the the clippers I'm using. It was literally that was the plastic going crack.

[00:12:05]Okay. Come on. Get off of here.

[00:12:19]And there it is. There's your crown gasket.

[00:12:24]You'll get that back and can play with it.

[00:12:54]Okay.

[00:13:04]Yeah, I think that's a good idea.

[00:13:08]Get a new piece of wrap.

[00:13:12]These are so beautiful.

[00:13:17]I love the way that the you you can actually you can see sort of the lighter outline around the edge of the sweep second's hand.

[00:13:26]I wish the orange didn't fade. It's so nice looking.

[00:13:35]One of the things I ever I thought about doing years and years and years ago was coming up with some kind of a coating for crystals that would that for UV protection.

[00:13:53]I got two Okay.

[00:16:10]Dial date is February 71.

[00:16:35]Okay, cool.

[00:17:04]Let's look at your pallet fork, jewels.

[00:17:11]Dirty, dry.

[00:17:31]H some marks on the entrance.

[00:17:35]Initial leading stone.

[00:17:38]The exit stone looks okay, but we'll see. It's probably just old grease.

[00:18:11]Wait a minute. There.

[00:18:25]Yep. Definitely low hours. Whoever and whoever owned this thing didn't use the chronograph very much.

[00:18:36]No dimpling on the bushings.

[00:18:49]Interesting. It's This is your hammer right there. This is your hammer spring.

[00:18:59]Seikko had a couple different Sorry, I had a timer go off. Um, it's interesting because this this design of this hammer spring I think of as a later style, but I don't have any real basis for that.

[00:19:13]It's just it's interesting that Seikko had two different designs and they they used them more or less interchangeably.

[00:20:39]Okay. So, on a 6138, the lower mainsprint arbers are already jeweled. It's uh they do it because they can't have any wear uh because the 12hour register gets driven off of the lower end of the main spring barrel.

[00:20:58]There's a little drive gear and everything in there and you have to have the clearance. You have to have the tolerances have to be correct. They can't change. And so they jeweled the bottom, which is unusual for Seiko. And they did it because they clearly had to.

[00:21:12]They did not jewel the upper. So I'm going to be jewel jeweling the upper on this to make this exactly what it ought to be.

[00:22:48]Come here.

[00:22:52]Absolutely dry as bone.

[00:23:14]No lubricant whatsoever.

[00:23:16]Just gucky marks from where it used to be.

[00:23:36]And there it is. This is your chronograph wheel.

[00:23:42]Is the heart of your movement. And this is a rare part.

[00:23:47]your if you have a 6138 and your chronograph wheel is bad, I'm so sorry, but yours is good.

[00:24:02]Yep, it's fine.

[00:24:05]It's in good condition.

[00:24:31]Here's your main spring.

[00:24:49]And there is there's your lower main spring arbor jewel right there. Here's the drive wheel that comes off that. I have to open this barrel and get that taken apart.

[00:25:04]I'll do that after I finish messing with the rest of the movement. The last thing I want to do is cuz you open up the main spring barrel and it's you get this uh S tube lubricant all over your hands and then you get it on everything else.

[00:26:42]Okay.

[00:27:12]Okay, now get this calendar plate off.

[00:27:54]There's that calendar plate.

[00:28:00]Oh, wow. Look at that. Yours is This one is early enough. The other one was 76 and this wheel, this intermediate day driving wheel was plastic. Yours is early enough that it's metal.

[00:28:18]High hour wheel.

[00:28:21]Intermediate day driving wheel.

[00:28:29]Come on.

[00:28:46]Canon pinion center wheelour wheel. Now the rest of this stuff I take apart. I take this stuff apart offcreen because I don't want to mess with anything.

[00:29:01]Well, I guess I can take this off.

[00:29:17]These aren't that big of a deal. But this is these are the reset levers for the 12-hour wheel.

[00:30:20]I'm unclear about how Seikko built these things with robots in the 60s.

[00:30:37]Okay. So, like I said, I'm going to take this apart off screen. Keyless works cuz I got some little springs in there.

[00:30:44]Let's get this out.

[00:31:00]That looks pretty good.

[00:31:08]There's that. So, here are these.

[00:31:10]There's the top of your main spring barrel there.

[00:31:25]There's the barrel itself.

[00:31:44]Getting there.

[00:32:03]And there is your main spring. It's a little funky.

[00:32:17]What's up with that?

[00:32:21]See this? See how it's like oblong?

[00:32:26]Clean that up. Also, we got a big curve here. That's weird.

[00:32:32]That is strange. Okay. Uh, I'm going to continue cleaning these up. I got to do the buttons. Uh, I got to pull your case apart. Um, I got to start things he Okay, I will be back probably when I am uh when the thing's back from the machine and I'm I'm I'm getting numbers back out of it. So, I will be back.

[00:32:56]Okay, the movement is going back together. Uh, I'm assembling the train bridge side and you can see here is your jewel. So, that is your lower. That's your upper main spring arbor jewel.

[00:33:11]Here's the old bushing. And you'll get that back and you can play with that.

[00:33:16]That went right there. If I can stop wiggling all over the place. Anyway, that's what it looks like. So, it's looks looks pretty nice.

[00:33:29]Okay. Onward and upward. Okay. There's your movement.

[00:33:38]running in doing its thing. Let's see what kind of numbers we get out of the deal.

[00:34:08]That's good.

[00:34:11]Oh, that's great.

[00:34:24]Wow.

[00:34:36]It's fantastic numbers.

[00:34:45]This is a great watch.

[00:35:02]Well, let us we only get a little bit of B air. So again, the way that this works is this is the gain or loss if you're gaining or losing. You can also see that because the line's going up, that means it's going faster.

[00:35:25]That's fantastic amplitude.

[00:35:32]Really, really nice.

[00:35:38]Oh, that's just great to ease. My goodness.

[00:35:52]Okay, so we've got a little bit of beat error.

[00:35:58]Let's get rid of that beat error.

[00:36:03]I'm going to guess and I'm going to go move the arm clockwise which will make the which will effectively shorten the hair spring and which will make it go faster. We'll see if that's right.

[00:36:25]It didn't do anything.

[00:36:34]It just does not want to move.

[00:36:46]Too much. I was correct, but it's too much.

[00:37:08]too much. Too much the other way.

[00:37:16]Too much that way.

[00:37:25]Okay, I'm going to get rid of that gain.

[00:37:42]Okay, I'm going to hit that B error again.

[00:37:54]No, too much.

[00:38:22]too much.

[00:38:44]Trying to get that beat area down.

[00:39:09]Gain up a Cool.

[00:39:35]Just a little bit of beer.

[00:40:18]Boy, this watch is fantastic.

[00:40:21]This is a great watch, boy.

[00:40:45]Fantastic. It's got to be one of the best numbers I've seen out of a 6138 in years.

[00:41:09]Wow.

[00:41:31]I wish I could claim credit for it, but I I the you know I I did a service like I always do a service, but the the movement itself is in great condition.

[00:41:55]This is a fantastic watch. Fantastic.

[00:42:02]Okay. Well, I'm going to continue letting it. Well, actually, I want to do something.

[00:42:07]There we go.

[00:42:11]Uh, so I switched up the links a little bit. There had been four removable links over here, which is really long. Um, and I moved them over here. One of them over here. So now you've got uh how many you have? You've got three over here and three over here. They're pretty easy to move. Um, it's just I don't know. Usually you want this that the tail end of the bracelet to be the long one, but there it is.

[00:42:47]I'm just so happy how it came out.

[00:42:52]What a great great great runner.

[00:43:02]What a beautiful example of this model.

[00:43:06]I wonder how long it's something I actually don't know how long they used the the short handset for because I you know I I associate that with being I don't know I just don't have an answer.

[00:43:23]It's super cool though.

[00:43:28]Here's your old stuff. There's your crown seal. Your button gaskets came off in pieces. There's your old crystal and everything.

[00:43:39]Uh, the bracelet cleaned up well and taking it apart was definitely the right thing to do. Not that I would have not done that, but everything is all nice and clean.

[00:43:51]I did hand clean this fold so you didn't lose any of that.

[00:44:13]Super cool watch. Not much else to say.

[00:44:15]I'm super happy that it went out that the numbers came up the way that they did and it just took the it took the it took the servicing very well and I'm looking forward to getting this back to you.

[00:44:29]I do want to test one thing.

[00:44:38]right to zero.

[00:44:41]Cool. Okay, that's about it. Thank you so very much.