zOwie Omega Discussion Forum

Hi all......just thought i would relay to everyone a recent VERY pleasant experience with one of my 18k Connies with the Cal 561 movement. I had decided to wear one of them on a regular basis,as this is a prestine example heavy cased with intregal lugs and i was fortunate to find an unusual and great looking Omega thick and heavy 18ky woven braided band!(NOT the typical "mesh" band.)The combo weighs in at 140 grams!!! WOW!!

Not knowing when it had been serviced last i decided to have it cleaned at a local Jeweler who has a Rolex trained watchmaker on staff. He does nice work and the wait is only a week or so if parts are not needed.

Anyway......got the watch back and it ran "ok" timekeeping wise, but i felt the watch was more that capable of bettering the 15 seconds fast a day it was doing quite consistantly. Most watchmakers time to a machine and slightly "fast" to prevent the customer being late anywhere........but they can't know the specific watch wearing habits of each customer. So they rarely get a watch timed in as closely as someone actually wearing the watch with a little knowledge of finetuning!

Having been in the jewelry business 32 years as a bench jeweler i've fussed a bit with watch over the years......and decided to get this one tightened up a bit. So off came the band to allow access to the screw off back. Using my case opener the back followed and i looked over the goose neck regulater to figure out which way to go to slow down the time a bit. It's not marked like on cheaper watches but after looking it over i already knew that to slow down you needed to increase the effective length of the hairspring and vise versa. I didn't know how much that equated to but i carefully turned the adjusting screw on the gooseneck regulator 2 full turns clockwise! I then gently blew out the watch of any dust with my bulb blower and put the back and band on and watched it for a few hours against a quartz watch. It didn't take long to discover i had gone WAY too much with the adjustment......as i was now loosing a second an hour or so!

Later that day the back comes off for the 2nd time and i then went counter-clockwise 1 1/2 turn of the adjuster to remove most of my previous attempt to finetune this puppy. Watched it a bit longer(well into the next day) and found it was much better but still loosing a couple seconds that day. Had it been gaining those few seconds i would have left it alone.......but don't want to be late so off the back comes a 3rd time! Guess what they say about "3rd times a charm" really is......because i moved that screw counter-clockwise not more that a flea's hair thickness and blew it out a final time and waited for the result.

Well.......i've timed it to a nice quartz watch AND to the www.time.gov government time site (only use it when i get .5 sec or less accuracy on the site or else i reload till i do!) and i've now watched my Omega for 3 full days. Timekeeping over that period of time while wearing all the time save for showering has been better than ANY watch i've ever had! Even my Rolexes of the past and long since sold haven't bettered it!

IT HAS NOT VARIED MORE THAN ONE SECOND OVER THREE FULL DAYS!!!!! I can't even say if the watch is off even that, as on the www.time.gov site is rarely accurate to atomic clock time closer than .4 or .5 sec, and it's pretty hard to guage parts of a secong on a mechanical watch hand anyway as it doesn't stop like on a quartz.

All in all i'm extreamly pleased in the consistancy in this 1960's vintage watch has shown. I'm enjoying this one,..... and i'll try to remember to follow up with a longer guage over time as to it's ability to run like a quartz!