Hamilton Khaki Navy Frogman

[Ben]

Well, it's not a new watch...but it sure seems like it to me. Oh, wait! I guess y'all need some of the backstory. OK.

I bought this watch a couple of years ago during one of those "I want a new watch, but can't afford one that's $4k" stage. I really liked the watch and enjoyed wearing it. It came with an olive drab canvas strap which I replaced with a NATO.





Hamilton is making some interesting watches right now, I must say, and the quality is damned nice for the money. This Navy Frogman comes with an ETA 2836 movement (I believe...Al?) and is in a titanium case with a 200 meter depth rating. There's also a sapphire caseback to view the movement (which I sadly have no photos of). A right nice package for $400.00! Should almost be in the "frugal" category.

I guess the unique feature of this one is the screw-down crown cap. This is their "homage" to the device used on the early dive watches Hamilton made for the US military in the 1940's.





The cap, along with the gunmetal color of the titanium, gives the watch a definite and distinctive vintage look and appeal. A look that I really like.

OK, back to the story. Quite a while ago now, it stopped running. WTF! I tried to wind it and the stem came out in my hand. WTF!! I took it to a local guy who claimed that he knew how to repair it. Well...he lied. It would run fine for a few hours and then stop. So, before the holidays I asked Al (avalon) if he'd be willing to take a look at it for me. He agreed and I shipped it off to Canada.

This is probably the time where I should ask Al to jump in and talk a bit about what was wrong and how he fixed it - then - tweaked the watch to get it running at it's best.

Anyway, I got the watch back from Al last week. I noticed that the NATO strap was really in pretty bad shape so I put the original canvas strap on it. Talk about giddy! It was like getting a new watch!! But after about an hour I realized again why I didn't really care for the olive drab strap. Off to the internet. I wanted to keep the military frogman look, and I need a long strap (which limits the choices). I found an inexpensive "Swiss Army" style strap (their terminology) at the "Watch Prince" that looked like it would fit the bill perfectly and ordered it. I got it in today's mail. Here it is.....



I think it works perfectly (please excuse the quickie hand-held, iSO 800 photo). The new strap is very comfortable and maintains the military/vintage character of the watch that I didn't want to lose. I have to thank Al again for doing the repair work and getting it running in tip top condition.

Oh...but it doesn't end there. When I opened the package, what do I find? A bonus. Inside a find a very spiffy Glashütte Original leather business card case. Here it is posing with the cute little Winchester pocketknife I rescued from the gun show last weekend.




I have a new watch. Well, almost. It just seems like it.

-Ben

[Archer]

Hey Ben - my pleasure helping to fix this watch and also you are welcome for the little extra.

Ben sent me his watch because it kept stopping, so while it was on it's way I had several complicated theories running through my head as to what would cause this. When the watch arrived and I had a chance to look it over, all those theories went out the window....it was something very simple. ;D

In the photo below you can see where I've added a red circle, and inside that circle you might notice a screw. For some reason a bridge screw had come loose and was floating around inside the case. Not good!



Once I removed this screw and put it back in it's proper location, the watch ran quite a bit better.

I'll post more on what else I tweaked later.

Glad it's running well Ben, and it looks nice on that strap! I wore it for a bit on a black strap (with Ben's permission of course).



It's a very nice watch for the money!

BTW it has an ETA 2895-2 movement in it.

Cheers, Al

[Archer]

To expand on the repair a bit....

Here is where the bridge screw was missing from (red arrow) and also shown is the stem release button (green arrow).



What I think happened is that when Ben took this to his local guy to fix the stem issue, this person removed the screw for the bridge thinking it was the stem release. It wasn't put back in tightly enough and worked it's way loose.

After I fixed this I put the watch on my timing machine.



The beat error is way out of whack at 1.9 milliseconds, when at most it should be 0.5 milliseconds. So I had to adjust the beat. To do this I had to remove the auto-winding bridge.

Here is the movement with the bridge removed.



Here is the bridge.



Now I can get at the ETACHRON system for adjusting the harispring. The hairspring was not centered between the regulating pins, so I did that, then closed up the pins. Here is the spring after centering but before the pins were closed up.



Now I installed the auto winding bridge and rotor, then put it back on the timing machine for the final adjustments. Corrected the beat and the rate.



The watch ran great after this. I also did the pressure test - at least as high as my machine will go at 10 ATM.



Passed with flying colours!



Hope you enjoyed seeing this.

Cheers, Al

[langnam]

Dang, Al! It looks like you're doing great work! Keep it up!

[aerome]

How neat is it when one can enjoy a hobby, turn it into something to helps his friends, make a bit of a profit, then maybe to sustain a living!

You're quite lucky, Al

Al II

[atomic]

Great stuff... can't wait for my next visit and see the bench now that it's all together and workable.

[otis]

Love threads like this. Glad I'm able to learn something whilst enjoying watches like the Hamilton.... Very nice piece there.