Project: 1947 Hamilton Gilman 982M

Lately I’ve had old Hamiltons on my mind so I made my next project a 1947 Hamilton Gilman with a 982M. It has a larger bezel than most Hamiltons of this era which I thought was a bit unique.

The case looked pretty good for its age. A small dent on the side and some expected wear. There were are couple of slightly discolored spots in the gold which I assume are just areas in the alloy with a little more copper which changed color over time. The back of the bezel had a small cut in it from where someone checked it to see if it was solid gold or plated. It was right at the edge of one the lugs so it was barely noticeable so not a big deal to me although it was still a shame nonetheless.

 

This watch was advertised as “SERVICED” but I usually interpret that to mean “it was serviced before, yes.”

The caseback has been marked many times as you would expect on a 71 year old watch that still runs. After cleaning it up and studying many of the marks my best guess is it was probably serviced 11 years ago.

 

I’m not sure if the dial has ever been worked on before but it looks pretty good for its age.

The movement looked good but you might have noticed a wavy pattern on the timegrapher photo earlier in this post. If you look carefully you can see that the cap jewel for the escape wheel is held on by a small screw. The bridge that screw goes into was stripped of all its threads and a screwdriver was unable to remove the screw. The loose fitting resulted in enough movement of that pivot to cause variation in its rate. I ended up replacing the bridge with one from a scrap movement and that wavy pattern straightened up.

 

Here it is with a fresh strap after about a month of regular use. Although I haven’t kept an accurate measurement of its accuracy it has kept excellent time for its age.

Thanks for watching!

-Watch Dog

 

This entry was posted in Projects and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.