Custom diver - bitsa this & bitsa that

[pauluspaolo]

Hi all,
originally this watch was a 200m Pulsar automatic from the Seiko stable - it uses the same case as the Alba Manta Ray diver (Alba are also part of the Seiko empire) which was released a good few years back. The Pulsar was originally plain stainless steel but I got a bit bored one day & asked Bry1975 (I'm pretty sure he's a member of this forum) if he could get the case DLC coated. He'd done some work for me in the past on watches (beadblasting etc) & said of course. He emailed me a photo/list of all the colours available. I chose a satin charcoal grey/black for the main case & a contrasting gold for the case back & crown (DLC coated again). All the surfaces have a very nice satin sheen to them with no polished surfaces. The brown dial is from a Seiko 5 (no clue which model) while the hands are whatever I could find in my spares box that fitted the 7S26 movement - hence they're totally mismatched & I may replace them later. I do like the watch as it is though so may well leave them alone. Thanks to jkb89 (Joe) of this parish who accepted my offer for a Seiko 5 he was selling - this watch provided the movement.

The watch is on my wrist as I type this, keeping good time with all functions working as they should. This is a minor miracle in itself as many of the watches I work on - sorry that should say butcher - end up in the same spares drawer that the hands came out of!

For those who don't know DLC stands for Diamond Like carbon & is a coating applied (by means of magic as far as I can understand) to provide wear protection/low friction properties to components in constant motion/high wear applications! As you can probably tell I don't really know but I've gleaned the following from the web:

"DLC is a hard, wear resistant, carbon based coating. It provides excellent surface finish, corrosion resistance & very low friction which improves with use and lubrication."

The finish on this watch is superb - very even & smooth - &, given the fact that I've worn it loads over the years & had the watch in bits many many times, it also appears to be very hard wearing. I have to say that I had the case, case back & crown coated a good few years ago (2010 maybe??) & the watch has been through many looks/incarnations since then. I've no idea if Bry can still offer this service but if you're interested the best thing to do would be to contact him directly.

Thoughts appreciated but I like it :)

The original Pulsar:


As it is now: