I found this old Vostok Amphibian diver watch a few weeks ago. It’s an iconic Zissou with an old “transitional” dial. The dial looked pretty good but the movement had seen its better days. I bought it because of the rare dial. An automatic movement for this watch is easy to find.
After a few weeks I got around to working with the watch. The new movements had arrived.
First, removing the dial:

The dial was in pretty good shape. Now, to transplant the movement:

Now it’s all in place. Let’s hope the components work fine together. I’ll let the watch run on the arm over night.
It has stood the test. The old watch works fine with the brand new, automatic, 2416b movement. I might have extended the life for this beautiful Zissou by 10 – 20 years? It will be a great summerwatch!

This might sound like a complicated operation to some of you but it isn’t. It’s just opening the caseback. Removing the crown and the movement, with the dial, falls out. Pretty easy, when you know how to do it.
There were no surprises with this operation on these two watches.

Inserting the movements in the new case is just as easy as removing them.

The caseback of the automatic Scuba dude, with the antimagnetic shield, follows the movement to the titanic 627 case. I like the serial number that begins with the tripple zero on the Scuba dude caseback.

I think the 627 titanium case looks better with the Scuba dude dial. The original Komandirskie dial, with the submarine is kept safely in the Neptune case if I want to change it back.

Vostok old 710 Ministry case:

The Vostok Amphibian in the 350 case wasn’t the first Russian or Soviet era watch that I bought but I fast came to like it.

The watch looks kind of fragile but it’s a tough watch that’s been used in as tough environments as open space and in the deep sea.

It’s a diving watch. The civilian edition of this watch is waterproof down to 200 meters. There is a small, modified, military edition of this watch and it’s waterproof down to 300 m. It might not sound so impressive today but back in the late 60’s or early 70’s, when this watch was designed, it was very good. Considering the tools the Vostok factory had access to at that time, it was very impressive.

The military edition of this watch looks a bit different than the civilian edition but they are similar in many ways. I’ve got the military edition in my collection as well and I’m going to write more about those at another time.
One special feature with this watch is that the design of the case is very special compared to many other diving watches. It uses a compressor techique that makes the watch more waterproof, the more pressure that’s being put on it. Vostok didn’t invent this techique but they are using it very well.

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Here are some photos of the 350’s in my collection:

Vostok Amphibian prototype?

Early Vostok Amphibian that might be a prototype before the earliest Amphibians from Vostok.
The seller said that it is a prototype because the case is in chromed brass as opposed to all the rest of the Amphibians that are made of stainless steel. The shape of the caseback is also different than the caseback seen on the regular Amphibians. The hands on this watch is different than on the early Amphibians. There are some Amphibians with brass cases in other collectors collections and they’ve got the same kind of hands. The difference between this Amphibian and the Amphibians that are called prototypes is the logo on the back of the case. The logo on this case has the same position as the logos on the regular, steel, Amphibians while the logo on the prototype Amphibians are turned a quarter of a turn compared to the regular Amphibians. I pointed this out to the seller and he agreed. This was the only time that he saw a brass Amphibian with the logo like that and that makes this watch even more unique, he said. *lol*

I’m not sure if you can see it but the serial number on the movement is very low. It says 16813. I don’t know if Vostok’s serial numbers are in chronological order but it’s the lowest serial number that I’ve seen on a 2209 movement from Vostok.

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Watch #2

This watch is probably put together with different parts but the parts are very interesting. It will be a nice project to restore it to its original configuration later. The dial has the unusual cyrillic logo. Original neck tie hands with the small lumedot second hand. The domed crown. The domed acrylic glass. The aluminum bezel. Looking at the movement you can see that the movement is younger than the watch. The movement probably comes from a Vostok Amphibian Tonneau. It works so the movement stays for now. Since the dial has the logo in cyrillic I guess the caseback should have the writings in cyrillic but the caseback has latin letters.

Anyway, this watch works fine.

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Watch #3

I bought this watch from the American collector Paul Schnurr a few years ago. I think that everything on this watch is original. The cyrillic logo on the dial goes fine with the cyrillic markings on the caseback. The nice necktie hands with the small lumedot second hand. The original bezel in good shape. The crown is a bit worn so that the brass is a bit visible but it only gives character to the watch.

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Watch #4

This watch came to my collection in a terrible shape but I’m slowly collecting parts to get the watch back to its original configuration. It was the dial with the cyrillic dial that got me interested in the watch. The hands has been replaced with new, handmade, replaced parts. The bezel is a new bezel that I made together with some friends. The crown is new but an original part for this watch. A great, domed, acrylic crystal in good shape.

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Watch #5

This watch is nice to wear. I put a stingray watchband on it. Matches good with the watch don’t you think? It’s an excellent “beater”. The caseback is the unusual “Amfibia” caseback. The dial with the latin text goes nice with the latin text on the caseback.

Ok, ok, I bought it myself. I’ll write more about this iconic watch in another post at another time.

I bought the Okeah with a very comfortable leather strap. It looked good but found an original Okeah metal bracelet to match with this iconic watch.

Changing the bracelet was easy. No surprises.
My wrist isn’t very small. It’s not very big either but it’s not that small. The bracelet was gigantic! I regulated the bracelets clasp or lock almost to the bottom of the scale and the bracelet would sit just loose. The clasp was – in some positions – sticking out from the bracelets links in a way that it could get stuck in my clothes or something else. I don’t like to change things on these rare wristwatches. Regulate watches is one thing but changing or modifying is another. If I keeped the bracelet like it came, I would risk loosing the whole wristwatch. The bracelet might open by it self and fall off. Better to remove a link so that the bracelet fits properly. Pretty easy done and I’m saving the link of course.

The original crystal is a flat acrylic glass. Not domed like for instance Vostok Amphibians. I wouldn’t call this a diving watch like the Amphibians anyway.

The caseback on these early, military issued, Okeah:s are supposed to have this caseback. Poljot later produced Okeah chronograph also for the civilian market but those didn’t have this caseback. The cases on those civilian Okeah was chromed brass. The cases for the military issued Okeahs was made in stainless steel.

Judging by the guide that I mentioned above I would say that this watch is from about 1981.

I don’t know if this photo show so much but on some watches you can see traces of a human hand polishing the watch before going out to the first owner. I take it that there was some craftmanship in making these watches. These small traces is one of the things that I like with the Russian watches. It’s not just machines all the way to a finished watch.

Raketa is one of my favorite Russian watchbrands. While Vostok and other Russian watchbrands are making tough watches, Raketa’s watches can be more elegant.
This is a franken watch. The dial is pretty rare and beautiful. The dial should sit in a watch called Raketa Record together with a case that’s as unusual as the dial. This case is good looking but it doesn’t belong together with the dial. The case could work fine with some other Raketa dial. The hands in the watch are also wrong but I’ve got no plans for those.
My plan is to find a case for the Record dial and to move the dial and movement to that case. The empty case will be saved while I hunt for a dial and a Raketa 26xx-movement to place in it.

When I found the Raketa Record dial in the wrong case I found the Raketa Record case with the wrong dial at the same time. Not a perfect match but a pretty good match. Since one case is already empty – where the Raketa Record dial used to sit – I bought a Raketa dial with movement for that case.

The watch with the Record case didn’t work that well but it was the case and hands that I was after.
Inside the watch was a Pobeda 2603 movement in pretty bad shape.

The watch with the Record dial worked pretty good and had an original Raketa movement. It didn’t have a second hand but I thought it was just lost.

I made the watchcase for the Record watch free.

Inserted the movement and dial into the watch case. The hands were a bit tricky to get in place and the second hand was just impossible to get right. I remembered that the second hand was missing from the beginning.

Now I’ve got two of these beautiful Raketas in my collection. One as a collectible piece and one that I might use as a daily beater.

How I did with the other watch? I just used the spareparts. The hands are not my favorite but I’m pretty satisfied with the rest and the best of all is that it works fine. The ticking is strong.

I sometimes get comments from friends about my watches since they know that I’m a collector. This watch gets a lot of comments. Many of my friends like it. It’s pretty cool.

And just because the blog is about wristwatches I have to show what wristwatch that I was wearing at the time. It’s a Vostok 2209, type 350. I’ve put a watchband from a Stingray on it and the wristwatch has grown to be one of my favorite vintage watches to wear on daily basis.