1980s Hamilton Khaki Pocket Watch

Hamilton made field watches for the Allied forces in WWII and they are very popular with collectors today.  

Hamilton continued to make military watches in the 1950s, 60s and 1970s in various quality levels, depending upon the military contract specifications.  

The look and feel of Vietnam-era watches includes a parkerized case, a black dial, and luminous hour markers and hands.  These features lend themselves well to "civilian" use too and in the 1980s Hamilton started to produce their Khaki line along with similar (identical) models cobranded for LL Bean, Orvis, and other outdoorsy retailers.

The model like included a pocket watch option and other than being larger overall, it's features are the same as the wrist watch field watch, right down to running the same movement.

It's not too hard to find the LL Bean pocket watch but the Khaki variant is a little more scarce, in my opinion.  

I recently received a Khaki pocket watch in need of some serious TLC.  I'm sure it could tell some tales, based on it's condition.

One thing you'll immediately notice is the crystal is cracked in several place.  Of more concern, the second hand is missing and does not appear to be rattling inside the crystal.  I wonder where it went?

The back of the case appears to be marked N/A, which is very odd.  There's a tiny lip in the case back where I can insert a case knife to carefully pry off the back and reveal the movement.

Inside is a Hamilton 649 movement made by ETA and is based on the 2750 caliber.  This is the same movement used in the GG-W-113 military models.  The movement ring is a good visual indicator of how large the case is relative to a standard wrist watch.

Everything is cleaned and dried before being reassembled with fresh lubricants.

The reassembled movement is ticking away with a good motion.  The beat rate of more modern watches is faster than the typical 18,000 beats per hour of vintage watches.  It's noticeably faster than "one mississippi, two mississippi, etc".

It's running a smidgeon fast but I can easily adjust that.

A new crystal is a huge improvement but the real challenge to this project was finding a second hand.  The second hand bit is .025mm and I needed to find the longest hand of a similar style that I could find.  This one isn't too bad but it doesn't have the white ball on the short end of the hand.  It doesn't really matter though, this was the best I could find and it's looks way better than nothing at all.

These watches have become very popular... perhaps to my blog (who knows?).  I used to be able to pick these up for under $100 as project watches but now even the unrestored examples often sell for over $250... go figure.  This one is definitely a keeper but it's not mine so it will go on to it's happy owner.