Seiko 6139 chronograph

Seiko's museum calls the 6139 the world's first automatic chronograph, launched in the spring of 1969. That is a contested claim — Zenith announced the El Primero in January 1969 and the Heuer, Breitling and Hamilton Chronomatic in March — but the sequence of dates is in Seiko's favour: movement production began in October 1968 and Japanese sales in May 1969, while the Swiss watches did not go on sale until later in 1969. The engineering is the part that holds up regardless. Toshihiko Ohki, the project's main engineer, paired a vertical clutch with a column wheel, which is otherwise a high-end feature, and Seiko describes the 6139 as the first chronograph in the world to incorporate both. Seiko sold the result as a 5 Sports Speed-Timer — a mass-market sports watch, not a luxury piece. The Skylab story, which is told loosely everywhere, survives checking better than most. According to the auction listing, Colonel William Pogue put a Seiko on layaway and bought it three days later, on 13 June 1972, for $71; Plus9Time places the purchase at an Army and Air Force exchange. Beyond the Dial gives a different date and price, September 1972 and $64. He wore it aboard Skylab 4, which ran from November 1973 to February 1974. The watch was auctioned in October 2008 with its original layaway receipt, the instruction booklet, a NASA photograph of Pogue wearing it aboard the station, and a two-page handwritten letter from him explaining its history. That is unusually good provenance for this kind of story. One correction worth making, because the trade gets it wrong constantly: the auction listing describes Pogue's watch only as a 6139-600x, and Plus9Time, working from the auction photographs of the dial, identifies it as a 6139-6005. In ordinary usage "Pogue" has spread to cover any yellow-dial 6139-600x, and many online sources give Pogue's own watch as a 6002. If somebody calls a 6002 "the Pogue", they are using a nickname, not describing the watch. One functional quirk to know before you wear one: there is no running seconds hand. The central sweep hand is the chronograph only, so you cannot tell at a glance whether the watch is going.

Wearing. It is about 40 millimetres across, which feels modern, and it was built as a tool rather than a treasure. Owning a genuinely significant movement without paying Swiss prices for one. A column wheel and a vertical clutch in a watch that was sold through a PX is a strange and good thing. Where it falls short, and these matter more than usual on this watch: The crown will not wind it, the seconds do not stop when you set the time, and there is no running seconds hand at all. We found no Seiko accuracy figure for the 6139. Judge even a freshly serviced one by vintage standards, not modern ones. The 70 metre rating is history. The pushers are plain push pushers, not screw-down, sealed by one small gasket each. And the decisive one: Seiko's own US service centre lists the 6139 among calibres it will no longer service, because parts have been discontinued for years and there is no stock. Every repair now depends on donor movements. Buy a working chronograph. Summit Watch Company warns that one repair alone, a chronograph wheel, can cost as much as the watch is worth.

A quick test worth doing before you buy. Start, stop and reset five or six times. As a rough guide: if the sweep hand lands on the same wrong spot every time, suspect the hand's fitting or the reset hammer's adjustment. If it lands somewhere different each time, suspect a loose hand or wear in the chronograph works. Only a watchmaker can say which.

It should start instantly and cleanly with no stutter or jump, run smoothly, and stop dead. A hand that lags on starting, runs erratically, or loses time against the watch points to a slipping clutch. Run the chronograph for several minutes and watch the thirty-minute register too: it should advance crisply once per revolution.

They should move a short, defined distance with a crisp click and spring back fully. Sticky, gritty, mushy, or a pusher that stays in, points to perished gaskets or broken pusher springs at minimum.

On its own, poor timekeeping tells you little. Old, dried lubricant alone can make a 6139 run badly. Judge the rate after a service, not before.

Use a loupe on the rim of the dial, the underside of the glass and the thirty-minute register, looking for tide marks, bloom or corrosion. This is the one to be strict about: water inside a 6139 attacks the dial. Water marks on an original dial cannot be undone except by redialling or swapping the dial, and either way it is no longer original.

A photograph of the movement will show it: a bright curved track on the bridge under the rotor is rotor wear, and Summit Watch Company describes it as difficult to address.

A separate question from whether it runs, and on a 6139 the dial wording answers most of it. The markings date it: WATER 70m PROOF from 1969 to mid-1970, WATER 70m RESIST from mid-1970 to late 1972, and no water marking after that. A dial code that does not fit the wording is a red flag: Vintage Watch Advisors notes that most fake dials carry a 6030R code, and treats a PROOF dial with a 6030R code as almost certainly fake. Original dials came from two makers, Hamazawa and Shokosha, identified by T and R in the dial code. And read the inner bezel correctly: it is yellow plastic that fades towards white under UV, so a perfectly vivid yellow ring on a watch of this age deserves a question. A white ring is normal ageing and not a fault. A black inner bezel is correct on the Thong-Sa imported South-East Asian and Australian 6002s.

Treat any 6139 as unserviced until someone produces a dated receipt. Seiko's general advice for its mechanical watches is a service every three years or so, and a chronograph makes that dearer than it would be on a plain automatic: the clutch, the column wheel and the operating levers all have to come apart, be cleaned, oiled and adjusted, on top of the ordinary going train. Worn chronograph parts are scarcer still. Seiko USA lists the 6138 and 6139 among discontinued calibres it will not service, so this is a job for an independent watchmaker who knows the calibre. Ask for the whole job — movement stripped, cleaned, lubricated and regulated, fresh gaskets, then a pressure test — and ask for the date of that test. Until then the 70 metre figure describes the watch as it left the factory, not as it is now: seals this old have gone hard.

A familiar complaint, with several causes. The hand is loose, bent or not fitted at the exact zero point. Or the reset hammer is worn or out of adjustment; on the 6139B an eccentric screw sets the balance between the two registers. Or there is wear, such as worn heart cams, and poor lubrication in the chronograph works. The reset test in the troubleshooting checks gives a rough guide. All of them need the watch opened, so all are watchmaker work; the first two can often be put right by refitting or adjustment, while the third means replacement parts, which are scarce. Summit Watch Company notes that replacement chronograph hands are common on 6139s.

The clutch couples the fourth wheel to the chronograph centre wheel; two levers lift the clutch plate away when the chronograph is stopped and release it when you press start. What fails is slippage, from dirty surfaces, a weak or broken clutch spring or distorted clutch plates. Watchmaker only, and it matters which one: Clocksavant warns that a vertical clutch can be ruined by being put in cleaning fluid. Worn parts have to come from a donor.

Seiko's magic lever winds in both rotor directions using two arms that grab the wheel next to the ratchet wheel. Its contact points wear over decades. It is a small, separate part, and replacement levers are still offered by parts sellers. The more serious version is rotor and bridge wear, which leaves a bright curved scar that is difficult to correct. Test it by wearing the watch a full day, then leaving it off overnight: it should still be running in the morning and comfortably past twenty-four hours.

A typical wear point. The barrel arbor slowly wears its holes in the plates, turning them from round to oval, until the barrel hits the mainplate or the train bridge. The usual repair is punching the barrel to close the play, or replacing it from a donor. You cannot see this as a buyer. It is why a service history and a watchmaker's inspection matter so much on a 6139.

It is what gives the pushers their feel. Mushy, inconsistent or notchy pusher action, or a chronograph that starts when it should stop, can point at the column wheel, its jumper spring or the operating levers, or simply at dirt and dried oil. A watchmaker cleans first and replaces from a donor only if parts are genuinely worn.

Each pusher is sealed by a small gasket. Old ones deteriorate and stop protecting anything, and Worn & Wound's watchmaker names sticking pushers and crown, from broken pusher springs or deteriorated gaskets, as one of the most common problems on Seiko chronographs. Bad servicing makes it worse — in one case he describes, three gaskets had been fitted on the crown where one belongs. These are plain push pushers, not screw-down, sealed by that one small gasket. Operating a pusher pushes its stem inward and drags the seal across the tube, which an old gasket may not survive. Never operate the chronograph wet, and treat the 70 metre rating as historical only. Use good pushers when they are replaced, not the cheapest reproductions — the common modern ones have a rounded rather than bevelled top, narrower gasket grooves and thicker tips.

Seiko's US service centre will not service the 6139: parts have been discontinued for many years, there is no stock, and they ask customers not to send them. Every repair depends on donor movements and aftermarket parts. Worse, many — though not all — chronograph parts differ between the 6139A and the 6139B, which narrows the donor pool for any given watch. And one fault can be decisive: Summit Watch Company warns that a chronograph wheel repair can cost as much as the watch is worth, and replacement chronograph centre wheels are getting harder to find.

Vintage Watch Advisors warns that counterfeit 6139-600x examples circulate widely. See the troubleshooting checks for the dial code, the dial maker and the inner bezel. The two dial makers age differently: T dials, from Hamazawa and used until about 1975, tend to fade from darker yellow to a lighter, more translucent shade; R dials, from Shokosha and from 1972, tend to keep their original shade. A dial whose ageing does not match its type is suspect. A redialled or re-handed 6139 cannot be put back as it was; the only remedy is to say exactly what has been changed.