When I last wrote about my Gyromatic saga, it had mechanical problems and I’d been quoted a ludicrous repair estimate locally. I put it out of sight for a couple months and then contacted Jose Sotto, from whom I’d bought a vintage Seiko and had excellent results when he had to fix it post-sale. He was willing to try fixing it, and also to look for a replacement for the missing dial logo.

Here’s what the GP looked like when I sent it to him:

And here it is today:

The second hand still isn’t perfect due to gear wear, and the redial font is still wrong, but now I have a correct logo and it runs much, much better. This picture is on an 18mm deployant calfskin from the recent Christopher Ward sale.

On a related note, I have to confess that the next pictures show a rather odd strap. I splurged (25 pounds UK!) on an alligator strap. They usually run hundreds of dollars each, and even CW usually charges 65UK, so for 50 or so USD I wanted to get one. See what you think of the combo:

The strap is lovely, shinier than the leather I’m used to and still bending itself to fit my wrist.

The logo doesn’t match the watch, but I rather doubt anyone else will notice except me. To be honest, it’s quite hard to tell the difference between this real gator and an imitation one I bought at the same time, so I’m not sure what the fuss is. Chris suggests that perhaps gator wears better.

It’s interesting to wear this watch. You can’t read it at night, its a bit smaller and much thinner than contemporary styles, and it’s silver-on-silver is nicely understated. Even the dial curvature is less obvious than a pie pan dial:

Even though I paid too much, this is one of those watches that makes me happy to wear it.