# Seiko 5 Dual English And Arabic Days



## Who. Me? (Jan 12, 2007)

Afternoon everyone.

I've bought myself a cheapish, old, Seiko 5 dress-style 'project watch' from a certain auction website that is cosmetically a bit naff (case badly scuffed, lume spots missing from dial, hands tarnished and missing the lume) but that appears to be working fine.

It's a bit of a cheesy lounge-lizard watch, which I liked, and I'm aiming to make it 'beautiful' again, rather than take the movement apart to see how it works, although I may do that when I have a little confidence that I know what I'm doing.

The back says it is a 6309 (17 jewel?) movement, but the movement itself is stamped 6349A (23 Jewels), so it appears to be a bit of a chimera. I'm not worried about that though, as the more jewels, presumably, the better the movement (?) and this isn't exactly an heirloom.

Anyhow, getting to the point; I have a few questions that I'm hoping you can answer...

1/. The watch has dual English and Arabic days. It read 'Sat' yesterday, but having just looked at it again (Sunday afternoon) it now reads something in Arabic (black text on white, so presumably Arabic for Saturday, as Sunday appears in red).

Do any of you know if there is a specific way to set the day on these watches so it changes from English-Day-to-English-Day, instead of via the Arabic day, or is this an indication of a fault with the calendar mechanism?

2/. As noted above, the hands are either tarnished or stained where the lume has cracked off. I may try cleaning them up with IPA and a cotton-bud and re-luming them, but; does anyone know of anywhere (in the UK) that stocks Seiko replacement hands? I may just swap them in the short-term, as I've no emotional attachment to this watch.

Roy doesn't have any listed on the sales site, and Googling doesn't come up with anything useful (see below).

3/. The watch came on a new leather strap. Nice enough, but I'm guessing it was originally on a steel bracelet?

Again, anyone know any UK sites that sell replacement bracelets for older-style Seikos? (Again, nothing on the sales site and googling just brings up 000's of ebay Seiko watch-sale adverts).

4/. Does anyone have a scanned copy of the instruction manual for setting one of these movements?

Have googled the movement number and found some reference to it on the Austrialian Seiko site, but not an instruction manual.

5/. The seller had it listed as a 60's watch, but the Australian site says that the movement was introduced in '76 and the first digit of the serial number on the back is a '1'.

Am I to assume that it was actually made in '81 (the next '1' year after '76)? Having said that, the back doesn't match the movement, so I've no idea if the markings on the back actually relate to this watch at all.

Hope you can assist. Will post some pictures when I've restored it (tarted it up) a bit.

Cheers

Andy


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