Otero 782

Description

The Otero 782 is a rather rare german selfwinding movement, which uses an excenter mechanism for winding the watch. This mechanism is so genius, that it only uses a single gear and two spring-secured clicks. Unlike a conventional direction changer, this mechanism has almost no neutral position at all and winds the watch very efficiently. On this movement, there’s also the patented Otereotest mechanism, which allowes the watch to contain a normal mainspring without detachable (and in this era sometimes problematic) ends: When the watch is fully wound, the Oterotest mechanism decouples the rotor from the mainspring and let it spin free, thus preventing the mainspring from overload and a jumping balance.

The rest of the movement is very nice to see, with many deck jewels and the Incabloc-secured balance. The date can be semi-quickset by advancing and turning back the time a few hours.

The movement shown here was a rusted ruin because of a large water damage. The complete winding mechanism was so rusted that it did not move at all, and the selfwindig mechanism was almost dead, too. Only with a extensive restauration, the watch could be brought back to life again and today, only the dial tells of the water damage. Sometimes, it’s really worth investing some time in a “ruin”, especially when it has got such an interesting movement inside.

Technical data

Usage gallery