Leave it to Universal Genève to make a microrotor movement that, somewhat in contrast to the Buren microrotor in my Hamilton 688, is genuinely well designed and engineered (and pretty to look at, with Geneva striping across the entire movement). It still has the usual microrotor efficiency issues, but the hand winding mechanism is so solid that it hardly matters. It’s too bad the dial on this watch was subjected to an overly aggressive attempt at cleaning and tritium dot removal, but it still looks good in person - better than the photos.

Some vintage watches are highly cooperative. Others, not so much. This particular Hamilton fought me tooth & nail, but I persisted (through multiple donor movements) because I really love the style of the dial. The Buren-sourced microrotor movement in this thing is cool looking, but not fun to work on. Lowlights include a complex and cantankerous compound ratchet wheel, a frankly terrible click spring design, and a difficult-to-assemble automatic winding mechanism underneath the rotor. Eventually I got it working, however. Well, except for the calendar - the calendar driving wheel, like most of the rest of this movement, is complex and delicate, and the one in this watch literally fell apart. I have not yet been able to source a replacement, so the calendar is currently stuck on 6 (short for “666”).