Seagull ST 2505

  • Retrograde date
  • Power reserve indicator
  • Extra wheel to make it look slightly like a tourbillon
Dial side, retrograde date on the left, power reserve on the right, fake tourbillon at 6 o’clock

The wheel with the three blades that sits above the balance wheel is purely decorative as far as I can tell. It revolves slowly and therefore can give the impression that the movement is a tourbillon.

All the dial-side gears visible

On the side of the power reserve, there is one gear on the underside of the bridge that links the ratchet wheel to the intermediate wheel with a “smile” cutout. The cutout sets the limits of how far the power reserve indicator can go. Note that no additional spring is needed to bring the gear back to its origin as the mainspring does that on its own.

On the date side, the first intermediate wheel that connects to the cannon pinion has a system that will gather energy towards the end of each turn to then push the next wheel by one increment. The next wheel has a snail which slowly moves the hammer which moves the date wheel. At the end of each turn, there is a sharp drop in the snail and a spring pushes the hammer back to its origin, which turns the date wheel quickly back to 1.

At 6 o’clock, you can see that the “fake tourbillon” wheel does not turn with the escapement, but is driven by a pinion going through the baseplate at 4 o’clock close to the canon pinion. The decorative wheel is not connected to anything else.

Movement with automatic system removed

Above, you can see the relatively common layout of the movement. The automatic system was removed (you have to remove the whole automatic bridge to be able to remove the rotor) but would interact with the ratchet wheel at its 10 o’clock where you can see a jewel and a cutout for a small gear.

The movement has directly driven seconds and indirectly driven minutes.