I wanted to have a basic bridge or in-line movement and found one in a cheap Chinese watch. The first surprise when I took the watch apart was that the mechanical movement only drove the seconds hand and that the minutes and hours where controlled by a quartz movement. The description did mention mechanical and quartz, but then it also mentioned tourbillon so I thought it was a typo. This meant that the movement, which was an automatic, did not need a keyless mechanism as it did not need to be wound or set.
I could not find the movement reference and the movement most resembling it was the JQ-R005, although that one has minute and hour hands and can be set and wound manually.
The other surprise is the number of wheels in the gear train. There is one missing compared to the standard setup, which is probably possible as there does not need to be a wheel driving the minute hand.
On the other side of the base plate, there is only the automatic mechanism, which is very straightforward and uses Seiko’s magic lever to move the ratchet wheel.
On the dial side, there is only one bridge for the whole gear train and as mentioned earlier, one fewer wheels than in a conventional movement.
The balance wheel impulse pin is not facing the base plate as it usually is, which is why the Swiss lever is not fixed to the base plate, but to the underside of the single bridge.
