Slava 2428 Watermelon
My first Slava! I have had my eye on the Slava 2428 Watermelon for a little while. It was for sale on Ebay in the UK, and I finally got round to buying it.
Slava, which translates as “Glory”, is a civilian watch brand, the second non-military watch maker in the Soviet Union and the watches were made at the Second Moscow Watch Factory. Slava produced their own mechanical mechanisms including the 2428,2416 and 2427. The Slava Watermelon is fitted with the manual winding 2428 mechanism. Like the other mechanisms it has two mainspring barrels coupled together with an idler gear. The Slava 2428 Watermelon is the double date version with quick adjust, it has a simple pusher above the crown which you can push in with a pen, or something similar, to quick change the date.
The Slava Watermelon is part of a small range of watches produced for export to the Italian market in the late 1980s. I presume the domestic market was not quite ready for a pink watch! The range appears to consist of the Slava Watermelon with the pink dial that I have, a funky black-dialled watch with a California dial and pink numbers, a Slava “Big Zero” (similar to the Raketa Big Zero) and a Slava Medical Watch. The Slava Medical Watch has a scale on the dial to help take a patient’s pulse. There is a great thread and photographs of this at the Watchuseek Russian Watch Forums. There is also a really good thread about the Slava Watermelon and the Slava California dial here too. I would really like the version with the California dial, it looks really cool, I have never seen one for sale but apparently there is some NOS (new old stock) of each of these still floating around, stock that re-appeared in 2003.
The Slava 2428 Watermelon has a chrome plated case which measures 36mm across, 38mm with the crown, approximately 43mm lug to lug, an 18mm lug width and a thickness of about 12mm. As mentioned the quick date adjust button sits just above the crown at around the the 2 o’clock position. The case back has a star, CCCP and the serial number (138868 in this case) engraved on the back, and is secured with a screw down tension ring similar to that on the Vostok Amphibia. The crystal is acrylic. The dial is a pretty orchid, pink colour with grey-ish blue arabic numerals, with a large 12 and even bigger 9 and 3. The dial has the cyrillic name Slava, 26 jewels and made in the CCCP on it. The minute and hour hands are silver with a black line down the centre and the seconds hand is silver with a red “meatball” marker towards the tip. At the 6 o’clock position is the vertical day and date window, cyrillic day names above the arabic numeral dates.
I currently have the Slava Watermelon sitting on a padded brown leather alligator-look watch strap but I am not sure it is the best match for this watch. I like the funky pink dial and, to me, it has an almost Art Deco look about it. I normally like a slightly bigger watch, my favourite sort of size is the Vostok Amphibia Ministry or Tonneau case, but this does not look too small on my 7.5 inch watch. This is a cool watch, the colour is not over the top, it is quite a gentle pink and not too garish. The red second hand seems to clash a little. One small grumble, there is no lume, but that is not a massive problem. I think the big vertical day and date window is a really nice feature too. A great little watch. Now, where can I lay my hands on one of those with the California dial!
If you want to know more about the Slava 2428 movement, there is a good forum post here, with lots of pictures, and a great video of re-assembling the movement here.
