Abercrombie and Fitch Solunar Vintage Watch Restoration

and welcome back to another video here on wristwatch revival I'm Marshall and boy oh boy do we have an exciting one this time around this this watches I would consider it one of my grades this is a watch that I have wanted for a really long time it is a Abercrombie & Fitch sole lunr or Solon are not sure how to pronounce it but I'm gonna say Solon R and it is awesome this watch comes from Hoyer actually which is my favorite watch brand for vintage watches they manufactured this for Abercrombie & Fitch who as we talked about on another video was an outfitter during this time this this watch was manufactured in 1949 by Hoyer it uses a value 90 movement and I these do not come up very often this one I got on eBay I actually found it on eBay it looked like one of those finds that you get every once in a while and I found it and as you can see this was originally designed for Fisher's for people that like to fish and hunters where there's a complication that tells you the tide and the idea was there is these Solon are tables that would indicate when fish and other animals were more active based on the the mood the movements of the moon and the tide and all that kind of stuff the gravitational effects I don't know how true those things are they actually do still exist but this watch was designed in conjunction with Hoyer for Abercrombie & Fitch too so that a if you were an outdoor person at the time you would know when to go fishing and that kind of thing and it was marketed both as a lawyer as you see here but also as a Abercrombie & Fitch model properly so taking a look at what we actually have here this thing's rough as you can see this this thing has been very well loved I think is a nice way to put it there's a huge crack on the crystal it's a little difficult to see the dial underneath this and that of course is a really important part the case looks like it's unpolished and in good shape which is incredible again it looks well loved take a look at the dirt here just between the lugs this didn't come with a strap but I mean yuck right like that so that's a lot of dirt to just be sort of built up and hanging out there and as you can see it'll come off so it looks like it could be clean but it's hard to say what condition the watch is in inside and of course on the dial without really kind of taking it apart this is one of those ones that you bid on ebay and hold your breath you know these watches are very valuable and they are very difficult to come by you know I've looked around for these for quite a while and I had to pay quite a bit on eBay for it and this is the hold-your-breath moment right you're taking the back off of watch you spent a bunch of money on him you don't really know that much about so let's see we've got in here alright well the good news is is that it's running so that's your first indicator you can see this the case back is signed by Hoyer and also by the company that owned Hoyer which is sa Hoyer whatever also the movement is signed Hoyer and again this is a value 90 that's a movement that was pretty widely used at the time the main complication that it offers besides time is a lunar complication you know one that tells you the moon face this one was actually modified by Hoyer to be a to tell you the tides instead so it uses a it's a value ninety point one so it's a little bit of a different take on the normal movement but overall the inside of the movement looks okay it's definitely dirty but it's running and I'm happy with that and the parts all seem to be intact at least at first glance here as you can see there's a lot of dirt in there but overall okay this this passes the first eye test here and this is where you again this is this is where you open it up and it can be a complete nightmare and it looks like we've cleared that hurdle here so first things first let's let's put it on the time graph errs put it back together and see how it does as sort of a baseline on how well it's keeping time at the moment and what the amplitude is again the amplitude is something I look for here in this initial stage pretty closely because it kind of gives a rough indication on the health of the watch basically one way to view what amplitude is measuring is is that the mainspring keeps all the power in it and then it has to go through all the gears of the watch before it gets to the escapement and this is telling you how healthy that escapement is from a power level perspective 162 degrees is pretty low actually that that's not that's not really where we want this to be but this is a very old watch and so it's not unexpected also the rate seems pretty poor plus 40 seconds a day I'm trying it in a couple of positions just to see if anything changes massively here and it's okay as you can see the amplitude is a little low at 155 and it's a little all over the map with its readings but generally speaking it's running about plus 40 seconds a day which we can work with that so again that's not the worst case scenario and once again let's get into the back of this thing and well you know what we have to do we're gonna get into it we're gonna strip down the entire watch we're gonna clean it we're gonna troubleshoot it slash inspect it look for any type of errors or mistakes or anything that doesn't look right maybe needs to be replaced or addressed and then we'll put it back together lubricate it and then see if we can get it running well so first things first there's a movement ring here around the outside of it it looks like it acts as a way to protect the movement and perhaps a little bit of springiness on the case back as well which can help it stay in place and we need to you know take out the the winding crown here first so that we can take the movement out of the case and inspect the dial now the first thing to notice here is that there is rust on the winding movement on the winding stem excuse me so we'll have to address that as well but there's good news here this dial looks nice like this is this is pretty good you know these dials are very old at this point this watch looks like it was well worn by its previous owner and actually used you know as a real watch here not just something that was sitting in somebody's collection and with that yeah this is about as good as the dials gonna get for a watch of this age and I'm thrilled about it seriously if this dial was all messed up then that could have been the difference between me having spent a lot of money on something that would be worth it in a lot that would be something I'd be looking to move down the line or whatever so let's get the hands off of this thing use these little hand levers and the bag is just to protect the dial in the hands from from the metal and again these are special tweezers that have plastic tips on them so that they're a little more gentle on the delicate hands they don't work as well as regular tweezers because you can't quite grab as much but they're better for delicate parts so now we're going to apart the loosened the dial and see if we can't take that off one of my favorite things about this watch is the tide indicator is so colorful and beautiful you know watches of this era rarely had bursts of color like that on the bottom where that blue and the yellow the complementary colors and that cool kind of star designed to it that that wasn't something that you saw almost ever on older watches like this and I love it it's a beautiful paint on that and it's still intact so the dial comes off and there's some bad news here for sure that's rust that that dust that you see in there is definitely rust and what that means is that likely there was some water ingress coming through the the whining crown at some point during the the operation let's watch now it doesn't seem to be affecting it from a functional perspective but that is scary rust is the worst thing you can find inside of a watch like this and it may need it may facilitate some work on some parts or even some replacement parts if we can find them so we'll have to address that when we get to it for now the first thing that we do is take the balance off and this is really done for a simple reason it's to protect it the balance is the most delicate part on the watch and you just want to keep it protected and in a case or under a cover as much as you possibly can you so now I can see that this this tide wheel is being pressed on by that clicker on the left but otherwise it's just sitting on its post so I should be able to just take it off pretty easily I decided to use the the duller and tipped tweezers here again just to protect the paint on the on the part but it comes off easy enough and this wheel is actually what ticks over that dial at the appropriate rate so they have to design these intermediate wheels with a very specific number of teeth and a very specific spacing so that you know its size so that that tight indicator doesn't turn over too quickly or not quickly enough taking apart some of the motion work here and starting to get into the guts of this thing again you can see there's quite a bit of rust present nothing terrible but a decent amount and certainly worthy of concern you also just you know eyeballing this from my experience it looks like this hasn't been serviced in a really long time the rust is a clear indicator of that and then also the fact that basically everything's dry I mean there's no oil or lubrication left from the last time this was serviced this is a cannon pinion remover and this is a really handy tool for taking off a cannon pinion which otherwise people do with tweezers but the cannon pinion is actually quite a delicate tube it's it's it's a thin tube and if you squeeze on the sides too hard it can actually pinch it down a little bit and make it so that it's too tight on the cannon pinion on the pinion so I like using that tool for it it grips it from multiple sides at once and keeps that off next we're going to continue to disassemble this thing by taking off the pallet fork bridge here you you you you and another reason that I think this hasn't been serviced a long time besides the dirt and rust is that even like the bridges and things are really kind of stubborn they don't want to come up and I've had to give give both of the both of them a bit more ease you see when I take off the pallet as well I wasn't able to fully wind down the mainspring here I couldn't figure out how I did after I took it apart but not while I was taking it apart so I just had to let them mainspring wind out that's not best practice it's better to have that wound down before just so that nothing gets whacked but I knew it was coming so when I took out the pallet fork I did it in one quick motion to make sure that nothing got caught up in it and it seemed to be fine so there's a small jeweled bridge on the top here and this goes on that extended pivot for the center seconds and that doesn't really sound like English but this little pivot I'm pulling out right here that's actually what the seconds hand so the big sweeping seconds hand that you saw at the beginning attaches to that small tip at the end is what you push the hand on to and then that is attached to that big wheel that you sit in on top which is a which is on an extended pivot down to the third wheel now the third wheel will turn once per minute and that will turn that little pivot once per minute and a seconds hand wants to go around once per minute so it basically just transfers that action from the gear train up to the little the hand that you actually see going around on the front of the dial so again with these extended wheels though these extended pivot wheels I have this tool that safely removes them from it but I found it to be a little bit abrasive so I've started to put plastic down to use it there as well just to protect the integrity of the wheel and then the plate underneath so that one comes off and now we're starting to really get into this thing this is the train wheel bridge coming off here and we can see how the train of wheels looks if there's anything that looks damaged or bent or anything like that you and again all of the bridges are a little stubborn coming apart here and I believe that's because they haven't been a part in many many many many years you and there we go and you know what this doesn't look too bad actually once again we can see that the that the keyless works looks like it's where any rust damage will have happened here and there seems to be some rust on that as well you we're going to continue just to take apart the train of wheels and here comes the barrel bridge as well or the barrel as well and the ratchet wheel just sort sits on top of it that's how you wind up the watch and again this is where the rust seems to be the water seems to have really kind of gotten into it as around the keyless works there's another bridge here the other one had some of the Train of wheels and and also the barrel on it this one looks like it's just for the the escape wheel and the fourth wheel you and again the same issue with these bridges they're just a little stubborn but with some gentle pushes they do come off and they look clean too so that's good news and out comes the escape wheel so now we can turn this back over to the other side and address anything that's going on over here first there's this weird kind of half plate thing so I'll take that off you you and now I'm starting to take apart the different parts of the keyless works as well as the parts that make the moon phase or I should say the tide function work it would be a moon phase on a normal value 90 but this one it's tied and that's the setting lever spring again I'm working on the keyless works now which is pretty similar to every other watch I've worked on that's the yoke and there's a spring pushing on it you and I'm using a piece of peg wood here just to make sure nothing goes flying because sometimes things go flying I don't want it to happen here I should note here as well this is easily the most valuable watch I've ever worked on these usually go for five to seven thousand dollars mainly because they're so rare and because they're so beautiful once again I'm just trying to be careful here to use my peg wood so that these little Springs don't go flying and so far so good I'm also taking care to kind of figure out how the mechanics of these things work so that when I put them back together I'll have a better idea in my head and this this arm here is actually what the little pusher on the front of it on the side of the case actuates on to advance so that you can set the tied function properly for your area you can see there's some corrosion on the bottom of this as well another indicator that this watch saw some water as that's the area where the other pusher is so the two parts of the case the crown and the pusher are the ones that are most likely to let water in and it looks like that's what's happened here nope nothing flew off but don't worry I find it ok so we get that part all done and now I can look on the underside of the bridge to find the crown wheel which is kind of cleverly embedded in this bridge this is what this is what you wind on when you wind up your watch and then it sends the power over to the ratchet wheel which is attached to the barrel and that winds the mainspring it which is inside of the barrel sounds so simple doesn't it and that's the click then I'm taking off there that's what lets you wind up the barrel and not have it unwind it's also interestingly what makes the noise when you wind up a watch that really like satisfying click sound comes from that even though a lot of people think that it comes from some gears ok so here is the watch completely destructed 2d assembled and ready to go into the watch cleaning machine which I will do off-camera I lied a little bit it's not completely disassembled yet this is the barrel the mainspring barrel so we still need to get the mainspring out before we actually put it into the watch cleaning machine and you can see a lot of grease and dirt on the inside of that but we can take out the barrel Arbor here and again it I like try to be as careful as I can take in the mainspring out because they don't know of any other way to take it out of the barrel other other than doing it carefully by hand I have a special tool to put the mainspring back in but I don't think they make them for taking them out okay this looks very very dirty and I got dirt and grease all over my fingers as a result and you can see there's a lot of dirt buildup so that's gonna need to be addressed for sure probably just cleaned I also usually take the time to put the parts on the microscope just to inspect and you can see there's a lot of old oil kind of crusted on to that jewel that's a telltale sign that this thing hasn't been serviced in a really long time in CA right there also let's take a look at this rust well this needs to be looked at for sure so there's some rust dust in there and there's definitely been some amount of rust but it's actually hard to tell exactly how bad it is at first glance this is also something I noticed the tip of that extended pivot that I pulled out of the middle the one that goes on the seconds hand it's bent can you see that it's it's it's subtle but I was actually looking at a video of the watch going and I noticed that the hand looked like it was kind of pivoting a little bit so now it's time to actually get everything into the watch cleaning machine so as you can see we put every part in I mean there's a couple that we don't obviously the dial and things like that don't end up going in there but basically everything else goes into the watch cleaning machine to get fully cleaned it goes through a initial cleaning and then two rinses and then a dry cycle so it really puts it through the paces and should be able to clean up these parts pretty much all the way okay so here we go out of the watch cleaning machine and as you can see it looks much much better but there's still a little bit of rust staining or rust dust going on here down by a where the keyless works is so I'm gonna have to just sort of get in there manually with a brush my tweezers some Roddick oh and and clean that up because you want all of that gone if possible before you reassemble the watch the deal with rust is that if you can get rid of it and the parts still functional it's okay if it's some staining that's okay if it's taking chunks out or if you can't get it to stop it will eventually stop the watch it'll keep rusting and you know that's really bad for the watch so as I'm taking these parts out of the cleaning basket they look really good overall but as you can see there's some pretty annoying parts here that actually do still have the rust on them meaning that the watch cleaning machine was not able to take them out and they're gonna have to be addressed by hand now for me as an amateur watchmaker and somebody who's always trying to learn about this this is one of the first times I've had to deal with rust like this so my first inclination was to put it in one dip which is the solution I used to clean the palate Forks and the balance it's a it's a solvent to see if I could use that plus maybe some peg wood to just scrape away this rust especially if it was just some staining then I should be able to do that as it stands you can see I made some good progress on it and I ended up putting this in the in the one dip and then doing it again and kind of really trying to work it using this but the truth is that one dip isn't actually a rust remover per se it is a solvent for cleaning and I wasn't happy with the result of how much I was able to get off of this so I looked it up online on the watch repair talk forums and they said to use vinegar and baking soda baking powder I think it's baking soda I can't remember the one in that box and so that's what I did so this involves soaking the parts I soak them for hours in this solution and then also wanted to get in there a little bit more manually and so I pour some of this powder on and then put some of the vinegar on and then got in there with brushes and tools and different things to try to really give this the best cleaning I could because the key is you don't want to put the parts back on with the rust still on them even if they're functional it's not good so you can see I got my toothbrush here and it's kind of working a little bit I dry them off and I put them back on the microscope to see how they look and this one well you can see a tiny bit of rust staining there but that's actually pretty acceptable I don't think I'd lose sleep over that this Bushra piece looks a lot better that was the one and but look at this the setting lever screw it still has rust on it and it's really bothering me like I don't like the amount of rust that I can see in the threads and and on there and I'm worried that it looks like a functional part but that it'll keep rusting and I don't want to put it back in the wash like that and this is really bad so here's the whining stem and as you can see it is pretty darn beat-up very rusted still and my efforts did not work to to get it D rusted so I got to do it again and this time I'm doing the same stuff again and you can see there's a whole lot of this coming off and I even get out a little fiberglass brush scraping tool and I do this actually three times I'm not gonna make you sit through it but you do get to see the result of having worked this over and over again so this is what it looked like after a second run at it and as you can see it's definitely improved but there's still some rust hanging around in the crevices of these parts and I got to say it just bugged me too much I just did and so I just was determined to keep doing it but since I was seeing progress I figured I just keep along the same path and same thing here with the winding stem it looks a lot better but they're still rust in the in the divots there in the little parts and I again I just don't want to put it back in looking like that so I went back to the drawing board and did another run with the same type of process of scraping it and using the vinegar and baking baking soda baking powder and this is the final result after having done that multiple times now I'm happy this has no rust on it and finally I've got it all the way stripped down and cleaned and the good news is is that this part doesn't seem to be permanently damaged by the rust it doesn't look particularly good but you can't see it anyway and here's the winding stem again I was able to get the rust off of it and I'm much happier with that as you can see it's much cleaner it does look like there's some pretty extensive pitting on the upper part of it from the rust I can't tell if that's gonna affect the functionality of it yet so I just need to test it to see how it does it doesn't look like it's structurally damaged to me though okay the last thing to inspect here is this mainspring this is out of the wash cleaning machine but it has a weird bend at the end there and also it just doesn't look right I mean I'm sure you could just sort of eyeball it that's supposed to be a pretty clean spiral and it's just got a bunch of little kinks and bumps in it would it work still yeah probably but this is a pretty tired mainspring it's the old-school kind and so I decide it's probably gonna be better to replace that so later on we'll do that we're gonna replace it now I've got to deal with an issue that I'm very scared to deal with which is this bent pivot at the end you can see that it bends over a little bit I can't roll this part because of the bend and I want to fix it but this is an extremely delicate part that could break very easily and would be expensive to replace eventually I got out my-my-my staking tool and I realized that the smallest hole on the bottom would actually fit the pivot but I'm trying to be so so so careful here and what I'm doing is just gently tweaking it to the side to see if I can get just a little bit of that Bend out of and after quite a bit of very again one little push too far and the thing just bends over and snaps and then I'm screwed so this thankfully actually worked and I was able to get this acceptable East rate and I'm really happy about it this took me you know 45 minutes of it's just again you're just on the fine line right you just don't want to make a mistake but with that fixed and the rust gone from the other parts we can begin reassembly of the watch so let's get back let's see what we can get out of this thing first I'll start with a train of wheels which is going to be the escape wheel here you these ones both go underneath this little bridge here you see all the parts looking nice and shiny too I like that you you you you and it can be a little tricky to get the pivots in their jewel holes but this is one of those things that you just sort of keep tweaking around with it and eventually you'll see that they'll find their home and that's what you want just another quick check to make sure that these are sitting correctly and what I've done here is what you're looking at is a brand-new mainspring so I ordered a new one because I didn't think that that other spring really had much life left in it and when they come they come in surrounded by that little piece of blue metal or sometimes it's red and the way you do this is you set it over the barrel and then you very gently just press in the spring from there it's really easy and one side of that metal ring around the outside will have a color on it and the other side will be silver and that tells you which side is up you and there we go new mainspring in there a little bit of oil here just for where the barrel Arbor hits it and we can put this barrel Arbor back together you or this barrel back together the barrel Arbor goes in first and it can be a little bit weird to get in there because there's a little tiny hook on the inside that actually grabs the mainspring and you need to make sure that that's engaged and again a little bit of lubricant here for where the barrel cap engages and this is just friction fit inside you you you okay so that's all ready to go means we can put in the setting lever screw and the barrel bridge here before we put on that big plate not forgetting to put on the ratchet wheel there you it's always tricky to get everything lined up but sometimes it just takes a bunch of little tweaks and pokes and prods to make sure that everything's properly seated you above before we put on that bridge I have to also remember that underneath sits the crown wheel I like the design though it's cool it's it's hidden as part of the upper part of the bridge where normally they just put it right on top of it you you and along the same lines the click the clickspring I left on for cleaning it didn't seem to me that it needed to be taken off for any specific reason so I took off the click so that it could be clean because it wears back and forth but the springs pretty straightforward this is kind of a tricky one to get in because of that spring but there we go and you can see that's operating correctly and now I can put this huge bridge back on it's a little bit of an intimidating one but overall it's actually not as bad as it looks from the outside by the way that right there that's how you let down the mainspring that actuates that's the clique that's the top of the clique so if I were to work on one of these again I would know right away that I could let down the mainspring by pushing a little tiny knob over but again this is my first time working on one of these watches and I didn't know that at the beginning you all right so let's get this this bridge lockdown you and again what you want to do is just double check and triple check that things are working properly now I've got the extended pivot in there and then there's this little I don't know what this what these are called an arm a spring or something that's meant to keep it in a very specific place so that it can engage and here it is right here by the way this is engaged with that wheel that goes on top and then it stays engaged with it so that the seconds hand keeps going around there we go speaking of that wheel there it is so third wheel extended you that's also just friction fit on the top you just pressed on all right so everything looks good there now we need to do some oiling here of the pivots so I'm just going to use my loop to do it this time you you and now this little jeweled bridge thing that goes on the top there that holds everything into place for that second cent running seconds Han but also make sure that I get a little bit of lubricant on that now I did want to show you what I use for lubricants I know that a bunch of you have asked in the comments there's four that I use this one is called 90/10 this one comes from Mobius in fact all of them do that I use and I also wanted to show you how I fill up the little oil container here that I use it's kind of an interesting way because you need such a small amount that you actually can just get some on the tip of your tweezers like this and then eventually work it down and then it'll just sort of capillary action get on there so that's ninety ten that one is used for the finest points it's the lightest oil that I use this one is called HB 1300 it's also by Mobius as I said and this one's for the medium stuff so this is for higher friction parts but not super high friction parts bearings often this is what you use for those again fairly high friction this is 9501 so this is that blue grease that you'll see in the videos sometimes and this is grease so this is for the highest friction parts this is where like metal big-big relative to watches pieces of metal are rubbing up against each other you'll use 9501 and then the last one is 90 for 15 and this is for the pallet forks so this is a specific type of grease that is used for the escapement only and you put a very very very small amount on the exit stone of the pallet and then that goes on to the escape wheel as it goes around and keeps lubrication on there and this is a type of grease that's meant to stay there for a long time but it does need to be replaced and it does affect the performance of the movement pretty significantly so now we can start to put together the keyless works here so that's what they call the sliding pinion and I'm making sure to put some of that that 9501 grease that I just talked about on it this is one of those high wear parts and there's a clutch and pinion type setup here where that thing has two different ways that it can engage one of them is to wind the watch and the other one is to set the hands on the watch and as you can see I put it in backwards to start with because I'm still learning but the good news is I caught it before anything went and now I'm using that HP 1300 so that mid-level oil on some of these motion works parts these spin on those little posts so they're fairly high friction but they don't have metal pressing on them right they're not like spring-loaded if you will but a little bit of 9501 here on the main post again you can kind of get an idea for when these when these things are used the Canton pin remover unfortunately does not put it back on so you just have to press it on with some tweezers and get this a little holding bridge on for the motion works the motion works are what you use to set the time and also what makes the hands go around the ultimately so this part here is again the part that clicks over the tied functionality it has a little raised area on it that clicks it over once every however long the tides go alright so that looks like it's all set up and we can focus our attention now on the keyless works as well as the tied functionality again this is the the corrector I think is what they call it so this is what gets pushed on when you push the little button on the outside and then that moves over a little tight indicator one notch at a time so that you can set it correctly you have to look it up on a table for where the area where you live during the time of year that it is and then you can set it now I have to move this spring out of the way to get this little part in and this part actually pushes on the teeth part of the tied indicator part so that it clicks over instead of just sort of being freely spinning but I have to hold this spring back the whole time or else it's really hard to get the screw set properly there we go and as you can see it now is spring loaded on that part so that when it pushes it'll actually push now but looking at this I'm looking and going wait a minute if I push down on that then it should push up so this spring should actually be on top of that corrector and I didn't place it there when I put it in so I have to take it back out I don't want to try to bend that spring I'm worried that it'll it'll break or permanently bend it so I'll just bend it out of the way like this and then get this part back in but I just need to kind of hold it there with the tweezers so I'm kind of doing the one hand tweezer dance here which is something I can do but I wouldn't say I'm good at just yet but we're getting it and there we go now that spring is actually pushing down on that lover so that it recur exit back to its original position when let go of and that's what it's supposed to do okay so now back to the keyless works again and this is the yoke so once again I need to do a little bit of maneuvering here because that spring activates on that yoke and I need that spring out of the way to install it so again I'm using just a piece of PEG wood to kind of just hold things at bay and or tweezers and now I'm using the tweezers to hold it down because I still need to screw this part in and I need that hole to line up for the screw so yeah kind of kind of tricky business but nothing terrible and I have to say this thing's coming right back together I'm feeling pretty good about how this has gone so far to be honest took a pretty big risk buying this on eBay but it's the kind of watch that if you see it and it could be what they call an honest example you know like basically a not polished kind of somebody actually wore this watch type scenario you don't see those very often so you just kind of have to bounce on it by the way I put a little bit too much grease there and so that was rhotic oh that kind of putty stuff that I was using to clean it up I'm gonna put some more of this grease on the whining stem here there we go so now you can see the motion work working there and now that's the winding and I need to put this weird kind of spacer thing back on I think this is just to support the dial or whatever okay so now we can start getting to the really good stuff this is where we get to put on the pallet forks and then the balance and see how it runs or if it runs I assume it will it was running when I got it and it was actually keeping acceptable time so I'm not that worried this time but that means that I'm gonna get out the one dip again this is a solution that you can use to clean these type of parts it doesn't harm shellac and shellac is a is a material that you used to hold jewels in place on these parts and if you put these in like isopropyl alcohol or something like that you know a different solvent it can dissolve or diminish the shellac and then those jewels will just come out at some point but one dip is is a product that is safe first jhalak also very effective it's a really strong cleaner kind of scary stuff it evaporates really quickly like it's it's some kind of old-school watchmaker stuff but anyway it evaporates quickly enough that the only thing you need to do after taking it out of having sat in the solution is to just dry it off with an air blower I mean just takes 30 seconds or something all right so let's grab the movement and let's get to work here and see if this thing will fire back up and how well it does so first goes in the pallet Fork and then what you want to do here is get the palette fork installed most of the way and then wind up the watch because now the palette fork will prevent it from unwinding like it did when I took it out and what you can do is you can just do a little test here by hitting it back and forth to see if it kind of banks back and forth sharply because you want to see it let go let go like this see that how it I'm not I don't have to push it all the way it kind of clicks over on its own that's the action that the watch is going to be taking when it's actually running so you need to see that before you know that the pallet forks been correctly installed okay now we can get the balance put back in as well and this is of course the best part of watchmaking the most fun is getting to put the balance back in after all that work and to see if it springs back to life I'm just want to make sure the pivots in there properly before trying to push down on it too much because that can be delicate no not quite in there yet and there we go yes it is running so that's all these great news and a beautiful sight to see again I thought it was gonna run but it's still awesome to see it fire up and it looks good too looks like some good amplitude again it's hard to eyeball that too much but you can usually see if it's really low and it doesn't look like that's the case here now we get to put in that the tide indicator which again I find absolutely gorgeous the paint on that has just the coolest tone especially in real life and so I'm going to gently push down on it so that I can get the that kind of controller thing on the Left engaged with the teeth and that seems to have gone fine and I can see that when I push this forward and engages the wheel by one click over and that's exactly what it's supposed to do so that's good and we can kind of enter the final stretch here this is big of course is putting the dial back on I still can't tell you how thrilled I am with how good a condition the dials in yes it's patina'd you can see the loom has gone dark that's normal for this type of loom and there's some you know you can see some kind of age on the dial but again that's completely normal and I love that I know some people like to try to restore things like that by cleaning it I would never do that so these are just the dial feet so you just turn these 1/4 3/4 turn and it'll secure the dial on the front yeah it is interesting you'll find people falling into two different camps when it comes to restoring things like this and as you'll find out by watching my videos I'm very very much in the camp of to not repaint real loom dials I don't like it I love the warm glow of aged loom I love a little bit of where on the dial I mean I would probably do it on a watch that I didn't really care about her one that maybe you couldn't even see what was going on on the dial or something but not on something like this so the minute-hand goes on and again I'm just making sure that the hands don't touch each other and that everything's lining up correctly and that means that I can put the seconds hand on this is the one that I noticed that bent pivot on and it's funny because the the main reason I noticed it was actually because of watching the filming from this I had had it on fast-forward and I noticed that the top was reflecting the light in different angles and I'm like what is that and then I looked at the at the pivot and noticed that it had got a slight bend to it I thought well that's what it is he doesn't do that now though so all the hands on and again just making sure that the thing is going properly now that looks good to go this case however is not good to go we need to address this it is very dirty again same thing with dials I'm not a fan of polishing cases you will not find me doing that on my own watches I know that some people like that and I don't mind it I think that if they want to do it that's totally fine but I will never ever do that on my watch like a watch like this half for the reason to buy these things is because they have this beautiful aging but this one has too much this is just dirt right caked on gunky dirt from the person wearing it for years and years so I'm gonna take the pegwood to it and kind of get into it and you can see that it's a lot of dirt it's really gross and this crystal I don't mind replacing crystals myself when they get too scratched up and dingy it hides the beauty of the dial and that's why I don't mind replacing them now I will tell you I always keep the crystals that I replace in case I ever wanted to go back or if I ever sold the watch I don't throw them away but for me a new crystal does not it actually enhances the watch because you can see the cool old stuff going on underneath this crystal those done this one is broken in half and it is certainly not going to be usable for me so I'm going to need to replace the crystal and I'm going to to give this case a good cleaning you can see the inside of the case has some pretty significant dirt and a little bit of rust around that rust hole as well so yeah this case needs some work and I'm gonna do it my way which again is not in not going to involve polishing but it is going to involve some pretty extensive cleaning so I'm gonna knock off as much of the loose dirt and rust as I can here and I noticed that oh well that actually comes off so I can clean that too and that means I can get in here next to the thing and then now well there's also a washer in there so I can clean that too and there's all the dirt underneath so what we're gonna do we're gonna throw it in the ultrasonic cleaner a little bit of ultrasonic specific detergent water and let's put the parts in and let them sit in here for a while okay about half an hour and they're all done and we can take them off rinse them off just to get any of that detergent this leftover off of them and then we can take a look and see how they did and you know what this thing looks gorgeous it looks absolutely stunning to be honest like this case is in remarkable shape for the age and the fact that it doesn't look like it's been touched by a polisher which is very rare polishing is really really common but as I mentioned before we've got an issue here with this crystals so the way we're gonna do this is you measure the old crystal the best you can you can either measure the inside of the case where the bevel sits or you can just try to measure the crystal itself and then you gotta order up a new one there's a whole bunch of different types of crystals available in all different sizes and you have to decide you know which one you think is going to fit the best I receive good advice from mark Lubbock over at the watch repair channel watching his videos to order the one that you want because they're not expensive and then order a little bigger and a little smaller so that in case you are off by a little bit it'll work so there's our measurement thirty-one point two four millimeters and I ordered a thirty one point two that's three one two is thirty one point two so this is the one that I ordered that I you know tried to get the exact same size so we're gonna just sort of do a quick test fit and actually it does look like that's about right but we do need to use the crystal press to actually put this on you you can't hand press the properly fitted one and they need to be bent in so that's the crystal press it's called a Rober press the one that I have here and the way it works is kind of weird you you would think it just pushes it on but it actually doesn't so you put one of these soft smaller posts on the bottom and then you put the aluminum press fit on the top that fits the size of the of the crystal then you put the case just over the top of that just sort of hanging out there then you put the crystal on like this with a piece of plastic just to make sure it doesn't ding up the top and then you start to crank it down and what this does is this puts even pressure on the outside of it with a post in the middle and it effectively just bends it decreasing its diameter by just a little tiny bit then you bring the case up until it's sat correctly in that bevel and then you UNCHR ank it so that now the glass expands and I'm by glass I mean the crystal expands into the spot that it's supposed to be and that's one of the many ways you can do it and as you can see it's in there and I just give it a quick check if you can push on the back with your thumbs and it doesn't come out it you're good to go that's that's a good fit and this one actually looks perfect so I've got an extra crystal for my supply that's one size bigger but this one's good to go and so now we can actually fit the case of course in order to do so I need to take the winding crown out because it won't go on with it on there and I use these air blowers to just make sure that there's no dust inside you can also use a little bit of radical if you find some dust that's stuck and we'll do a fit here to see how it fits and there's this movement ring in there that goes in as well and by the way this movement cleaned up beautifully didn't it I think I'm in love with this thing and this case back didn't get quite as clean it has some staining that I couldn't really get off of there but frankly I'm not super worried about it so this is just a sealant ring and then here's a washer and then a little post cover here for the winding crown I don't know what that's actually made of it feels like really like maybe bakelite or something like really old plastic and now we're just getting the crown install reinstalled and by the way this thing is just humming along which makes me very happy okay so now I can put in this this movement ring thing again now that we've got the winding crown in there and seal up the back I use these rubber balls for a lot of the case opening it works on most of them I do have a machine for it too but those are really handy and cheap if you need one and look at that this thing is stunning as you can see when I push this it ticks over the tight indicator by one notch each time and I love this watch I I feel like I got so lucky finding this on eBay and having it be legit with original parts and everything and I got a brand new strap for it too that's right I'm giving it the full treatment here I got this from blue lung and Sons which is a european-based strap company but I love their straps and by the way know this isn't a paid thing or anything I just I just happened to have had a lot of really good success with their straps I think they're gorgeous and they've lasted me for years leather straps and you know leather straps do wear out at some point so yes I do I do recommend their straps if you want really high quality for not insane prices they're not cheap by any stretch you know there are 90 bucks or something but you can pay 250 for these things so these are kind of the upper mid-range I would call it but I love them and I picked out this one for this watch and I think it is absolutely gorgeous that does of course leave us one more thing we got to see how it's running and right away you'll notice the amplitude 239 degrees up from 150 160 or whatever it was before much much better and the timings actually pretty good two plus four seconds plus one seconds plus two seconds now the beat errors one point seven milliseconds off which likely won't affect the timing of the watch but is something I'd like to address down the line just for longevity so that's it that's what it looked like before real beat up terrible crystal tons of dirt needed some tender loving care there's no doubt about and you're gonna see that after pictures or after videos in just a minute but I have to say I am absolutely thrilled with this watch I've been wearing it every day since I got this this thing finished and it is gorgeous it especially for a watch of his age have absolutely lived up to what I thought it would be it cleaned up beautifully it wears beautifully it's got a really cool pop of color from and it's got a really neat story behind it too which is one of the my favorite things about watches is you know if somebody goes hey what kind of watch is that you can explain to them well this is this is why this is cool and this is why this interests me and this is one of those type of watches absolutely stunning watch really just a pleasure to own and wear and super fun to have restored as well I want to say thank you by the way for watching the video and hanging out with me for making these videos I started the channel not that long ago and all of a sudden a lot of you are hanging out and watching and I'm really happy about it because this is a hobby and a thing that I really find awesome and I love to share those types of things and the things that I find awesome about it with you and I'm really glad that you're here for the ride if you're new to the channel and you want to get updates about when new videos go up you can click the subscribe button with a little bell icon and if you want to find updates on my projects while in-between videos going up you can follow me on Instagram its wristwatch underscore revival thanks again for hanging out we'll see you there and we'll see you next time

Channel: Wristwatch Revival

Views: 285,479

Rating: 4.8628755 out of 5

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Id: i8mtA8VkTOc

Length: 65min 57sec (3957 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 27 2020