He Wore This Rolex Every Day for 53 Years (Until it Stopped Working)

hello there and welcome back to another video here on wrist watch Revival my name is Marshall thank you so much for coming along this time on the bench check out this watch it's a beautiful Rolex Oyster Perpetual this one comes from 1962 when the owner Rodney bought this watch he was in the military service at the time and he bought this and this has been his watch ever since he has worn this watch every single day since he bought it in 1962. except for it stopped working about five years ago he said it stopped running and he was having a hard time finding somebody to service it for him he actually reached out to me via my patreon and said hey can you can you point me in a direction and you know I said Ronnie one I'll take a look at it for you you know like he he was worried about the the pricing and stuff and I said I'm not going to charge you just just send it over and uh and I'll take a look at the watch and you know maybe I could do a video on it and he said that would be awesome and so that's what we're going to do today is take a look at Rodney's Rolex and see what we can get it going I there's something so cool about this is kind of it's like a one watch collection right Rodney wore this one watch every day this is his watch like he didn't wake up and go well do I feel like this one or that one you know he said uh this is the one and he just wears it every single day but also you can tell it's got a bunch of dirt the bezel looks like it's off center a bit could be a sign that it took a shock you know a drop of some sort interesting also here is that the watch has started running uh this is not uncommon you know it wasn't running for Rodney but you know he put it in the mailbox and sent it and uh it has actually kicked up a bit so first things first is let's put it on the time grapher and see how well it's running my assumption is poorly and my assumption was right oh boy yeah no it's not good at all so What's Happening Here is the time grapher uses sound to generate all of the data and it can't pick up a trace meaning that it hears it those little dots are are it hearing the ticks and the talks but not consistently enough to actually say hey this is how well the watch is running so this thing needs a service very badly and that's what we're going to do we're gonna give this watch a service and I can see a few other things that probably need to be addressed here as well but we'll start off by taking the case back off of the watch and I use this rubber ball in most cases to do so but wow that case back is on there very tight and that means that we're going to have to bust out the big gun here this is the case back removal tool this thing holds the case back in place and then it has a special adapter for whatever type of watch you're using this is a Rolex adapter you can see they used they used the kind of ribbed edge around the surface of the case back there to create surface tension here so that I can use the leverage of this big wheel on top of this tool to pry that thing loose okay and it looks like it's come come free you can see that Rodney had the case back engraved with his name on it that was a common thing to do it's less common now and let's take a look at the movement inside and see how it's looking okay all right it is in there um as you can see it is running it does look like it's kind of barely running this is an automatic movement you know Rolex calls it a perpetual and that means that uh you know when you move your arm around that big rotor that was kind of spinning around there spins around and winds up the watch for you which is nice it means you never have to wind the thing as long as you wear it often enough and Rodney does get over there there we go where's this thing every there we go yes this uh he wears it every day so what we can do first off here is uh get this movement out of the case and there's two case screws that we can loosen up and then on a Rolex you can twist the whole movement over and then it'll drop out of the bottom once you uh flip it and that dial still looks like it's in beautiful shape so that's awesome it's got that kind of sunburst finish on it what I can do now is put the stem back in and then line up the hands this isn't necessary 100 but it just makes it easier to use these hand levers to remove the hands I'll put a piece of plastic down just to try to protect the dial from any type of scratches or anything like that and there we go and when they're all lined up it just makes it even easier okay and then I can put the hands for safe keeping in this little plastic container it actually has this sort of a plastic membrane in there that will suspend the hand so that they're not knocking up against anything now I can remove the dial from the movement the dial is held in by two dial screws once again the dial is really pretty just an absolute classic and I've got a special dial holder for that too again the point of these is that you know these are the type the dial the hands they get set aside for the majority of the work that you do and you just want them to be safe they're not you know gonna get scratched up or knocked into anything else you take the hour wheel off and now I can take off the Canon pinion with my Canon pinion removal tool and once that's done I can flip the movement back over and start the the proper disassembly we're going to start by taking off the uh automatic winding work so that's the rotor and then the part underneath it that transfers that winding power into the watch and one thing you'll notice as I take off these three screws that hold it down do you see that they're a different color they are actually blued and they're done that way so that I know that those are the ones that are holding down that particular part it's it's these movements the especially this is a Rolex 1560 it's a 1500 series movement they made a bunch of these over the years they are awesome I absolutely love working on these things you know I was talking to my friend Jen she's a watchmaker and I said uh I said boy these this movement is just a dream and I love working on these things and she said buy watchmakers for watchmakers that that's how she thinks of it you know when she's working on these types of movements where you can tell that the people who design these knew what they were doing when it came to the servicing part they knew how to make it easier they knew how to have everything just kind of fit into place and uh they do it's awesome working on these first thing we'll do is after taking off the automatic works is take off the balance wheel and now there's a kind of an extended wheel here that uh actually drives the center seconds hand and I need to remove that and then this is a little tensioner spring that goes on top of the center seconds pinion pinions like an axle it also happens to be what you stick the seconds hand onto the very tip of that little needle there is what you actually put the seconds hand on now I can take off the train wheel Bridge foreign and it just comes freely here and that reveals the train of Wheels underneath and I have to say you know so far everything looks pretty good on this movement my my guess is that it just has not been serviced and long enough that it slowed down and stopped at some point and that does happen oh see like there's a sign right there do you see that grease Circle in the middle of that wheel let's take a look yeah look at that that is exactly why you have your watches serviced often is because that grease then attracts dirt and Tiny bits of debris and then as it turns it will become an abrasive right because the oil has now stopped doing its primary function and actually reversed like it's not just that it stopped working it actually started working against your watch and if left unchecked that type of abrasion can can lead to the need for replacement parts or repairs down the line when it comes to why this watch stopped running that's probably more likely due to a few factors one of them is that the mainsprings probably do for a replacement though that wouldn't stop the watch entirely more likely than not it's the oils that are on the train wheel and you know the more delicate Parts have dried up and perhaps also become a little gunky and that can add up on each of them to to stop the watch okay this is a click spring coming out carefully there we go I'm always so careful with those parts they just tend to fly away too often and you can see yeah do you see that this is that this is the bottom part of where that wheel was that had all the grease on it it's just accumulated there so probably whoever service this watch lasts put a bit too much grease into the main spring Barrel I'm curious when we get to that point to look inside to see if it's all gunky and and has a lot of extra liquid in there that that does happen sometimes um some watchmakers I I was not taught to use anywhere near that much oil or grease in the on the main spring just a thin film on the mainspring at the most but I think that some watchmakers do overdo that you know where they put a ton of grease in there and over time it can even come out onto the rest of the watch and and really accumulate into kind of a Mucky mess okay and that does leave that Barrel left over we'll take a look inside of that in a little bit but there's a couple of parts to remove still here the uh pellet Fork bridge and the pallet Fork this movement came apart pretty easily uh you know it's what they call a three-hander right it's just hours minute seconds there's no date function or stopwatch you know they call that a chronograph nothing like that on this watch pretty straightforward this type of watch really does make for a great you know one watch collection if you will a daily driver because it can kind of do everything right like this watch is water resistant shock resistant will go forever if you take care of it it looks nice in all occasions as well like this is the type of watch you can yeah you can wear on a weekend and not you know feel like you're too fancy but you know you could wear this to a wedding or something and yeah you wouldn't you wouldn't feel like you know you're wearing a big you know something that was way out of place at a at a more formal event like that and Rodney's really getting his money's worth too 1962 he picked this up I don't know what he paid for it at the time but uh you know that you wear the thing for 50 years you figure you probably got your money's worth at some point okay back on with the balance wheel um this is just for safe keeping there's no you know this is optional but if you're gonna put all these parts into a watch cleaning machine that kind of uh will agitate the parts in a liquid you don't want the more delicate ones floating around in there even though they're suspended in liquid it does make it it's not like parts are banging into each other you know because liquid makes it so that that can't really happen but anyway all right so let's take a look inside the barrel here and see if it is like a Mucky mess that like that we had maybe predicted okay let's see huh you know that's actually not too bad uh there's definitely a little bit of extra in there but that's not that bad I I was actually anticipating worse than that you can see that there's a bit of Grease built up on the lid and on the mainspring itself but that's not wow I've seen way worse than that before so it looks like maybe the oil just sort of uh gathered around that that hole at the top the one that we saw the grease kind of caked on during the disassembly there's a mainspring and there's the barrel and like I said looks okay and the last thing to do here is to uh disassemble the automatic works this is held together by two screws and again the automatic works is is a optional part on a watch mechanical watches generally fall into two categories they're manual wind or automatic they're all mechanical watches but the mechanical just means you know doesn't use a battery or electricity or whatever but within that family you know you've got a lot of different ways to to keep the watch wound up this one is again an automatic kind of a module that sits on top of the movement interestingly you don't have to use it you actually could just leave it off and I'm going to go ahead and separate out these two parts as well just for cleaning and lubrication they're a little stuck together there we go that part there is the rotor and then the other parts the upper half of that automatic winding works that weighted rotor is the thing that spins around and actually does the winding you may have noticed when I took off the back that the uh that the rubber gasket here was kind of sticking out the side and yeah it looks like it has definitely seen better days so that is going to need to be replaced uh there we go and you can see it's just started to get to the point where it's melted and deteriorated enough to kind of stick to the case but for the most part I was able to take off that gasket and that's a relief a little there's a few bits here that I still need to try to pry off with my tweezers or something but not too bad okay so now we can take all of the parts and in this case I'm actually just going to throw them in one of my parts trays here uh mainly you know somebody like me a hobbyist I I use my Watch cleaning machine but it's not like it's you know I'm not I'm not running hundreds of movements through it or whatever where if you're like a full-time Pro you probably are um so I can keep the parts in a tray and then move them over to the basket later for the cleaning taking a quick look here at the case it definitely is in need of a clean you can see that there's a bunch of Gunk and dirt between the lugs here I also mentioned before but on the bezel there's a decent amount and speaking of the bezel we're going to have to take it off not only is it crooked but this Crystal looks like it's seen better days as well so I'm going to use my bezel removal tool here and as you can see it prys apart the bezel at four different locations so that there's not this like torquing side action on it so that nothing gets cracked or bent and it works really well watch this boom I can just take it off and you can see all the dirt and debris that's actually formed between the bezel and the case I can take the crystal away here and as you can see it's pretty darn banged up it's definitely seen better days and likely should be replaced there's the bezel itself and then we can take a quick look at the case here as well and uh yeah things look okay but really need to be cleaned up and sort of brought back to their former glory so we will be doing that as well the last thing to take a look at here is the bracelet this is what they call a jubilee style bracelet from Rolex and as you can see it's quite dirty so it'll need to be cleaned up and it does have an issue here uh well first I can take off the the spring bar which certainly should be replaced as well those are affordable but check this out one of the links seems to have pulled away from where it attaches to the end link there and it's perhaps bent out of shape and that will need to be addressed as well probably just bent back but now that can also introduce some risk you can see the Rolex side here of the bracelet properly gunked up as well and this is I mean honestly this is just what happens when you wear a watch every single day right um you know wear and tear dirt debris and stuff do tend to build up and yikes there's a good amount on this bracelet so we'll be using some manual labor here to clean off the really caked on stuff which is wow rough and then I'll be putting all of these things into the Ultrasonic Cleaner which will help clean it up more microscopically now as far as cleaning the movement goes It goes right here into the watch cleaning machine and while the parts are cleaning I just wanted to say a special thank you to everybody who supports me on patreon that's kind of how I support this channel it's a great place to go to support the content creators that make the stuff that you love right if there's a YouTube channel music podcasts art whatever it is that you love it's a good chance that that Creator will have a patreon page and I have one for wristwatch Revival here as well and I just wanted to say thank you to everybody who supports me over there it really doesn't mean the world if you do sign up by the way whatever level you sign up for you get a wristwatch Revival sticker and thank you card in the mail for me and you get access to some pretty cool perks as well so thanks again to everybody on my patreon take a look at the movement after it's been through the watch cleaning machine these Rolex movements tend to clean up beautifully and boy this one is no exception it looks fantastic and it's very satisfying right like especially having seen how dirty it was before now the reassembly process must begin and take a look at the mainspring this could be one of the issues why the amplitude was down you can see that there's a big bend in the mainspring and that's a warning sign we were going to replace it anyway though just because this one hasn't been replaced in so long so I've got a replacement mainspring here and uh we're going to start off by putting that in now when you get a mainspring uh brand new like this you can see it's already pre-wound up and it comes in this sort of metal disc one side of it will have a color and the other side won't the color side that faces upwards and all you have to do it's actually very straightforward is you just take the little disc put it over the barrel and then just press the main spring into place it's really handy to do it this way and it is recommended often that you replace the main Springs when you do services on watches although it isn't 100 necessary in all cases one thing to keep in mind here though is that this is an automatic watch and that means you have to put some braking grease around the edge of the main spring Barrel you can actually see some wear on the inside of the barrel from the mainspring before in this breaking grease helps that reduce that and again all you have to do is carefully place the mainspring over the barrel and then I use kind of the flat end of this pointer stick to uh to gently push the mainspring into place just like this wait just just like this right oh no well maybe I overspoke a little bit about how easy it is to put that in it looks like the edge got caught and I can't get it to seat flush so I'm I'm gonna actually have to take it out of there thankfully I have a tool for this uh this is the main spring Winder here that I can use to rewind the mainspring back in and then uh and put it in and I'll be honest with you I like doing this anyway this is one of the really cool tools uh of the trade if you have a hobby like this anything remotely approximating this then you know how cool it is to get all the neat tools for it and this is one of the best ones it is unfortunately one of the most expensive tools that you can that you have to get to kind of do this hobby um you know again there are other ways to do this you can wind a mainspring back in by hand but it really isn't a good way to do it it can damage the spring quite easily or contaminate it it's also finicky and difficult to do and just not the proper way to do it but you know as with any hobby you kind of work your way up this is the best part though well well worth the price of admission just for that satisfying click that you get when the mainspring goes in and as you can see now it is fully seated properly the way that I wanted it to be the first time around now I can put the uh the arbor into place here and a little bit of medium viscosity oil on the edge here just where it rubs up against the lid is necessary also on an older watch like this you can see where a little bit of the plating has come off most of the parts inside of a watch are made of brass even the ones that don't look brass colored or like this one are usually and they're plated um in with rhodium to make it this bright silver color you can see there's a little bit of adhesive or something on the barrel as well so I'm just going to use a piece of Peg wood to clean that up just before continue with the reassembly I don't that must have been old adhesive that came off in the cleaning process because it was pretty stuck on all right that looks better and does This Thing spin yeah there we go so with the mainspring spring Barrel in place the next thing I like to do is to put in the setting lever screw the problem with the setting lever screw is it goes in this hole over here and then there's the plate that goes over top of it and it has a hole in the plate so that you can put a screwdriver in and unscrew that but if you forget to put that in and just continue on your way you can't put that screw in once the Plate's in place you have to undo it so it's always good to just remember straight away like hey let's let's get that thing taken care of so they don't have to undo a bunch of stuff later and by the way the plate that we're talking about here is the barrel Bridge normally you know the wording there's actually a lot of different wording that you can use for the different parts of a watch but normally we talk about the the big disk at the bottom the the kind of the foundation for the whole thing being the main plate and then Bridges go on top of the main plate once again I'm going to use a little bit of medium viscosity oil between where the barrel meets that Barrel Bridge just because even though it spins very slowly um you know that can create a bit of tension there and it is metal on metal in this case so a little bit of lubricant there just to make sure that everything spins nice and freely and with that I can start with the train of Wheels you can see we start our way at the kind of bottom of the waterfall here this one is the Escape wheel and then the fourth wheel the third wheel on this watch is kind of special it has what they call an extended pivot one of the axles if you will is very tall you'll see it stick up here and it's actually it actually sticks up really far uh so that it goes through the plate that sits on top of it and then you can affix a wheel to that and we'll do that later on this is called the center wheel and it needs just a little bit of lubricant applied here because it's going to meet up again on a metal on metal situation the contrast I keep saying metal on metal well what's the other option if that's when they're jeweled right that's when it's metal against Ruby and those ones you need usually you use the lightest viscosity oil because it's already a very friction light environment But Metal on Metal can definitely produce shaving so you usually use the slightly thicker oil now I'm going to put on the train wheel bridge and what the it just went right into place are you serious that that is absolutely incredible like this is normally like a 10 minute finicky job and all I did is just let go of the bridge and it has just seated itself perfectly you know this is what I'm talking about when I say that these movements are just made to be worked on and that they're such a pleasure to work on that is incredible I mean that thing carries the pivots for the center wheel third wheel fourth wheel and Escape wheel that's four different things that needed to all be lined up perfectly on the top and bottom and yes I took a little bit of extra time to make sure that the wheels were all seated properly which is what you're supposed to do but come on it just dropped right into shape it's awesome I absolutely love working on these things next we can go for the crown wheel you can see that the crown wheel is made up of three parts there's like a washer disc at the bottom and then the outer tooth teeth wheel I don't know how to say that but that outer part that actually spins and then inside there's two tiny little screws right here that hold in that inner disc and that's actually static that that stays uh firm some watch movements use this method of two tiny screws to hold in that center part and other ones use a large screw in the center the ones that use a large screw in the center also tend to use a reverse Threaded Screw but when you do it this way with the two little tiny baby screws you they don't need to be reverse threaded it also frees up the center of that part for other use and this watch actually does use that for a separate use okay this is the uh The Click spring and it looks a little weird actually I wonder if let's try to put it into place I feel like this looks a little bent or maybe not quite right yeah why does this not want to sit properly and you know trying to get this to fit in here and noticing that it is not seated right it felt like it was damaged so what I did is I went and ordered it ordered another one you know you can inspect these parts as they go and that one just did not look right to me so I found a new one on eBay and look at this now it just seats itself almost by itself right and that's the difference right that's what's supposed to happen what I find with this Hobby is that you don't want to go against the grain meaning if it doesn't feel right stop and go what is going on here because when you are using the correct Parts in their correct location especially on a really well made movement like this it all kind of just tends to fall together and when you find yourself fighting something the screw won't go in or this part won't seat it's it's usually because you either have the wrong part or it's in the wrong location that's been my experience at least okay now we can tighten down the click here and it's ready to go which means the ratchet wheel can go into place I'm really looking forward to getting this watch back on Rodney's wrist he's an absolute pleasure just a you know I was emailing him with about some of the parts and you know we should probably replace this and that kind of stuff and he was always really nice about it and it always cracked me up because at the end of the emails he would give me uh like weather updates about where he lives you know oh the the weather is great down here right now and maybe tell me a little bit about his day and you know I I just thought that was so Charming it honestly it kind of reminded me of one of my grandparents who used to write me letters and and say things like that too but yeah I'm just really excited to to get this watch back on Rodney's wrist I mean can you imagine wearing the same watch for 53 years and then having it break how annoying would that be you're so used to the thing just being there and working it's your companion I mean it even has his name on the back of the thing okay so with the watch flipped over I've now lubricated each of the lubrication points for the different Springs and arms and things that are going to be going into place and now we can simply put them into place so the first we'll start off with the keyless works here this is the sliding clutch and the clutch wheel and I'm using some of this blue Grease it's kind of heavy duty grease for for a watch like this but it's necessary because again you know what I'm going to say metal on metal right you really have to make sure that you take care of any of the parts that are going to be under any amount of pressure in a metal metal on metal scenario it really does it really can turn into a bit of a disaster if you don't do that okay and this is called the yoke and as you can see it's especially shaped arm that kind of reaches over a couple of Parts slots into another part and it has oh the scariest spring in the watch that one right there it's called the Oak Spring it's always a high tension part it's a thicker spring because it has to really push on that yoke and boy do those things love to fly away and when they go it's not on the bench right it doesn't ping off you know a foot and a half away I mean you hear it hit the side of your closet and you're like oh no you have to get out the flashlight and the magnet and go try to track down this little spring now Parts like this they don't do that right that this is a setting lever spring as you can see it's a multi-function part that part cover plate part spring and these are big enough so that when they fly a they don't tend to go very far and be you can see them or find them you know generally pretty easily okay so with that in place I need to just move the arm over of the spring there so that it engages properly and then I can lubricate as well so the first I'll do is this is the same thing I did on the top half just to the bottom half of the barrel again where it meets in this case the main plate it's also interesting because your perception of top and bottom gets screwed up this is probably technically the top of the watch like this is what we call the dial side right this is the dial will eventually attach to this side of the watch not the other but the other has all the action right it's got the trainer Wheels got the balance it's got pallet fork and it's kind of where the most of the work takes place so my brain thinks of that as the top of the watch and this is the bottom but you know I think most people would say where the dial goes is the top of the watch but I don't know I mean these are the types of things that like actual professional watchmakers have to worry about but for hobbyists like me I just call it like I see it you know there's a lot of advantages to going to like a technical school to do watchmaking and stuff you know I think that would be totally awesome if I could do that but at the same time being more self-taught having to kind of figure it out for yourself also does build out a different type of knowledge base that's uh you know hard to replicate let's say that said I don't think you can really replace you know two years of intensive training at a school or something with uh without doing a whole heck of a lot of work yourself okay so now we can put the uh the palette fork in the palette Fork bridge in place and what that means is we're getting very close to seeing if this watch is going to run properly again again it was actually running a bit when I got it but you know come on that wasn't running this this watch is capable of much much more than that and uh that is where I want to get this thing to so that Ronnie can enjoy this watch again let's see if we can get this thing cooking come on baby yes yes yes yes yes there we go get a little kick on it and off it goes okay so this is good everything went together exactly how I would have hoped and the watch kicked right up again so we don't have any of these disasters where you know one of the things I was thinking of you know based on the fact that the bezel was tweaked over so much was that it could have gotten hit it could have landed on something and that can break parts inside or bend them and that can be difficult to ascertain but as you can see it's actually cooking along pretty nicely here we can now uh lubricate this watch and see how well it's actually going to run you can see the open Jewel holes just require a little tiny bit of lubricant but some of them have a capsule on top this is one version of how a capsule would be applied it uses this sort of individual size spring that holds the capsule into place and so what we're going to need to do is loosen this spring these ones actually don't come off all the way they are made so that you can get them out of the way and then I can use a piece of radico just like that to remove the capsule and that's all it is right there it's a jewel that is domed on the top but flat on the bottom and I can put it in a solvent and use a little bit of Peg wood here to just manually clean away any dried on oil or debris that might be left on it you want that about as spotless as you can possibly get and then what you do this is tricky but you apply a tiny see the flat bottom there the tiniest droplet of oil to the middle of this Jewel like this and then you very carefully grab the jewel flip it over without it skipping away and then replace it back on the top and what this does is this will suspend the oil above the hole where that pivot is and let it run freely as freely as possible of course the last thing to do is to put this shock protection spring back into place now the other way that they do these more fancy multi Jewel setups with the cap jewel is this so once again there is a brass spring that needs to be moved out of the way this by the way is what protects the watch from great shocks is that spring will give rather than the the jewels snapping but this one's even more complicated so there's the capsule uh coming to waste just the same as I did before you can see it right there but this this one has another Jewel underneath that's uh like a whole Jewel you see it there that actually has a hole that the pivot goes in into the cool part is is that with both of them removed I can give them a really good cleaning individually with the same process I can use a piece of Peg wood to manually clean it and I can put it in the solvent to make sure that it is spotless and that there's no debris this is extremely important the balance swings thousands of times per hour eighteen thousand thirty six thousand twenty six thousand depending on the model of watch that you've got and this is the friction point for that balance so imagine the difference between this being perfectly clean and well lubricated versus say old dry lubrication or there's a piece of dirt debris dust hair fiber in there that can drastically change the performance of the watch because this is such an important part so now I can button that back up by simply moving the shock spring back over into its place and we're good to go there now I do have to do that to the bottom and then do some regulation but here's what we come up with on the time grapher after all is said and done look at that zero seconds a day 266 270 degrees of amplitude and the beat error that was the best I could get it was to 0.4 you actually want that as close to point zero as possible but that was the absolute best I could do and that is going to have to do for now now this type of watch requires servicing that's right the automatic works as well now these get serviced in a different way yes they get clean in the watch cleaning machine they went through the same process as everything else but lubricating them can be kind of difficult and so we use this stuff called lubetta which is a like a think of it like a combination between the solvent that I was using on the other parts and also a lubricant basically what happens is you put in lubetta you let it sit for a while and when you take it out you dry it like this with an air blower and what it does is it removes the excess liquid but anything that's left on there creates like a thin lubricant film on all the parts and as you can see that's really important here because these parts do rub up against each other as you're wearing your watch all day long anytime you're moving that thing swinging around and those parts those are called reversing Wheels those purple wheels in the middle are spinning up against each other so you do need to have like a good lubricant film on there okay now I can attach this bridge to the rotor using this little uh clip that I had taken off earlier this is a gear that goes right in between those two reversing Wheels kind of uh meshes them together and then this is the top half or the bottom half however you want to see it of the automatic works that ties the room together again just two screws to hold this whole Contraption together and once that's done then this thing's ready to go and I can put this in usually quite late in the process like you can put it in even after you've already cased the rest of the movement it's in the watch already because it's just those three screws do you remember those at the beginning how would I possibly remember which ones those are well we'll have to see when I get there and just a quick check to make sure that everything's spinning and now we can address the case so the case in the bracelet first off desperately needed cleaning you you saw how dirty they had gotten that is normal from everyday wear and tear and so first they're going to go through a full bath in get it yes uh in the ultrasonic cleaner an ultrasonic cleaner is really an extremely useful tool for a watchmaker and honestly just around the house you can put a bunch of stuff in these that you might maybe didn't know um paint brushes makeup brushes sunglasses um stuff around the kitchen jewelry of All Sorts can go in and get cleaned up and it's non-abrasive and you don't have to use harsh chemicals like you can just use water like I put distilled water and like a special ultrasonic detergent in here but you can use like dish soap and it works fantastic and you can even pick up uh ultrasonic cleaners you know for not that much I I ended up getting this kind of fancy watchmaking brand one it's a brand called Elma because I was like I'm gonna be using this thing a ton but I mean I had one that I had gotten off Amazon I used it for years with with no issue as well okay with the case out of the cleaner one thing that we do need to address here are the Seals the rubber gaskets and these are what keep the watch waterproof or water resistant depending on what kind of wording you like and in order to get this gasket out of this case tube I'm using these like dental tools that I bought yeah it's like the scary tools from the dentist but it works really well for kind of getting underneath this gasket and taking it out look at that out it comes and there's the rubber gasket that's probably been in there forever and that'll need to be replaced I can use some radical to help clean up the tube as well just to keep it free from any debris you can even run it through the ultrasonic again I'm going to use this uh this swab here just to get any type of dirt and debris out of there as well just every little bit oh oops well looks like I ruined ruined my swab here but uh that's okay I can just take this foam out and there we go and one quick final hit with the uh radico and it is ready so what I use is some silicone grease here and this will help again with waterproofing and now I've got a brand new gasket to put into this case tube and it's a little tricky to do you have to kind of wedge it in and then use some combination of your fingers or the tweezers to get it seated into place once it seats it sits quite nicely but it's just a little bit of a tricky deal there you go you can see it in there all sealed up and ready to go now the same thing needs to happen here on the crown the way that Rolexes and in fact most water resistant watches work is that there's three different gaskets that go on the watch to help contribute to waterproofness one of them is here and you can see it's a little bit stuck in there uh here on the crown and then one of them is in the case tube which we just did and then the last one goes on the case back that was that gasket I took off at the beginning those are recommended to be replaced when you do a watch service anyway just to you know try to give yourself the best chance of having that waterproofness just so the person can wear the dang thing every day you know people don't generally go diving with their watch you can take a look at the gasket coming out there so it's not like it needs to you know be super waterproof but they should be able to wear the thing washing their hands you know uh out in the rain maybe take a shower occasionally or or if somebody pushes you in the pool or whatever that it's not going to just completely destroy your watch it really depends on how well the watch was uh waterproof to begin with in this case it's quite waterproof like these Rolex oysters are they are waterproof so you know you'd hope to be able to get most of that back all right brand new Crystal going on and as you can see with the bezel there's the top has two hashes and everything else doesn't so that's what needs to be at the very top at the 12 o'clock position so I want to carefully place the bezel so that it's realigned if you saw when I first got it it was a little bit out of alignment and again not really sure how that happened but I am sure it would drive me absolutely nuts if my watch had that so I'm going to return it to uh to Rodney with the bezel properly aligned I could use this case press tool to do so and what it does is it takes that bezel and squeezes it around the brand new Crystal and that actually creates a seal and that's a waterproof seal as well there's no rubber gasket under there it's the the acrylic crystal with the metal gasket excuse me bezel pressing up against it and you know all this talk about waterproofing's kind of got me curious because I got one more part to put on that's the case back but uh you know I did pick up a watch waterproof testing machine and I'm wondering if we should throw this thing on there I you know I'm not really willing to do like full troubleshooting to get this thing down to like uh you know diving depth rated whatever it's a watch from 1962. but I am curious like do you think a watch like this would still pass you know the set kind of standard test for waterproofness I'm curious so I think we're going to go ahead and throw it on here so let's give it a shot after tightening down the case back with my case back tool I this is what the tool looks like and what you do is you create kind of a cool little world here inside of this cylinder so I'm hanging the case in there and then tightening down the lid that's going to create a water tight excuse me an airtight seal around that cylinder now I can use this handle to force air into that cylinder I'm going to put three bar of pressure that's three atmospheres of pressure into this container and when I've done that I'll let it sit for a while and what it does is it fills the container with air at that pressure if there's a leak now I can hit this button on the top and see if bubbles come out to show me if there's a leak oh wow there's actually not is this thing going to pass the waterproof test that is incredible oh oh wait a minute oh look at that on the left hand side there you can see that is what a leak looks like now that is a very slow very small leak if there's a real leak the bubbles come out I mean you know and you're like oh boy here we go that is a very controlled small seal break but there is one and that could be because the inside of the bezel deteriorated a little bit the inside of the case perhaps the Crystal and so this watch would not technically pass at that three bars but it's dang close and I would feel totally fine wearing this thing out anywhere in any reasonable conditions you could probably even get away with a swim with it and it probably wouldn't break I I wouldn't do it but that's how close that thing was to passing okay we can continue the reassembly now and get down the home stretch on this watch to get to that beautiful finished product we're going to start by putting on that extended third wheel that I talked about before this one is just going to get press fit onto the top of that pivot it's just friction fit on that's it and here's the middle of that Crown wheel that I mentioned before I said did they use that center part for something else and this is it they use it as a place to put the tensioner spring for that Center seconds pinion again the center seconds opinion is the thing that gives you the seconds hand in the middle of your watch but it does need to be held under some amount of tension and that's a little tensioner Spring right here that does it a tiny bit of lubricant on the top there just because it is going to be pressing down and then it's a bit of a tricky operation because you have to line up this spring but then also screw down the thing that it's attached to so it wants to like jump off to the side so I hold it with the tweezers and then just give it a gentle tight down and boom all ready to go back over on the other side we can put the minute the hour wheel into place excuse me as well as the washer for the dial that keeps that our wheel down flush and in place and now this lovely dial can go back on again two screws to secure it I'm going to use just a little bit of radical just to remove any dust that may have built up on the dial over time this style is in beautiful shape there's no need for me to do any crazy stuff to it just to get it cleaned up and now we can put on the hands as well extra easy to put on hands on a watch it doesn't have a date function all you have to do is put the hour hand on and line it up with any hour you can choose whichever one you want I'm just going to go with 12 here and then line up the minutes hand exactly with that and that's it you do have to put on the seconds hand but you know there's no uh having to fuss around with getting in at exactly midnight when you so that the calendar clicks over it exactly none of that stuff here what you do have to make sure is that the hands don't foul each other that they don't bump into each other as you turn it I'm also gonna put the seconds hand on with the movement flat on a piece of wood here and the reason for that is that that little spring is kind of the only thing holding it on and you want it up against something to back it so that um so that you can push down a little bit on that hand okay A bit of microfiber cloth here and a air blower to make sure that the case and the inside of the crystal and everything are looking absolutely beautiful with no dust or debris uh before you know the reassembly gets complete here oh boy I'm excited about this one it just seems to have come out so beautifully like this watch has a lot of life in it and yeah it had seen better days when it arrived but I gotta say it is like look at that movement beautiful okay you can put the crown and stem back in here and we'll secure it as well and as I mentioned before we still need to put on the automatic winding works but I can do that now and how did I remember which screws go where on this one the blue screws right as you can see they make it easy on you all right now I can put the case back on as well and this little thing is just about finished though we do have a little bit more work to do there's a wow beautiful watch I yeah this thing cleaned up absolutely lovely but I also have to do the bracelet now this is from earlier remember this I had that that Rogue link that was bent out of shape and not holding on to the end and all that so that needs to be addressed here before I can put the bracelet now I did put the bracelet through the ultrasonic as you saw and it actually cleaned up quite nicely but as you can see that part needs to come down and fold over onto that inner metal part and if it's gonna function proper and also look proper so I talked to Roddy and I said look I'm going to try to just bend it back there's a chance that that part breaks but it just you wouldn't want to leave it like this because it's going to get caught on something or your bracelet might let go so you're going to have to find a new one if it breaks or if it doesn't and he said yeah go for it give it give it your best shot so I've got these special tweezers or not tweezers pliers that are kind of rounded and can go in there and it looks like it works see now it's actually covering that middle section I think it worked just fine I mean these are stainless steel like they can take a bend it I didn't expect it to break but you know I wanted to give Rodney a head it's a heads up just in case and with that a couple of new spring bars and I can put the uh the bracelet on the watch what a journey with this thing huh needed all the treatment and needed all the stuff movement cleaning Crystal all of it and look how gorgeous this thing came out I mean who wouldn't be proud to wear a watch like that right it's just beautiful simple and stunning this Rolex Oyster Perpetual this is before remember this now look at it I mean look how well that cleaned up by comparison right and look at this before right it had all this Gunk around the edge the bezel was crooked now look at it perfect looks absolutely fantastic what a beautiful watch and what a fun journey to go on thank you so much for joining me for it I really do appreciate it you can find me on Instagram by the way it's wristwatch underscore Revival you can stop by there and say hi uh I also just wanted to say thank you I really appreciate you taking the time to go on these watchmaking Journeys with me I really do appreciate it and we'll see you next time

Channel: Wristwatch Revival

Views: 1,595,324

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Id: XHBdQzWkvFo

Length: 53min 58sec (3238 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 30 2023