Restoration of a 70-Year-Old Abandoned Tissot Antimagnetique Watch

hi everyone thank you for joining today we have a very cool tiso from 1940s 1945 to be specific and it needs a lot of help I got this from a second hand shop I think I paid around 70 dollars for it while the straps are somehow ripped off never seen that before the watch doesn't run and the person I bought it from didn't know why as it's usually the case and the Crystal you can see it's it's very broken looks like a car run over it but anyway that should be an easy fix we can just replace it for a new one I'm also not sure if the watch has been served before it definitely does not look like it but if it is we will see some marks engraved on the inside of the case back well first things first let's open the back and see how it looks inside oh wow good news this looks already way better than expected let's have a look at the case back first we can see some watchmaker marks inside the case back I'm not sure what those mean but at least we know it has been serviced before okay so now we can use the padwood to clean that up a little bit the more we clean now the easier will be for the watch cleaning machine wait a minute this is not dirt sink let me oh well this is definitely not dirt this looks like a very old rubber gasket but I don't know it looks like metal to me now so I'm not sure how this used to look just look at all that they're coming off of this well one more thing to replace thank you I mentioned this before this wooden stick is made out of soft wood and it's usually used to remove debris or stubborn dirt it's used specifically in watchmaking because if you would use tweezers or any other metal tool you would scratch the parts you're trying to clean okay let's clean up with the bench first and then have a look at this the movement looks great to be honest this looks like it's new compared to the outside I don't want to speak too soon yet so let's disassemble it and see if we have any surprise waiting for us inside to take the movement out of the case the first thing we have to do is to take the stem out we unscrew here a bit and we should be able to pull this out there you go very dirty as well let's have a look under the microscope of all of these will be clean later but let's try to remove it a bit first there's actually a rubber gasket the one from the crown also disintegrated inside these pendant tube no wonder the watch doesn't work no okay well a bit better this is the moment I've been waiting for the dial is basically the only thing you get to see when you're wearing the watch so it's all worth it if it's in good conditions no look at this this looks amazing look at the patina on this dial it has an orange color to it very very nice way better than expected you can see it's written in antimagnetic just below the logo which seems like a weird thing to write on a watch style but this was quite a technical achievement at the time the reason why this is important is because from the 1930s people were buying more and more appliances for the household that use electricity to work these were telephones or radios I think the microwave came later but it's the same thing all these devices produce electromagnetic fields and are able to magnetize watches that means that they interfere with the balance spring and make the watch run too fast or too slow so gain time or lose time which definitely defeats the purpose of wearing the watch in the first place the reason it's written here below the tiso logo is because this all came up with some improvements to compensate for these magnetic fields and was the first manufacturer to introduce non-magnetic wrist watches and they actually marketed these anti-magnetic models quite heavily I assume the general population at the time was not aware that this was a problem and they were trying to make it very obvious by showing for example huge magnets next to watches or a guy holding a phone where it's written even phones can magnetize your watch so one of the improvements was the material that the case is made of and this movement ring that we will try to remove now maybe a bigger screwdriver perfect so as I was saying this ring around the movement is made out of more conductive materials that prevent magnetic fields to reach their hairspring inside the watch this was even claiming that 40 of the watch repairs were not needed anymore with what they call the non-magnetic watch the small letter reads two out of every five watches taken to a watchmaker for repair have nothing wrong with them except that they are magnetized let's have a look at these under the microscope you can see the thick layer of radium Loom it doesn't match perfectly with the numbered lines this is because it was painted manually back then ready means radioactive it was spun in the late 60s when they realized before that they used to put radium everywhere even in food so you have to take some extra precautions when working on these watches nowadays all watches are anti-magnetic after desolding the mid 50s IWC introduced the engineer Rolex made milgauss Omega made the real master and all the other brands joined the next step is to take the Canon pinion out for this I have a vintage tool made especially for this it works like one of these claw machines at the arcade so when you press the lever down there the claws close and then pull the Canon pinion out problem is that it's hollow inside and if you take it out with the tweezers and press too much you can damage it okay time to start disassembling from the movement side now we have to take the balance spring off this is one of the most delicate parts of the watch it has a very very thin spring it's called the hairspring so imagine how thin it is this was the second Improvement that is so implemented to make watches resist in the magnetic fields and they did this by replacing these hair Springs by ones that are made out of special metal alloys that are not sensitive to magnetic field the big wheel amount scrolling is called the ratchet wheel and this one is a crown wheel you can see the teeth underneath that make it spin this part is one this tiny part here is called The Click and this is what actually makes a satisfying clicking noise when you're winding the watch it has a very tiny spring underneath and this is what actually helps bringing the piece back in place and preventing the mainspring to unwind itself can fly away very easily now the next thing to remove in this part of the movement is called the train Wheels bridge and this is what keeps the train of wheels in place these ridges have some small grooves underneath so you can fit a small screwdriver and carefully lift them but you have to be very careful not to scratch the main plate and okay not too bad you can see all the wheels resting here very delicately inside the Dual holes I shoot the movement a bit accidentally and messed them all up already this set of wheels are called the train of wheels and what they do is transfer the power from the mainspring all the way down to the balance let's take off the pilot Fork Bridge foreign driver underneath this time even more carefully we don't want to hit the padded Fork perfect and then the palette Fork off the last part of this side of the watch is called the power source so let's take first the barrel Bridge off you can't see a small number engraved in there this is the serial number for this particular movement and you can check the year it was made all the manufacturers keep records of this most of them you can find online so that's pretty useful if you want to date your watch but with some others you will have to contact them and they will charge you a bit to look into their archives and give you the information the part I'm removing now is called the barrel and it would hold the main spring inside so now we have to take a stacking Block open the lid and take the mainspring out we have to be a bit careful here this is a long spring and it's coil up very strongly so we don't want it flying to the other side of the room there you go oops okay now we found the mainspring but you can see it's all Called Love Inside the barrel if you want to clean it properly we have to take it out first to remove the armor we use a thick pair of tweezers and we try to wiggle it slowly until it comes out if we can this has a tiny pin on one of the sides that engages with the hole in the inner coil of the mainspring when you wind The Watch so then we take the tweezers and we take out the beginning of the mainspring we alternate then the thumbs up and down so it comes out slowly it's important that we take note of the direction that the mainspring was colon so we make sure we place it back correctly and this is it you can see the mainspring uncoiled this is one of the newer ones with a nice shape where the end of it turns the other direction and what this does is make sure that the watch doesn't tick slower by providing a bit of extra Force at the end of the running time when the spring is almost out of energy the movement side is done so let's start now with the dial side this part of the watch is called the keyless Works keyless as in without a key and that's because up until mid 1800s pocket watches needed an actual key to be wound and set the time as well so you have to open the case get the key directly on top of the barrel Arbor and turn it to wind the mainspring I think Patek Philip had a patent for the mechanism and was the first watch brand to sell watches with it um and we are done here this is only the main plate where all the parts are assembled into and these circles that you can see engraved on the movement is called pearlage this is one of the decoration techniques the manufacturers use to decorate these metal parts the last thing to do before having a look at the case is to unscrew the crumb from the stem to do this we use a spin Vise which allows us to grab the stem tightly while we unscrew the crown with the other hand good okay now that we finish with the movement we can have a closer look at the case well the good news is that the case itself is not damaged we just have to replace the straps on the crystal I kind of like how it looks so I don't think we will be polishing anything let's start by removing what's left of the straps they're quite stuck let me change the tool this case has a little hole in the locks where we can actually now fit the spin and push a spring you probably noticed that the spring bar looks green I think they call this Verdigris it's a corrosion layer and you can see this in Copper usually so I'm not sure if it's some kind of chemical reaction between the steel and the leather when you leave it outside for a long time let's push a crystal out this is an acrylic glass so they're quite flexible but before we put all this in the cleaning machine let's take some Packwood again and clean where we can all these angles in the logs is usually where you see most of the dry dirt that needs a bit of hand cleaning oh what you see is years of dirt here let's have a look at the case back now look how dirty this is these little grooves are here to help open and close the back tightly but the only thing they have been doing for the last 70 years is accumulate dirt yeah foreign we have to do is to put all these parts inside these mesh baskets this is what then we will put inside the cleaning machine they have this small compartment so we can separate the bigger parts from the more delicate parts and finally we squeeze the main string in we will make the cleaning process separately so the bigger parts will go inside the ultrasonic path with some special watch cleaning solution to help with it all right [Music] then when this is done we just take the parts out and we rinse them in distilled water foreign the parts that we put before in the baskets go to the watch cleaning machine this machine works with two different solvents so the first jar has a water cleaning solution in it and the next two have rinsing Solutions good time to put everything back these are synthetic oils we will use this in the movement the light glue is very low viscosity one so it goes in the fast moving parts and then we have two more oils that are thicker especially this is one that comes in a huge syringe and are made for slow moving Parts with more torque where the oil is not supposed to move around now the first thing we have to do here is to install and lubricate the mainspring and we actually do this with a crease which is even thicker than the oils the best way I found to do this is to apply a bit onto the fingers and then go slowly over the whole length of the spring like like this so that way we make sure we only apply everything layer now the more tricky part is coming we have to call the mainspring and fit it into the barrel to do this we have this vintage tool this is called a mainspring Winder and what you see is a lot of pieces with different sizes so depending on the size of the watch the barrel has different dimensions and the main screen has different length as well so basically you have to use an artboard that is a bit smaller in diameter that the barrel you want to fit the mainspring into now we just need to find the one that works for us oh this one seems to fit it's fairly straightforward we just have to fit the inner part of the spring into the Arbor which has a tiny pin that grabs the main spring so it can coil it's easier said than done though okay now and then it goes into the handle and we just turn it slowly you can also do this manually without the tool but you will see how tight we have to coil this and if it's done by hand there's a high risk of damaging or bending the spring let's take the arbor out carefully perfect there it is and then into the more satisfying part we just have to push the mainspring into the bar now we just have to put the barrel Arbor inside sometimes our boards are quite big so that spring wraps while around it and it's not so easy to fit now and then we put back the cup and close it now we start the assembly on the movement side we place the barrel the setting level screw there you go on the barrel Bridge we just have to make sure that it's aligned properly thank you the steel you can see on the mainspring barrel are the ones that will turn the center wheel and make the train of wheel spin that's exactly what we will assemble now starting with the Escape wheel and then the fourth wheel third wheel and Center wheel all these wheels have pivots on both sides and these pivots are fitted inside the jewel holes the jewels are the spin holes you can see in this train of Wheels bridge that are actually we just have to make sure that all of them are straight so again these joules are synthetic rubies and what they do is one they keep the wheels in place and second they reduce the amount of friction of the pivots since these wheels have to spin for years foreign good this is what we want you can see all the wheels are spinning freely so there is nothing blocked time to put some oil we start with a barrel this is the upper side and this is the Lower Side and same for the jewels we just have to make sure that we don't put too much oil or too little oil we use the thicker oil here to finish this side of the keyless works so these are the parts that spin when you wind up the watch just carefully with the spring and then the ratchet wheel you see that it has a square hole in the middle this goes right on top of the square portion of the barrel Arbor and it makes it spin and call the mainspring well wrong direction now the trigger screw you can see the three stripes on top of it that means you actually have to screw it turning counterclockwise we finish the keyless works on the movement side and now we have to assemble the dial side first step is to oil the sliding pinion and winding pinion this is exactly where the stem goes right through these two parts so this is how it works right the stem turns when you wind the watch then the winding pinion makes the crown will move and the ratchet will turn the barrel Arbor which coils the Mainframe setting lever goes in it goes on top of the setting lever screw at the screw that we put from the other side of the movement and goes all the way through so we have to turn it and tighten it from this side this is one of the tricky bits here this is called the yolk which is what moves the sliding pinion back and forth and it's placed under a lot of tension by a very small spring that again will fly to the other side of the room if it slips there we go foreign let's hold it with this hand and oh good that's a relief we're almost done here this is a relatively simple watch it doesn't have any extra complications no later anything so there's only a few parts left this is the intermediate wheel Canon pinion and the minute will perfect this is the part that holds everything in place it's called the setting lever spring and it acts like a little Bridge covering the wheels and like a spring at the same time with this thinner part at the far end will help the setting lever change positions let's quickly check that it works good almost there we just need to finish with the escapement that would be the pallet bridge but first the palette Fork it also has two tiny pivots okay and then we secure it with the bridge we need to be very careful to not put too much pressure on the bridge so we just push it gently into position if the pivots are not perfectly inside the Jeweler holes we can bend them or break them easily now you can see when we turn the crown the train of Wheels is not turning anymore because the pallet Fork is stopping it that tells us it's placed correctly and we can check it by carefully moving it side to side and it should snap back and forth like that perfect before putting the balance wheel on we have to do two things the first one is dipping it into this liquid this is a solvent called B deep and it's specifically made to dissolve the oils on the balance Springs foreign just create a bit of agitation to make sure it cleans well and the nice part of using this is that it evaporates within a couple of seconds just with a bit of air so you're sure that nothing remains wet inside the movement okay now the moment of truth let's see if we bring the watch back to life and all the work paid off we carefully place the balance no not like this it wants to run but ah now just needed a little push foreign we have to do here is to take off the cap joules on the balance and oil them as well under the microscope visuals are a bit different than the rest they are assembled into what the so-called a shock resist system which then evolves to the Inca block system and this is basically a shock protection mechanism we have two joules and the spring in each side of the balance and when this loss is adding support to the balance Tab and prevents the pivots and joules to break if you drop the watch tiny drop of oil and back in place as for the hour wheel and die washer to help the arrow will stay in place okay so let's take this out of the box now we just have to place the dial and the hands back in before putting the watch into the case I have these tweezers with a plastic tip to grab it without scratching or removing any paint and we just have to make sure that pins underneath the dial are inside the movement holds good then the way to fix it in place is to tighten two tiny screws around the edge of the movement that screw into the dial pins to place the hands we have another tool that's when no one tells you when you start watchmaking as a hobby there is a lot of different tools there's basically a tool for everything so we take the hands with the same plastic tweezers since the lumundi's hands is quite fragile and we don't want to damage it we just push the hour hand down with this pin a bit more and then the minute hand goes on top you can see that the hour hand fits into the golden portion which is the our wheel underneath the Dal and I mean it will fit into the silver part which is the Canon pinion underneath that our wheel last thing is a tiny seconds hand that goes in the middle of the subsequence dial and that goes on top of the extended pivot from the fourth wheel which spins one full run every 60 seconds of course and it ticks right away great almost on here let's just check that it works correctly sometimes the hands bump into each other if they're not placed correctly and that's enough to stop the watch now it's time to replace the Crystal this is the old broken one and we're going to replace it with this new one you can see how different they look this is acrylic glass so it can be bent and to put it in place we use a press we have these two adapters that match the size of the new Crystal there you go now we place the case inside the lower adapter and we place a crystal in between so when you turn this wheel the Press starts going down and the Crystal gets compressed and bent at the same time then we just have to slide the case upwards and finally release the pressure so the glass can expand inside the case we put the movement back inside the case we unscrew a bit the setting lever to release the stem so not too much otherwise it will completely touch and we will have to open everything again and don't forget we have to place the movement ring back hopefully it will be easier to put than it was to remove okay seems in place look how different this looks I'm really really happy with this watch and this is why we do this when we started we had a broken watch it didn't run no one could enjoy it and now it looks like it's new and someone can wear it again it's a fairly small watch by today's standards it's only 31 millimeters but I think this is part of the charm of these vintage watches just how small they are last thing before closing let's put the rubber gasket in to replace a petrified one we found and close it the only thing left is to put some straps I have some nice handmade leather straps I bought for this watch so let's see how that goes it seem a bit too big but would make them fit and it did let's put the other one on and finish [Music] perfect and there you go can't believe how good this turned out thank you very much for watching I hope you enjoyed the restoration as much as I did and see you on the next one

Channel: Rescuing Watches

Views: 51,453

Keywords: watches, vintagewatches, watchrestoration, restoration, Tissot, watchmaking

Id: xUeAz2e-0jk

Length: 39min 53sec (2393 seconds)

Published: Thu May 18 2023