Restoring the First Watch With a GMT Function, and Boy Does it Need a Lot of Work!

hello there and welcome back to another video here on wristatch Revival my name is Marshall thank you so much for coming along this time on the bench we have a really cool watch this is a glycine Airman this was uh actually the first watch featuring a GMT complication that's the ability to tell a a second time zone with the watch it also is a military watch and as such it has a 24hour dial do you see that this watch doesn't just tell time in the normal 12 and then 12 it's all hours at once on the dial and uh so that's kind of cool and then it has this rotating bezel you can loosen it and then lock it with that lower crown and that little Spike off the back of the hour hand that'll point to a second time zone and that's of course really useful for many different situations but one of them would be when you're in the military and you'd like to know what time it is at home and uh this watch was actually debuted in 195 three and it was made in conjunction with the US Air Force and it ended up being sold in the military stores for a lot of years it was very popular in Vietnam as well and uh yeah as you can see it's a 24-hour dial so every hour is just that little tiny corner there and uh yeah neat complications on a cool military watch let's start by taking off the watch band I don't really know what kind of project we've got in our hands here I've always liked this watch I've always thought it was a cool design and has really great history with it but I bought this one off of eBay now the this watch is pretty popular so even in this condition this watch was quite expensive it was about $1,000 for it as it sits here I mean this thing was pricey considering I mean take a look at it it's pretty nasty um yeah so today you and I are going to restore this thing we're going to take it apart see what's going on with it and get it looking and running as good as we can speaking of that let's see how it's running right now uh oh okay so this is my time grapher and it will read how quick or slow the movement is running and it is actually having a hard time just getting a reading at all and when it does it's we call it the snowstorm you see how those dots are just everywhere you want those to be in nice parallel lines and instead can't even get a reading off of it so that's actually not really great news for my investment here but let's start by taking the back off and seeing what we've got movement wise ah there it is you can see this is an automatic watch it'll wind itself just from you wearing it and wait a second look at this yeah okay well that explains why I could turn the crown and nothing would happen um it is missing the the crown wheel it looks like it's just completely gone see it's supposed to interact with this part right here right there that's a sliding clutch and there's nothing for it to grab onto because that wheel that's supposed to go right there is gone and of course it will interact then with the ratchet wheel that's how you wind the watch it's also part of how you set the watch so interestingly this watch probably hasn't been fixed because since it is an automatic you technically don't ever need to manually wind it so you can kind of live without that but that's not going to stand we we got to get this thing working properly of course course so what we'll first start to do is get the movement taken out of the case and that means removing the winding Crown now that other crown that you see sitting there it doesn't actually go into the movement um it is there just to lock the rotating bezel that's on the front in place so that you can set that second time zone so we won't need to take that Crown out but that one of course does need to come out it looks like there's a little kind of a grommet here as well so we'll just set that aside and yeah cool the movement comes right out and there it is as you can see the dial is kind of an interesting shape you can tell that it's been well used let's say but also kind of has a nice patina to it a little dark maybe but kind of has that military Vibe going we'll start by taking off the watch hands and I'll put those in a membrane box here just to keep them safe yeah this watch you know this Airman it really does have a lot of of history I mean the GMT function became quite popular and is to this day uh you know the most popular is the Rolex GMT it's called the GMT master or the GMT Master 2 that has that functionality but this one uh predates that or at least is really close to when it came out and it is credited with being the first ever GMT but sometimes you can read it and it says one of the first ever gmts so I'll let you decide you know the the companies really care about you know which one got to Market first and so that they can say that they were first but let's be honest that's just kind of marketing stuff the cool part about this is that it's been around for a very long time with that functionality and it was made very much for a purpose and as I said it's so you can tell a second time zone and you know if you're in the military excuse me the military and you're deployed it's really nice to know you know what time it is back home when you can make phone calls and what's going on there kind of keep keeps you connected and of course this watch also has that cool 24-hour dial probably pretty handy if you're in the military I would assume we can take off the hour wheel here I'd like to try to get to the Canon pinion underneath so that I can take that off the reason for that is because when we eventually get to the other side of the watch and start doing the disassembly there one of the uh Wheels is attached to the Canon pinion via friction and it won't come out unless we remove the Canon pinion and so I'd like to do that up front here before we uh get to the other side of the movement usually when uh watch repairs are talking about the movement which side it's on they usually talk about it like this is the dial side because you know side that the dial attaches too and then the other side they have different movement side or I've even heard some people call it the watchmaker side it's kind of where all the action is this one has a fair bit going on as well uh because it has this date function as you can see it going around and I really like the uh the red numerals on the date I think that's it just kind of stands out and it's really cool I can see why these watches are so popular by the way they they're a really nice size to wear and they're very functional I mean a GMT watch with a 24-hour dial and it's an automatic with a date function like that's a lot you know and this one was probably made I guess in the 60s somewhere in that range when this one was probably manufactured so you get that kind of uh vintage Vibes going to if you're into that okay so now we can turn the watch over we've got enough of the calendar side taken apart and the first thing we'll do is take off the automatic winding works there's a separate Bridge just for the automatic works and again the automatic part which is the part that you're looking at here that thing that spins around is called the winding rotor and whenever it spins around around that which is by the way very natural for that to happen when you have it on your wrist because you raise raise your hand up to say hello to somebody you're typing you're going for a walk you're unloading the groceries whatever that rotor is going to spin around and as it does it winds up the watch speaking of winding up the watch we do need to unwind the watch so we're going to do what's called L let down the main spring sorry if I let you down Main spring and that'll just take all the power out of the watch so there's no tension right there's no pressure on any part here so that when I go to remove it nothing goes flying away additionally we'll take off the balance assembly here uh and similar reasoning just to keep it from getting damaged if it's sitting on the movement it's relatively safe but as you'll see here like I have to start taking apart a bunch of stuff that's around it and it's a little easier to not have to work around it since it needs to come off anyway okay here's the ratchet wheel so it comes off normally it's a little bit lonely it's missing its good friend the crown wheel which we'll have to do something about as well before we're done with this restoration I just love restoring watches like this these ones just always have such a cool history to them you know you can just kind of imagine somebody having worn this from a totally different era all right we'll take off the uh the barrel Bri oh that's interesting so the barrel actually has looks like a ratcheting mechanism on the bottom that attaches to this wheel right here that is pretty cool and this wheel looks like it's actually screwed into place so I'll need to take out that wheel first and then I can get to the one underneath but for now I'm just going to leave it because I can take those off after I get the rest of this part of of this watch taken apart so we'll take off the train wheel br this will reveal the train of Wheels which are kind of I don't know I think most people when they think of a watch that's the part that they think about inside take a look at when I take this off and tell me if that's if that clicks for you we call them Wheels I think a lot of people will call those gears you'll see them here there you go that's kind of the part right like the little wheels and gears inside of a watch by the way this part here comes off nicely this is the center second hand wheel and as you can see everything just kind of comes apart easily from here now there's the uh sliding clutch and the clutch wheel the clutch wheel was a part that was sticking up earlier I actually said sliding clutch but I meant clutch wheel and uh it's a little lonely too because again the crown wheel is the one that goes in between and it's missing now this is a little auxiliary bridge that sits down below and it goes directly over the center wheel which you'll see right there this is the part by the way not this one that's the Escape wheel but the big one underneath it that's the one that's attached to the Canon pinion via friction on the other side that I needed to uh get to that Canyon pinion first so that that wheel would ultimately just come free I'm going to get the um the pallet fork and the pallet Fork bridge out of the way because it's actually sitting right over the edge of that Center wheel but now it'll come out there we go and as you can see it just comes right out nice and free and that's because we took that Canon pinion off the other side now again this little bit of a weird setup with the barrel here it's got this ratcheted piece on the bottom and then this extra wheel on the side that is held in place by a screw so I'm going to take that out and I'm just going to use a little bit of Roo to take it out Roto is this sort of magical putty substance it's it's kind of like Silly Putty for adults I guess or for people that are into watches and uh it's really great at just grabbing stuff now if you look there's an inner ring on the calendar side once again and this ring is actually what holds the calendar ring the you know the outer part there in place so I'll use take out these three screws to remove it and then I can simply just take away the calendar ring here I just I like to put this disc disc in one of these little holders as well it's probably not super necessary but at least the way that I work on watches is that there can be a long time sometimes between when I do the disassembly and then when I get any parts that are needed or uh information that I need or whatever to get things going again and do it I like to try to keep that stuff safe you know it's just it's a little bit of a shame if anything gets damaged while it's just supposed to be sitting there okay now we can take apart the keyless works and as you can see they actually come out quite easily as well so far so good the only real standout issue here is that Crown wheel that was outright missing uh to be fair this watch was listed on eBay as for parts and repair which is like my favorite three words ever four words ever um yeah I absolutely love it when it says that because it means I've got a big challenge ahead of me because people only put that on there if the thing isn't running at best you know or if it's just a disaster inside uh and then you and I get to go on a bit of an adventure this one already has some pretty major issues it's just straight up missing missing parts that's not normal okay so keyless Works have now come completely apart and that just leaves a little weird kind of cover plate thing I'm not 100% sure exactly what this part's for but eh whatever we're just taking everything apart I think this might actually have something to do with the calendar yeah I think that might be the thing that like bumps the calendar over okay now we can put the uh balance back in place this is all kind of a precursor to everything getting into the watch cleaning machine because this is how this works and this is one of the reasons why I love restoring watches is you get to take every single thing apart it feels a little weird to do it the first few times cuz you're just like really like what if I can ever get this back together and I mean you can see the pile of part starting to form on my bench here and you go oh my goodness how am I ever getting this back together but once you understand what each of the parts actually how it functions and what it's for your brain starts to get used to the idea of like okay that's going to go there that's going to go there that's going to go there and yeah you know you get stuck everybody gets stuck every once in a while it puts the wrong part in every once in a while it happens these are still very complicated ultimately but I'll tell you our capacity to figure these things out and get used to it is a lot higher than at least I thought when I first started because to me it looked impossible right I I watch videos on YouTube from one of my favorite watch Channels the one that inspired me really to try this out for myself the watch repair Channel with Mark lovik and he I look he he was a very experienced watchmaker making videos so he made it look really easy but at the same time it was like nah this is I can do this and and he was the one who who inspired me to start you know doing this myself I really enjoyed watching his videos but then he he kind of you know through watching his videos I was like well maybe I could actually try this myself and that was you know a number of years ago and now this is one of my favorite things to do okay so that's the automatic Works apart only one more thing left to take apart before we can start turning our attention to that watch cleaning machine that I mentioned and that's the barrel and how does the main spring look hey it looks intact yeah so when you turn the crown as I did at the beginning and nothing happens it usually means that the main Spring's broken and that's what I would assume for this but it wasn't the case this time as we found out it was because there's no Crown wheel so there's no tension to be put on the crown itself when you're winding so it could you know your brain as you start to learn this stuff will go to certain things automatically but it's not always that thing okay so main spring out and it actually looks like it's in pretty good shape and that means we can get everything ready for cleaning so what we do with these type of things the movement Parts is we put them in these little mesh baskets and then that'll keep them uh you know safe and secure and not so that we don't lose them basically and then these mesh baskets will go into a bigger mesh basket with the bigger movement parts and then all of that will go through the watch cleaning machine and all of its processes and these are the types of you know deep cleaning that you can do and you can do manual cleaning with like a brush or a piece of pegwood you can do a combination of them you can use an ultrasonic cleaner there's many ways to uh get this done but uh yeah I think that the watch cleaning machine is probably the best uh it looks like it has the original gasket on it here which means that if I can take it off which I believe I can yeah I can get my tweezers Under The Edge so that I can take this off it's going to be quite brittle and yeah it is this is supposed to be like a Supple gasket you know meant to keep the water out and that one looks like it's basically turn to just hard plastic so I will need to be replacing that and while I'm here I mentioned a little bit of manual cleaning yep that's part of the deal so I'll take a piece of Peg wood which is just shaped wood that's kind of dense so that you can uh Whittle it to whatever shape you want so that you can do cleaning or holding or pushing or placing or whatever with that last thing to check out is the case itself now we've got this bezel we've got this extra crown and it looks like it doesn't come off it's just got that extra piece of metal that locks in the bezel so I'm just going to leave that on I can use my case opening knife to take off this bezel I think it should just pop off pretty easily yeah it does oo that's a lot of dirt under there okay but this looks in decent shape we'll run that through the cleaner as well though and this has quite a bit of dirt going on as well as this funky setup for that locking mechanism again I'm just going to use some pegwood here to kind of run along the outside that'll knock off a good chunk of the remaining dirt and oh geez okay well it worked I got the crystal out and this Crystal is in terrible shape I am going to need to replace it although oh interesting so I actually thought that the magnifier was on the outside of the Crystal but it's on the inside that means I may be able to refurbish it instead of have to replace it cuz I don't know where I'm getting another one it also has a tension ring a metal tension ring on the inside which AIDS in keeping the watch waterproof okay so here's the watch cleaning machine that I was talking about before and uh again there's the basket it's going to go into place and then boom gets plunged into liid that's why these parts can kind of be floating around in there when they're in liquid they don't bang up against each other and then it'll go through a three-step cleaning process while the watch is getting cleaned up I did want to say I've got a patreon for this channel if you like what I do here and you'd like to support me patreon.com wristwatch Revival is the place to go there's a link in the description below and uh it's basically just a way to give back to your favorite creators there's many many creators on there I'm not the only one and you know it's a great way to support your favorite content creators whether it's podcast or videos like mine or music or artwork you know it's it's great to support the smaller creators out there directly and that's what patreon is for and plus it's cool for you too for example on my patreon uh you get a thank you card and a wristwatch Revival sticker in the mail no matter what level you sign up for and uh you can also get access to my videos a little bit earlier like a rough cut version of it before I post it up here on uh on YouTube so anyway thank you so much to everybody who supports me on patreon it really does mean the world and while that's going we'll also put the uh case Parts into the Ultrasonic Cleaner here this is a great tool for cleaning especially bigger stuff like the case and bracelets and things like that but you can also use it to clean the watch movement itself it just takes kind of a lot longer because you want to do a multi-step process and that means moving the parts from jar to jar and it can just be uh kind of time consuming so there we go everything looks much better I usually run my ultrasonic cleaner for about 25 minutes it also has a heat function so that that helps it work even better and get everything all cleaned up and looking great now one thing I did notice was that some of the numbers don't have the paint in them anymore and the ultrasonic took out even more of that which I kind of expected to happen and so what I'm going to do is just repaint the numbers I'm going to re-enamel them so that they're all matching and everything there and that means though that I need to take out the existing paint and uh I'm just going to use a pair of tweezers to kind of gently get in there a little bit of Roo goes a long way too to help clean it up and uh get all these numbers cleared off and I have to say it's very satisfying experience to uh do this especially when the paint just kind of breaks free um it's not uncommon for the paint to come out of these numbers and uh you know so then you have some with paint in it and some without and it just doesn't look very good I don't think and like I said the Ultrasonic Cleaner will take out a good amount of that paint as well but as you can see I can just go around carefully and use my fine point tweezers to do that oh that feels so good all right let's get this eight yes that was a good one oh man okay so that's all done but of course we need to replace that painter else we've really completely change kind of the look of this watch it actually doesn't look bad with no enamel in it but I've got some black enamel paint that I'm going to use to replace and this is kind of an interesting process because it's too small to like paint brush in there without getting it over the lines so I'm just going to use a a piece of pegwood here take some of the enamel and I'm just going to put it over the entire number and then I can just take a my bare finger and just gently go over the top of it and it'll kind of squeeze off the rest of the paint okay that was a little bit messy but there with a just a finger you can see it will just leave the paint inside and so my job now is just to go around this entire bezel and do this one at a time and just gently remove the excess paint and as you can see it's exactly what I'm going to do and you kind of get a feel for it over time and eventually it it gets to the point where you're like okay I can kind of feel out how I can do this and you can do multiple layers if you want as well I think I'm going to stick with one I like it to be kind of recessed there the one issue with it is is that it leaves a little bit of extra paint on the bezel as you can see so it looks kind of sloppy but it's pretty easily fixed all I need to do is take a a swab here with a little bit of isopropyl alcohol on it and that will uh remove the extra but leave the paint inside and look how it looks when it's all done nice right so the bezel is all clean repainted and ready to go and with that we can start our reassembly of the watch this one's already been a bit of a chore we've got missing parts and now had to paint the bezel as well but I think it'll be worth it in the end we'll start by doing uh some mainspring winding and this is probably my favorite tool ah it's there's like a five of them that are tied but this is definitely one of the coolest this is a very watchmaking specific tool it's really only made for this one purpose which is to wind the main spring back into place safely you can actually do it with your hand you can push it back into the main into the barrel but it gets well it's a little tricky because it can come flying out at any time but also you are very likely to damage it or bend it and this uh gives you a way to safely reuse a main spring and this main spring looks like it's in perfectly fine shape in fact it looks like a modern main spring which makes me wonder if maybe somebody tried to repair this watch and broke it and that's why I ended up with it not 100% sure but as you can see the main spring is now in the main spring Winder I'll set that aside because before we actually put the main spring back in the barrel I need to put some breaking grease around the outside of the edge and the reason for that is that main spring will actually slide around that edge and you need a little bit of Grease there to make sure that doesn't slide too much that's why it's called breaking grease but also uh you don't want metal on metal you know you get metal shavings in there and uh of course those can be those can help to really wear the parts quickly and this breaking grease doesn't know this is the best part oh there we go oh how beautiful is that see this is why these tools are so cool CU I mean there isn't another tool that could do that it just puts the whole main spring back into place safely and you even get that satisfying sound with it as well okay next we can put on the barrel Arbor it goes in the middle and it has a little hook you can't really see it but it grabs on to the inner coil of that main spring and when you wind your watch either by the automatic works with your arm moving or if you use the crown to wind it manually that's the part that actually grabs on and pulls against that main spring to tight it and wind it and then the main spring is basically just trying to undo itself and that's the power that we're capturing whenever we have a watch running now I just need to put the lid back on and you can see there's that weird ratcheting system on the bottom as well still not sure exactly what that's about it might have something to do with the calendar but at any rate we need to put in those bottom Parts in first because the barrel will actually sit on top of those so we'll put that one in and then we'll follow up with that other wheel that goes alongside it I don't know the name of it careful okay there we go and before we put in the barrel I can also put in now the center wheel I'm going to put a little bit of oil on it because it is going to be metal on metal against that hole in the middle and I just want to make sure that uh it can run smoothly and there's that little intermediate bridge that we took off as well that goes that only has one job you ever told any body that you only had one job well this thing actually only has one job and it's just to hold that Center wheel in place so we'll go ahead and screw that down so now the center Wheels good and it looks like the barrel itself is ready to be put back into place here I am going to use a little bit of lubrication here though on the top of the center wheel and if you ever use a little bit too much or make a mess the rooto to the to the rescue ideally you don't have to use it too often but sometimes you do I'm going to use some grease here as well on this ratcheting part this is held under some amount of tension on the bottom as you can see of the barrel and I mean I'm assuming that this is a ratcheting system meaning that these are like a clutch like they're rubbing up against each other they can only go One Direction but still that has the chance to create quite a bit of friction and I want to make sure that this watch is going to be running for a very long time so I'm going to go ahead and use a little bit of we call that Mobius 9501 grease Mobius is just the company that makes it and then the name is the type of Grease there's a bunch of ones you can use 9501 is my favorite but I've used one called Molly coat DX and it works just fine it's actually a lot more inexpensive than the than the Mobius as well okay so now we can put on the barrel Bridge it also has the click attached to it and before we put anything on top of that I'm going to take a little bit of medium viscosity oil and I just press it in between where that Barrel Arbor and that bridge sit and that'll give it a little bit of extra lubrication there and now we can put the train of Wheels into place once again this is the seconds wheel and it is going to need a little bit of light viscosity oil in there as well that's what the second's hand will eventually attach to and then probably the most important wheel here is the Escape wheel it's a big part of the genius Behind These movements the shape of the teeth on the wheel are kind of what allow it to go and now I can very carefully take the train of Wheels Bridge or the train wheel Bridge or the train bridge depending on who you're talking to and I can line up the pivots from the train and once I'm happy which I'm not because I can see that the uh Escape Wheels not turning which means that one it or another wheel are not properly lined up again a little bit of patience goes a long way here there we go now we can see the Escape wheel actually turning so I'll keep a little bit of pressure on that bridge while I grab the screws so that I can make sure that those pivots don't come out of place while I'm fidgeting around with the screws themselves okay so with that secured in place now the train Wheels all set and now I can put on the uh ratchet wheel but of course got to figure out what to do with that Missing Crown wheel and after looking around online a little bit I found that the best case the best option was probably just to buy a donor movement partially because I was able to determine that that was that part was missing straight away like once we got the movement uh out once we got the case back off the watch we knew that and so I figure that could be one of many issues that this watch has so I just went ahead and got this donor movement so as you can see here's the uh Missing Crown wheel itself so I'll go ahead and take it out of this movement and then just give it a quick cleaning and then I assume I can just install it right onto the other movement so let's just give it a shot everything should fit basically always Parts as long as it's the same movement are interchangeable unless something weird happens all right and does this fit correctly looks good and now all I have to do is screw it down and we will have replaced the part now it's worth noting that this is a left-handed screw wait a minute why is it just turning weird oh I think I know what's going on here actually yeah so the post itself which is part of the base of the movement I think it got stripped and now now that I think about it I know what happened with this thing that is a left-handed screw meaning that you screw it the opposite way to tighten it down and that's the same thing with removing it and so what that means is is when you go to remove it if you do it to the left like you normally would you know Lefty Loosey you are tightening it down and guess what happens when you tighten it down you strip it pretty dang quick and my guess is that whoever was trying to work on this didn't know that and stripped out that part and the problem is is part of the main plate of the watch you know where it screws into so I'm going to completely disassemble that watch re completely disassemble the new watch and now replace the base plate here the main plate underneath with the one from the donor movement and then finally get all the way back to this point this this is very disheartening by the way when you have to completely undo something and now we should be able to install it once again so here we go the moment of truth and no it still just it isn't working what is going on oh oh my God oh I know what I did so this part right here is the Upper Bridge right for the train of wheels that is actually what the screw screws into not the main plate I don't know what I was thinking I'm just going to test it out and yep sure enough the screw actually grabs on to the Upper Bridge from the donor movement here's the problem I want this watch to to be as original as I can have it be and what that means is I want the original main plate and what that means is I need to take this thing completely apart and rebuild it again this is the third time that I'm doing this but I want to do it right I don't want a donor main plate if I can use the original now I am going to have to use a donor Bridge here on the top but I mean the other one's non-functional so this is a matter of necessity but you know sometimes you just got to take a deep breath and go at it again and I'll tell you as I've learned here the more that you go through taking apart in reassembling the same movement the more you get to know it and I feel like this one and I are very very good friends at this point maybe uh it's overstate it's welcome a little and I could use a break but at any rate once again I'm going to reassemble it back onto the original main play with all the original parts except for the train wheel Bridge and now finally the next Moment of Truth will this thing screw in and I already know it will because I tested it before right you saw me do that and here we go here we go celebrate with me yes we did it we have a crown wheel on this movement and we're good to go okay flipping it back over take a deep breath everybody I can now put the uh Canon pinion back into place and as I mentioned before that's held on by friction and uh so I just need to push it down into place using my tweezers and then we can continue with the rebuild on the other side of the movement here we're going to start with the keyless works and uh I I do need to make sure that this is working properly as well because this is part of what was affected by that Crown wheel missing being missing but like I said I would bet serious money that the person who tried to work on this watch did not know that it was reverse threaded and just completely destroyed the uh threading and the post there on that Upper Bridge and that's what happened I've seen it before I you know because the problem is is that your instinct when it when you turn it and it feels tight is to turn it more right because you're like oh it needs to be loosened up that is and of course that's the exact opposite of what you want to do on a relatively small project like a watch like this you know you just start torquing on the screws that hard and they will break okay sliding clutch we've got the Yoke in place here as well and now the Yol spring I'm going to bring in the reinforcements here with this pointer stick just to help hold it into place that is a lesson that I learned the hard way numerous times it's always better to try to stabilize a spring like that with an additional tool if you can rather than just trying to go in there with the tweezers and see what happens I know what happens and it involves flashlights and magnets and the carpet so you don't want any part of it after securing the uh setting lever now we can put on this last little setting lever spring with which also is kind of like a little cover plate and I think there's one other cover plate that we need for a little bit further up the trough but okay let's give it a quick test and make sure that this thing winds yes and sets okay good that looks good that's really important again just because I want to make sure that anything that was touching the broken part we 100% sure about and this looks good to me so now I can use a little bit of this blue grease to make sure that the setting lever moves smoothly from its to its positions and then yes I got a little too much on there so some r to clean it up and yeah here's that last little cover plate up here sometimes uh watches that have calendar mechanisms will have a few extra plates like this one kind of creates a little Foundation okay now we can put on the uh the pallet Fork because it is getting to that point remember this thing was running horrendously bad it couldn't even get a reading on the time grapher machine so uh well we wanted to make sure that it kicks up and runs and then also that it runs well okay pallet fork and pallet Fork bridge in place just a quick check to make sure it jumps back and forth with very little effort and it certainly does so things looking good here let's get the balance in place and see if it'll kick up this is the most tense part of working on a watch I'm actually going to use the screw to help kind of stabilize the bridge now you don't want to tighten it down all the way at this juncture because you don't know that the pivots and everything are lined up but you can use it to help you kind of steady the ship a little bit Ah there we go a beautiful sight to see a running watch movement it really never gets old if you do ever try out this Hobby and by the way I want you to I think you should it's an watch restoration is awesome it's super rewarding you'll find that this is the best part and look how beautiful that is nothing more beautiful than that now we need to oil the jewels on this watch and one that I don't get to show normally because it's very very difficult for me to get on camera is oiling or in this case it's it's more like a grease uh on the pallet Fork Jewels so as you can see I'm trying to put just the tiniest Little Dot of this grease on the tip of the pallet Fork there and I'm going to normally I do it when it's actually on the watch but here I did it on the microscope so that you could see it I wanted to show you and now we can finish uh oiling up the rest of the watch so just a little tiny droplet of oil there the the challenge when you're oiling is actually to use as little as you can it it's tempting to just say hey the more the marrier with oil that is not the case though uh with such tiny tiny proportions like this if you put too much in gravity will actually and capillary action will actually pull that oil all the way through to the wheel and it'll leave the pivot itself potentially dry or with less oil than it should have so you actually need to use just the right amount which is generally speaking a very very very small amount of oil it's similar here as well with this cap Jewel it needs just a little droplet of oil on the top to be suspended above the pivot but the other factor with it is is that it needs to be clean so I'm putting it in some solvent here just to kind of get any initial Gunk off of it but often that's not not enough and I'll show you what I mean you want this to be really spotless and if you look do you see the dried on oil on there still yeah so that needs to come off so the best way to do that is just a little bit of manual labor here go for the uh Peg wood and you can just manually kind of scrape at it to break up that oil deposit then put it back in the one dip which is again just a solvent uh that'll help dissolve anything that's left over on it and I'll show you what it looks like afterwards boom that's what you want you want that flat beautiful shiny surface with no debris on it and that'll help the watch run at its absolute best and again I'll show you this part too that's how much oil you want to have in the middle of that Jewel there you don't want to flood it out so that it has too much on it at once and then what I can do is take this cap Jewel the bottom part of it is actually the whole Jewel and I can put it on over the top and what it'll do is it'll kind of seat itself in there and thanks to capillary action it'll just hold itself in place and that's that oil being suspended and now I can actually put it back on the watch itself and uh that pivot will have fresh oil on it so that it'll run at maximum efficiency and you also get the benefit of it uh making it last long too so now everything things all done with the oiling and let's see how this watch is running oh that's a huge improvement from where we were before remember it was snow storming before wow 0 seconds a day 259 degrees of amplitude the beat air is actually pretty off but I can address that a little bit later but this thing is running way way better let's take a look at the Crystal now and as you can see it's quite damaged um but that little magnifier is on the inside like we saw before and that means that I don't have to try to track down another Crystal I want to keep this one because it has that cool little magnifier on it I could get a generic crystal that's the same size but it wouldn't have that on it so I'm going to refurbish this Crystal something that I do every once in a while when I really want to keep the original crystal and this is a multi-step process that I do where I'm going to use these sanding sticks and I start off pretty high up which is a finer grain I don't go for the big scratchy one on this this is an acrylic crystal it's it's quite fragile actually so you could take off a ton of material if you wanted to use like 400 grit or something so I usually start up at closer to like a th000 grit and then I'll move my way up to about 7,000 grit at the top and then we'll finish off with a compound called polyat which is a a Polish that's specifically made for these uh acrylic watch crystals and it works really well and as you can see as you work your way up the chain it doesn't look very good it's very foggy and uh you know at some point you're probably going to question why you decided to bust out Sanders on something like this but if you trust the process and you wait until the end even here you can see that there's that kind of Milky fog on there but it's looking a lot better overall than it did before but watch what happens after we get done using the polyat after that's done this thing will look fantastic these acrylic crystals which are one of my favorite things about vintage watches by the way they have a totally different vibe than Sapphire um they're yes they are more prone to scratching but they are you can bring them back I mean look at this thing you saw how banged up it was it had definitely never been changed and it had never been you know polished or dealt with in any way and look at it now I mean is that not an incredible result you know and that took me half an hour or something and boom it's like new so anyway really really happy that we're able to keep the original crystal for that watch because of that magnifier it just makes it a lot harder to find okay now we need to continue with the re build so it's going to be time for the automatic winding Works to go back together and the reversing Wheels which allow that pivot or excuse me that rotor to spin either clockwise or counterclockwise and still wind the watch which are these right here these little reversing Wheels they need a special type of uh lubricant and cleaner it's called luetta and it does both so it's kind of like it leaves a a lubricating film behind but it also acts as a cleaner CU you can't disassemble these parts they're riveted together so you'll you'll destroy them so after that's done we can continue putting back together the rest of the automatic winding works it's a well it doesn't have that many parts I wouldn't say it's simple um you know these are pretty well-developed systems that this is not you know the first automatic watch of course so you know this is one that's quite a bit down the line design-wise and they really got good at it they're very very efficient these things will wind themselves quite quickly and they're so good at it that if you wear these watches every day any automatic watch from the modern era you never have to wind it ever like if you have to wind your automatic watch because it stops it means something's wrong that's how good they are now it's a very handy feature also just if you if you're kind of a one- watch person and you get an automatic never have to wind it or set it I guess that's not 100% % true if your watch does have a date function like this one you know it just goes from 1 to 31 and just keeps rotating over so on any months that aren't 31 you'll have to make an adjustment there they have by the way designed calendar mechanisms that get around that they even have ones called Perpetual calendars that will appropriately set the date even through leap years like they're good for like 400,000 years or something if the watch was around at that point it would still have the correct date how crazy is that the only thing crazier than those is the price if you ever see them like they're usually over $100,000 for that's called a perpetual calendar so eyew watering prices but pretty cool technology too especially when you consider it's all just same off of the same mainspring no batteries no computers no nothing okay I'm going to do a quick cleanup on the date disc here just in case there's any dirt or debris on it you know I'm not looking to do any big refurbishment on the thing but just to knock off anything in case there was some dirt on it then I can put it back into place and start reassembling the entire calendar assembly itself and as I thought this is the part that I had taken off before and wasn't 100% sure there's kind of two ways that calendars turn over when they go from one day to the next it's supposed to happen at midnight but some of them go over very slowly like you'll see the let's say it's going from the 10th to the 11th you see the 10 kind of creeping away and then eventually the 12 will be in place but this one actually has a mechanism there that I just put on where it kind of stores up that click and then Bing it knocks it over in one swoop at hopefully as close to midnight as you can get just so that you know it's accurate but beyond that this is a fairly straightforward calendar mechanism this is a jumper this uh creates a little bit of pressure on the inside ring of the calendar there so that it builds up that type of tension and keeps it so that um the date can't be misaligned that little jumper pushes in between the teeth and when it pushes over to the next day it pushes into the next tooth and it keeps it so that it's aligned with the window all right so now we can get this uh retainer ring in place and then this is actually the spring that pushes on that jumper that I was just talking about it again it's a little tiny spring but not that much tension is needed for something like this this is actually the spring that provides the tension to knock the calendar ring itself over that as I mentioned before so now we can just screw this down I should mention by the way that if you are looking to get into watch restoration as a hobby I have designed tool kits that'll help you navigate those early stages of trying to figure out what tools to get and uh I started a website with my friend Alex it's called Sutcliff hanson.com it's down down below if you want to check it out as well and uh we've got ones for beginners and all the way up okay now check this out I need to lubricate where these two things meet but I've got a little trick here so I can wind it up so it's just about ready to click over which will give me some space and watch this bang and see how it did in one quick move there that's what you're looking for and uh now it'll also have a little bit of oil on it as well now this dial looked to me as if it were dirty I'm not a it's also worn so I'm going to very gently take this foam tip swab and just plain water and just give it the lightest once over in case there's any dirt dust rust debris that might have been sitting on the dial and and that's it so that's all I'm going to do it looks fine I you don't want to push your luck with that type of thing now one other thing I noticed though when I was taking it a part is the crown and it looks like the crown is bent do you see how it's not turning over perfectly there and that means I probably need to replace the winding stem as it's the most likely thing to be bent but I'm going to try out my replacement winding stem oh shoot it looks like the Crown's actually still kind of turning over which means the in inner part of the crown might be slightly bent now I did find a new crown that I think will work it looks like it's about the same size uh but I want to test fit it of course before I go installing it or or doing anything else so let's see how it looks on the actual movement o shoot yeah it looks like it won't go down all the way so it's it's not as deep as the crown that came with it take a look this is the original Crown see that's what it's supposed to look like well that's tough I don't have a replacement crown for this so I am going to have to reuse this Crown hopefully it's still functional um but I will replace the stem either way because it's a bit rusted and it could also be slightly bent itself so the way that I'm going to do this is I'm going to take the new stem line up the old stem because it was still the correct length and then Mark it off with a pen on where I want to cut now as you may know you don't want to cut it at the exact Mark you want to leave yourself some space like that so I've got just a little bit of extra space there and now I can use a file to do two things one I can debur this you don't want it to tear up the inner part of that Crown if it has burs on it but also I can use it to gently remove a little bit more of the material from this as well if it just happens to be that it's a little bit too long and that way I can back down that size as I see fit rather than you know doing it in one big hit and then being like well it's too late now so that should be good to go uh it's the same size as the one that it was before so it should work um now I can put the dial on pretty cool dial there's a few different versions of this watches it was produced for numerous years and this is kind of the simplest dial of them I think now I'm not really sure what to do with this locking crown that that works on that outside part of the bezel but there is kind of a turning mechanism in ins side so I'm going to put some silicone grease in there um now I do need to replace this Crystal but since it's tension ringed I need to actually press it into place this actually just pushes it straight down I'm going to use a little bit of plastic here just to try to prevent any scratches and get it lined up perfectly and you just kind of feel it set into place and that should be it that tension ring should keep it I mean it's attempting to keep it waterproof and there we go that looks beautiful and we I'm really proud of this we still have that little window on the side now we can put on the bezel that we redid as well should just lock in place yeah there we go so it just goes on and then you can uh tighten it down with that locking crown on the outside now next we need to put on the hands and that means since this is a calendar watch getting the calendar to just click over to 10 there to any day that signifies that it's midnight because that's the exact time that you want the hand the date to switch from one day to the next would be midnight and uh and then we can replace the hands here at midnight I have to put the hands at midnight on a watch without a calendar you can pick whatever hour you want to put it on but with the calendar watch you have to line up the calendar and then put it at midnight and this is of course just a good way as well to make sure there we go that everything's lining up properly the last hand to put on is the second hand and I just kind of use the edge of this press because it's actually so small that and there we go and it looks like it's running straight away so that's good news as well nice this is looking good now we can start to actually recase this watch okay and we can replace the crown and the stem here as well this is looking beautiful mainly just because it's running oh and the supervisor's here so she has to make sure that everything looks Coos all right we got the lick of approval there from the supervisor so we are now green lit to continue with the restoration here we'll put on the automatic winding works now supervisor drives a hard bargain so we should feel lucky and we can screw that into place and just you know make sure that the rotor's spinning and working freely you just want to double check that kind of stuff now we do need to replace the rubber gasket that I mentioned on this cuz the old one was definitely worn out so it's an easy thing to do I just measure it up and boom There It Is I've got a box with kind of all the different sizes of these and uh I can just pick one out that I know is going to fit put it a little bit of silicone grease on it and boom there it goes none of these vintage watches they're rarely full-on waterproof anymore like up to the spec that they were when they were made but the real goal is just to make sure that like if you wash your hands or get stuck in a rainstorm your watch isn't ruined and this definitely passes that test I would not go swimming with it however this is a pilot's watch after all uh okay now we can put a brand new strap on it as well and take a look at this how cool is that isn't that a great looking military watch 24hour it's got the sweet bezel it's got that extra crown down there the big hands I think this thing is just sweet it even has some good history to it with the first GMT and all that so I love this watch but I noticed something I noticed something that I needed to do a time lapse to show do you see what's wrong here the hour and the minute hand aren't going at all and that usually means that you have a loose Canon pinion which again is friction fit so I dug the canyon pinion yes I had to take all of that stuff apart again number four for this watch and that's the Canon pinion now it is needs to be crimped down a little bit and I have luckily a tool for that this is a canyon pinion tightening tool and it's the same thing as the other tool that I used to clip off the end it's an end cutter but it has this extra attachment that allows you to limit how much that the the jaws of it come down because you have have to be really careful with these Canon pinions if you do it too much you will 100% squeeze it down fold that tube and ruin it so the way I like to do it is I line it up and then I see it I lift up the Canon pinion tool and I see if it'll grab it and if it doesn't then I tighten it down a little bit more each time until it does grab it and then I can give it one more little tiny 16th of a turn and then that'll be enough to actually crimp it down and that's what I'm trying to to do so with that done now I can put the Canon pinion back in place finally and after another reassembly we can do a quick check here on time lapse and yeah you can see now the hands are moving as they are supposed to and we finally have a finished watch and I think it looks awesome there it is the finished glycine Airman this is again a pilot's watch it's a military watch it was made in conjunction with the military and we restored one on the channel here to its former glory thank you so much for hanging out with me for this journey I really appreciate you taking the time if you want to find me on Instagram I'm uh wristwatch Revival you can post some updates and stuff like that over there you can come check it out otherwise just wanted to say thanks once again and we'll see you next time

Channel: Wristwatch Revival

Views: 531,025

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Id: syjv6ZYI1WQ

Length: 59min 18sec (3558 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2024