Rolex 1016 Explorer I - Service and Restoration after months lost outdoors

this week's watch is a rolex explorer 1 and 1016 from the 1980s uh this particular watch has spent the last seven months outdoors um it was lost by the owner and only when he went outside to work on his vegetable garden in the spring he found it it spent the whole winter outdoors and is in remarkable condition to say that it has been exposed to the elements and the oyster case has done its job no moisture has got inside it's just dirty and there's quite a lot of dirt through the bracelet and a bit caked on to the the outside of the bezel so um there'll be a thorough ultrasonic cleaning in the casing bracelet required but other than that we don't want to do too much refinishing to the case in bezel if a watch like this it's important to keep its history and not strip it of that artificially by doing too much work on the cosmetic side of things so we will keep that patina in place um the watch it is running it's uh it definitely needs a service but it uh to say it's not been serviced since the 1980s it's it's in good condition mechanically as well as cosmetically um it's got a is only losing two seconds a day so not too bad at all it's got a low amplitude there we want to get that above 270 and there is a b terror we want that as close to zero as possible so again that's a that's a significant mean terror when we open the watch and take a look inside the movement as always with rolex is nice and bright get that case back off here we are nice and bright inside the rhodium plating on rolex i i always say it to customers it's excellent after 30 years no service any looks like it was made yesterday um there is in this watch excess side shake so we will have to give some attention to the winding system it's not by no means the worst i've ever seen it's not not rubbing all over the place and things like that it's just just needs some attention before it does start going in that direction but considering uh the last few months especially this watch's life is in absolutely remarkable condition very well made watchers and they really do stand the test of time so we pop the movement out of the case and uh the dial other than some it's gone slightly shiny around the the one and two o'clock markers when the rest of the dial is more matte i'm not sure what would cause that but but other than that the dial is in pristine condition so we protect that under there and here's the movement under the microscope you can see there is a bit of dirt in there it's amazing how things do get inside the the case as i say this watch was still watertight spent all that time outdoors but there is dirt inside the case you can see it here in in the winding mechanism and quite often it does seem to come from out of the mainspring barrels rolex use a thick thick black grease inside the the mainspring barrel and it does seem to come out um escapement all in good order they're looking clean a bit dry no no oil there on that escapement so that definitely needs some attention but it it's clean and in working order all the teeth all properly shaped no looking like too much wear no signs of poor quality servicing all those screws are in in good order that was a little bit dirty but yes in in overall is in pretty good shape no signs of wear from the router as i say we will we will give that road to some attention here we see all the dirt pouring out as soon as we put that in the ultrasonic clean obviously this is sped up but that's that's about 20 minutes in the ultrasonic cleaner but from perfectly clean water to very very dirty water and that's as a sign that this was left out for so long in buried in mud basically it's still dirty in there so what we're gonna do is change this water and uh have a nice fresh tank again and rinse it again give it a second rinse you know we can just this again is sped up you can just see a few little bits of dirt still working their way out of the the oyster bracelet especially when they've got hollow links they do hold dirt so it does take a while to get it clean and you can see a little bit of what i was talking about the one in two o'clock markers is a shiny part of the dial but still absolutely beautiful it would be a shame to replace that dial or or anything like that actually a lot of our work comes from customers who they don't want too much intervention with their watch they want it wearable they want to be able to use it they want it to look beautiful but they want it to show its age and we're happy to do that um when i was training at the school of jewellery we had an entire section of the course on what was called conservation restoration and repair and it's a fine line to walk and we had reason these are historical artifacts um where custodians of them you cannot strip away too much history now a lot of the brands they do want to change dials change bracelets and the customer doesn't always want that so we're happy to work with the customer and tread that line to come up with a good finished article where we have a nice usable watch that shows its age in a nice way and we we don't strip away the the soul of the watch during repairs and servicing um it can be a tricky line to walk especially when you're trying to restore functionality but um we do work with the customer and discuss what should be done and how far we should go and we we do come up with a good result in the end and go likewise the rest of the movement under the dial it is in excellent condition here we are proceeding with stripping it all these parts of the keyless works and the hand setting mechanism out ready to go in and that's the canon pinion removal tool so we can take off the canon pinion without damaging it there we go get that out of there and we carry on stripping the watch and it goes into these cleaning baskets before it will go into the cleaning machine and we will give it a two or three passes through the cleaning machine just to make sure it's in a absolutely pristine condition here we are obviously this is sped up this cycle takes 26 minutes so i think this is times 64 speed just to show you going through the various rinses and ultrasonic settings and drying and this is oil in the uh escape wheel important to try and keep the oil on the the active faces where it interacts with the pallet fork now further on with rebuilding the movement getting this winding wheel back in place i've chosen this point to show you because this is where you can put the the power back on the watch and then put the balance back in and you see the watch bring back to life it can be quite a rewarding part of the the job and especially when the watch isn't running when it comes in and you you bring it back to life working here we're trying to keep everything clean and make sure your oils are in the right place and try and keep that surface tension of the oil so that they can't run off and that means your service will last longer now we can put some power back on see the pallets can hold in the power now and when we put this uh balance wheel back in it should spring to life and with these older balances especially you have to be very careful handing them when they have the the blue steel spring it's not like the blue here springs in modern watches it it's a very soft steel and it's very easy to deform i have to be very careful especially with these older older hair springs pop that screw back in and there we are and that's a good amplitude straight away and when this screws back in we'll be able to put it back on the testing machine and regulate we are back on the testing machine and we've still got that b terror but we've got an amplitude over 276 degrees now that's when your watch will run at its best all positional errors and anything like that are all ironed out over 270 degrees it's a sign that there's less friction in the movement the power is transferring through nicely so let's uh start regulating that that's where we started to touch the watch to um get rid of that b terror so we'll let it settle down again and then we'll start adjusting to try and get that as close to zero with the beta as possible uh the b terror basically means your um escapements not in alignment so with a swiss lever escapement it's all built down a center line and uh when you've got the b terror that means it's off that center line so you've not got even gaps between the the ticks of the escapement so you your watch will when it when you be terrorizable 0.6 your watch won't self start and it will run less efficiently so the the closer to zero we can get that b terror the more efficient the watch will run and here we are get some improvement now still liked it like it a bit lower than that so just adjust some more all right that's looking much better still trying to improve that slightly settle down and there we are that's perfect i've got one nice line and we just uh just let that settle and we got that 277 amplitude no b terror for a watch of this age getting over 40 years old that is an excellent result of the service um we're gaining plus plus six seconds a day so we're just outside of the chronometer test for a 40 year old watch the game plus six seconds a day i think that is a very good result now this is uh oil in there reverses so this fluid is a mixture is about 104 percent ratio of oil to an alcohol that will flash off so this basically allows you to oil the um reverses with a very fine film of a very thin oil and we just let that dry and when the the alcohol evaporates it will leave just a nice little film of oil behind allows your reversers to run very smoothly without blocking up i just need a little bit of oil inside on on the post then we can rebuild the reverses get them back into that automatic mechanism oh here we are putting the hands back on uh you see we've switched to the plastics um tweezers so we don't damage the hands again we're trying to keep everything original these um hands they can sell for over 500 pound for a set of hands so it's very important to keep the originals in perfect order we don't want to be causing any damage when we're working on a watch so we're always thinking about what we can do to to minimize the risk of any damage so yeah these are these tweezers are you get a bit less control with them so i don't like to use them all the time but when we're using the when we put in the hands on it i like to use them there we go now we just check that everything's parallel don't want the hands touching the dial or each other so all the hands have to be parallel and now for the second end and then we pop that on now when we push the stem back in it should go and here we are nicely running now again as part of a keeping the originality of the watch we don't want to be uh replacing the crystal and there are quite a few scratches on this acrylic crystal so we're going to recondition it now polywhat is excellent for this what a lot of people don't do when they use polywatch is uh the wet and dry paper first you can really get a good result using um wet and dry paper combined with polywatch so we started here from fifteen thousand grade and gone right to three thousand grade and then we finished with the poly watch um this is a times two speed we don't work this fast but we tried to keep the whole process in so that you can see um just how it works but yeah and it will go cloudy at first you can use these with water and you get a bit of a smoother finish it's not strictly necessarily when you when you're going through the grades properly and using the poly watch you will get a nice finish at the end it is important when you're using wet and dry paper to um go through the grades and you've got to eliminate all the scratches from the last grade before you move on so ideally each grade you should do it a little bit more thoroughly than the last just to make sure you've got through those scratches basically you're replacing scratches with fine finer scratches every time you you polish so um it's important that you don't move too quickly through the grades and leave some of those deeper scratches behind so um yeah just keep keep working your way through and it's good to sometimes do each grade in in one direction so you can see if you've left any um scratches behind but i generally like to just use um one of the grades and then move on and use that one for a little bit longer than the first grade and then use that third grade a little bit longer again just to make sure that we're eliminating all the scratches you can see now with the 3000 grade it's already getting a bit clearer and this poly watch is absolutely excellent you don't need much just a small amount on there and we just use a soft paper to rub it in for a few minutes and the crystal will look excellent now i've again not gone too far with this left some of the deeper scratches in if you want to you can get a crystal looking like brand new using this method i think this is a good solution again treading that line of how far do you go when you you servicing or risk restoring a watch um i think here we've kept the originality but um improved the condition of the watch as some customers don't even want this doing they just want the watch to be cosmetically as it was when it came in and we're happy to do that too but i think on this this occasion this nice polish to this original acrylic crystal we get a a good improvement to the look of the watch without stripping away originality and there we are also while we're doing that important not to touch the case without wet and dry paper and here we see the wear to the bracelet now we're going to leave the the scratches in place the deep scratches what we're going to do is just put that brushed finish back on so that the the um bracelet has been polished with where so we're just putting that brush finish back on but not removing those deep scratches so just lightly on that um that brushed finish so now it's time for re-casing just pop the crown out and we can have that back in the case a good good idea to to just clean the last clean of the dial inside the case um one of the worst things is when you take time carefully casing up a watch and then you're done you you look inside and you see a tiny little hair on the dial so yeah it's a good idea to just clean as you go there we go nice and clean now everything out of there it always shows up with a black dial as well if there's anything in there you'll definitely see it with a black dial we want it to be pristine and just carefully turn that you have to be careful doing this on these explorers because the the matte dial does tend to flake on some watches so always be very careful re-casing because you don't want that dial to flake off this is a persian seal grease i like to put a good amount of that in the crown especially with all the watches where everything's getting a bit worn this helps to make sure everything stays waterproof there we go now we this is an older 1570 movement so there's a screw that secures the setting lever in place and then always remember to loosen these screws that secure the movement in the case amazing how many rolexes we see where the screws have not been secured the last time the watch was serviced and here we have just a little bit more of that sealed grease into the case thread i'd like to use quite a bit of this on vintage ones because the those case threads particularly on the crown are starting to wear on on watches of this age so we want to make sure that we've got a good seal and just make sure that's sealed properly we don't want to cross thread it so just feeling for it in there there we are and there we are that's done that'll obviously be tighter don't tighten on the the case press and there we are nice full working order looking great still got its original character and that's a very nice watch that can be used daily again now it's functional it's water resistant it's keeping great time and it looks great but it's still got its original character we've done absolutely no polishing to the the case all it said is an ultronic cleaning we've polished that um that front glass and then we put that brush finish back into the the bracelet so if it is on a wall finder the winding mechanism has been rebuilt too so that will now wind properly and uh we have a nice watch that looks like uh these are worth easily over ten thousand pounds now and it does look like it again now nice smooth tick on there and here we are you see some of that wear on the original clasp but that's a good secure bracelet and a nice looking watch

Channel: Cerberus Watches

Views: 41,100

Keywords: Watch repair, Watch servicing, Watch restoration, Rolex, watchmaking

Id: 24xUtfUYLbc

Length: 26min 0sec (1560 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 02 2022