Rolex Datejust Vintage Watch Restoration

and welcome back to another video here on wristwatch revival I'm Marshall your host and today we've got a sweet one this is a Rolex date just and this is the first time I've ever worked on a Rolex I just didn't really have enough confidence yet to actually open up watch this nice I got this one off of ebay it is not working it was not clear from the description about exactly what its condition was as far as working goes honestly it's kind of a sketchy one but today you and I get to explore this watch together and see what's inside of a Rolex and why they're so special or if they're so special first things first of course we need to to open up the case and let's see what's inside hey not too bad at all there's some weird markings on the inside of the case probably from a watchmaker and as you can see this has an automatic movement and it looks like the balance wheel is trying to go although this is the winding rotor for the automatic works and it seems okay I don't know I notice right away that there's a screw missing there from that bridge and I figure let's just get into it so first things first we're gonna take the whining stem out and then that'll allow us to remove the movement from the case and you can see that balance wheel is trying to go but it can't and these movements kind of come out in a weird way but anyway there it goes and well the dial actually looks pretty good it's a champagne dial which is a pretty popular type of dial for a watch like this from the 60s I can't really see exactly what's going on with this just yet but overall it looks like it's in pretty good shape so let's get those hands off use this plastic bag just to make sure that the dial doesn't get scratched and then I've got these little hand levers that are I think the best way to remove hands also have these special tweezers with the the tips they're not made of metal and that way you can pick up hands without fear of scratching them although the tweezers are a little clunky to use because they don't grip as well as metal so next we're gonna take the dial off of this watch and that'll allow us to start to get in interesting stuff Rolex will be talking about Rolex a bit today my thoughts on it and also I really want to get into one of these and kind of get an idea for why they're so special why they're why people love them so much so let's get this automatic winding rotor off of here first because that will allow us to actually see the rest of the movement and there we go so that comes away and we can look inside and all told well I'm relieved right Oh Oh No so there's the problem there's the missing screw it was stuck in the balance wheel not a good start it's not the best sign for your vintage watch purchase from ebay though the price was right so I guess this is the kind of thing I have to suspect but as I say that hey this thing is firing right up and and that bounce wheel seems to be cooking along really nice so let's let the mainspring down and we can start disassembly of this watch now like I said it's good news and it's bad news on one hand the watch works because it was only stuck because of that screw so maybe I got a better deal because of that on the other hand the screw is loose in the case hopefully means it wasn't super well taken care of so first things first is the balance needs to come off and straight away you know just sort of again this is the first Rolex I've ever opened up or worked on just kind of working my way up get building up my confidence in my skill set I am a amateur and this is a hobby for me I'm not a professional watchmaker so you know one step at a time you don't want to get too far ahead of yourself on something that you can't handle but I felt like I was ready for this so yeah and we go and so far yeah I can see that this movement looks like you know they'd call it a workhorse movement right this is a movement that is I think you could describe it as overbuilt but I mean that as a compliment you know think military stuff or whatever right where they kind of overdo it for any situation this movement reminds me of that a little bit it's got some really beefy stuff going in here you can take a look at the the spring on the keyless works even and it has like a beveling around it and that means it's thick that isn't just a normal stamped out spring like you see that in fact that's the one I'm getting right here that is a much more substantially built part than you would find in a normal like ETA movement or something like that now I'm not really sure how to approach a movement like this this is has a lot of the stuff that I'm used to taking out the yolk spring here for the keyless works but at the same time it's a little different Rolex kind of has its own thing and the rest of the keyless works coming apart here and so far so good no no major issues outside of that one screw that was floating around the case so now I'm trying to take apart the motion works but I can't quite figure out exactly how to get that going so I'm gonna flip this thing over and see if I can't get to the Train of wheels so first we'll start with the barrel side and there's this little tiny retainer spring thing there and that just is on the top of that second pivot in the middle and I believe just to keep it in place and it course jumped away but it's it's easy to find that and these are something that I've always wondered about that wheel is on an extended pivot so it's it's only there's two wheels there's one below that's actually in the gear train and then there's that one on top that turns the second hand but it's just pressure fit on and I've never really figured out how to get those off for those of you that have been watching that channel for a while you'll remember the Omega Seamaster that I did it has the same setup and I never figured out how to get that off of there I ended up just putting it through the cleaning process with that still on because I could never figure it out it turns out there is a way to get that off of there but we'll have to wait for that when you wind the stem on your watch that's actually what ends up turning and then that turns the barrel which is the thing on the left there so so far so good there as well and now I think we can take off the barrel bridge itself ooh I do have to be careful because of that extended wheel is up there and I don't want to damage it but it looks like I have plenty of room so I'm gonna go ahead and just remove this bridge if I can and there it comes there it goes but it looks okay again this watch seems to actually be in pretty good shape considering the price I paid and well it's a Rolex Tate just I mean these are this is one of the most popular watches in the world they've been producing these for I don't know 60 years 70 years something like that now all right so now we can get the palette fork out of there remember I let down the mainspring in fact I've just taken out the me and spring into that barrel on the ground and the pallet Fork actually kind of sticks in the pivot but then it comes out so I guess that's fine and it looks okay No there's the normal motion work in the middle of the movement there but then there's that weird thing on that other wheel and I don't know what it is and this part comes off too and I don't know what this is but it looks like a spring or a retainer of some sort so I decide to try to take apart the parts around that strange wheel and there's this lever and then this actually has a jewel on it that sits on top of the lever it's actually a clever little piece and finally I figure out how to get this part off and I think I need a special tool to take this off properly I ended up using my my a pair of two pairs of tweezers to do this and also you'll note that it is it has those three stripes on the top which means that it's it's reverse threaded but it doesn't have a normal screw slot so I take that off finally this actually took me a while and on the bottom there's a cam and I realized this must be for the calendar to turn over the calendar now it's time to take the cannon pinion off I got my cane and pinion remover which is I think the safest way to do this I know some people just use tweezers but that seems like very risky to me to bend the pivot and with that I take off the can and pinion and the rest of the Train Bridge just falls off at the bottom well I guess that's one way to get that out of there so there's a fourth wheel and the escape wheel and I'll take that apart but there's also the automatic works so if you've ever had an automatic watch this is what's inside that's called the winding rotor and it has a weight at the end and then spins around when your arm moves around and it turns that motion it turns those little gears the to read you know kind of magenta gears that are signature to Rolex plus the one in the middle and it turns out into a little tiny bit of wind for your watch just as if you had turned the crown just a fraction you know a quarter of a turn but every time you swing your arm around it's a quarter of a turn a half a turn and adds up over the course of an hour or whatever and next thing you know your watch is all wound up and you don't even have to wind the thing of course Rolex in their infinite wisdom has a special name for it they call it a perpetual and this automatic work is pretty robust as well as you can see it's heavily jeweled jewels of course are those red colored ruby ruby colored parts and those reduce friction and allow lubricant to stay in place a little bit better and they're also almost as hard as diamonds they're very easy to produce and they're actually pretty cheap to produce as well synthetically much like diamonds and so the ones that we use in watches these days all over this movement in fact you can see them right there are synthetic sapphires technically and then the color of them is is what we like a sapphire and a ruby are basically the same fundamentally you so there you go there's automatic work and most of the the trains the train will taken apart but it's kind of stuck here as you can see I can't actually get that other wheel off with this wheel stuck on it and this has kind of become an issue so I'm gonna have to set that aside for now but it's we also have one more job to do here we have to get the barrel taken apart and that also allows us to take a look at the mainspring and see how it looks sometimes they're broken sometimes they're they call them set which means that they've lost their springiness this one is dirty really dirty like it has not been serviced in a very long time but this spring itself looks like it's in pretty good shape and this is always kind of an awkward dance that we have to do is watchmakers but there you go and the spring looks how it's supposed to look although it's really dirty so here's all the parts all laid out and again I've still got part of the that wheels still stuck on there but otherwise well you know what that wasn't the worst and this watch is actually in pretty good shape so with that let's get things back together now so first things first watch cleaning machine so I put the balance back on and then start getting the parts in the basket and every single part goes in there outside of a few there's a few that don't go through the watch cleaning machine process like the dial doesn't go through the hands don't go through for example and tada we're done so just like that watches cleaned and we can get back to reassembling as you can see that barrel looks much much better now this is an automatic movement so I'm putting some what they call braking grease around the outside because [Applause] because once the mainspring gets fully wound remember it's an automatic it's doing it on its own if you were to just keep winding and winding and winding you could damage the mainspring much like in a manual wind watch when you kind of hit the end of it and you know I don't need to wind it any further the way that it works in the automatic watch is it actually just slides around the inside of the barrel but that breaking grease can help prevent damage and also make it stick to the wall a little bit better so I put some of that on and now it's time for the watch winders the watch winders the mainspring winders and that means picking the right one and we're gonna go ahead and put the mainspring on this this end of it and then this tool will let me wind the mainspring back into a shape that I can actually put it in the in the barrel again doing this by hand is very difficult and risks damaging the mainspring a lot like it just it's almost better to just buy a new one if you're gonna do it that way but that gets quite expensive especially when a mainspring is in really good shape like this one I much prefer to just reuse the next reuse this one and so you wind it in and this is a tricky process but this tool makes it a lot easier and just need to make sure that the tale of this this is the part that actually hits the wall of the barrel when the automatic watches wound up enough and once it's in there all the way we can take off the winding handle and make sure that it's seated correctly in here and again this is all tricky stuff I'm using brass tweezers here just in case I don't want to put a kink in the mainspring that could hinder its performance and there we go looks perfect all wound up and ready to go that's exactly what we want to see so now it needs to go back in the barrel and this part Oh this sound is one of the most satisfying sounds and all of watchmaking oh that's good that is nice and now we can put the the barrel Arbor back on this is what actually gets attached to the rest of the watch so that when you turn those various gears that we talked about before it actually will turn the spring inside of the barrel always amazed at Maine Springs is such a simple thing just a coiled up piece of metal but it is responsible for all the power of the entire watch anything that's moving keeping time dates anything is ultimately powered by this mainspring this one little piece of metal put the barrel cap back on and that should be ready to go okay so now we've got the automatic winding works and that needs to get all put back together so I'm gonna put some lubricant on from a video that I watched to try to replicate that the best I can and these two gears kind of mesh with this one third gear that goes down at the bottom and that's the one that actually interfaces with the watch itself and then there's a little bridge here that kind of holds all three of those together again with jewels and you know going back to the discussion about Rolex and my view on it is that as a brand Rolex is thought of by most people as being a super fancy watch right if if somebody comes up and they go I got a new watch oh you probably got a Rolex right it's just the first name that comes to mind there's a bit of irony in that for two reasons one Rolex certainly did not make its its bones by by being that by being a fancy watch they made them they've got their reputation for being a watch a great watch company not by being luxurious or fancy but by being robust and useful you know they made a lot of their early stuff was tule watches watches that people used for different jobs or occupations or maybe even adventures or whatever nothing fancy about it you wouldn't want to be wearing a Rolex to a dinner party you would wear it on a mountain or diving but they still garner the reputation for being the best and they're really good they really are they mass-produce watches on a huge scale and they keep a level of quality that is absolutely fantastic all right so here is the tool that I finally got to take this wheel off I found this I finally figured out how to do it and basically it's like a presto hand removal tool but it's it's got different jaws on it so that it's set up to take off the top and there it is finally I've gotten it off of there and that will allow me to put the train wheel bridge back on and then I can put that wheel back on after so I mentioned the irony about Rolex so they made their bones by being robust reliable tool watches not fancy and by the way I'm putting that wheel back on here but the funny part is is that these days they actually are trying to be fancy and by the way I'm trying to put this barrel bridge in and it will not fit and I'm like there is something wrong I've often found that when working on a watch if something just doesn't feel right about how it's fitting there's usually something wrong they if it's right they go together pretty nicely and I realized I had put the barrel Arbor in upside down I tried to check this but I just missed it and so I put it in upside down and that was what was preventing me from being able to put that barrel back in so I'm gonna have to do the old thing okay open it back up take the barrel out flip it over thankfully I don't have to redo the mainspring or anything and look at that you see the difference it just pops right in when everything's right and when it's not it feels like you have to force it and when you feel like you have to force it it's best to just take a breath and go okay something might not be right here so I'm going to continue with the barrel side here and the barrel bridge is going on in the ratchet wheel and all that but yeah it Rolex these days if you try to buy a new Rolex you will look for all of the popular models the GMT the Submariner certainly the Daytona and even to a point a date just like this one but a modern one you you and end the Explorer you often can't buy them you you literally cannot walk into a store and purchase them and it's been this way for a few years this is driven the price and demand up a lot on the secondary market they'll sell for fifty to a hundred percent more of their value I mean we're talking about double like you if a watch costs eight thousand dollars in the store you might have to pay 16 you might even have to pay eighteen or twenty thousand dollars for it third party now it will still be new effectively with the box and the papers and all that but I believe that Rolex is trying to scale their market up I think that they're trying to be more exclusive they're trying to be fancier if you will which is certainly their right as a company but it is not in line with their traditional values where it was more about quality and robustness rather than exclusivity interesting move to make and it has a lot of frustrated customers and a lot of people really wanting to get their hands on one of those watches so it's kind of a controversial topic in the watch community in the meantime I'm impressed by this movement I really am that this to me is an extremely well designed movement and once I figured out for myself each of these parts I go okay I see why you did it that way and examining the parts themselves they're very high quality they're simple that these are not there's no fanciness here as far as the design goes they are trying to be effective it's that simple all right so I'm gonna actually take out my staking set here to get this wheel back on I actually don't know the proper way to put one of these back on but I figure that the staking set allows me to at least apply gentle pressure in a more even fashion so that I can reapply this wheel and yeah I guess I did it it's spinning and it's working and I did it again this is just one of those times where I'm learning you know I'm still figuring these things out and kind of figuring out what what works best here's the cannon pinion going back on and that means that we can start working on the motion work and even finish up the keyless work and then at least for me the calendar which is something that I don't have that much experience with now what's happening here is that little circle jewel on that arm that I pointed out earlier it's gone and while I was putting in the spring for the calendar work it broke this was a huge pain so I ordered a new spring as you can see there it is and that took a while to get here and and there's the new jewel so now all of a sudden I'm spending a bunch of extra money the jewel I have no idea where it ended up I put it in the watch cleaning machine I have that on film so I know it went into there and I've checked everywhere around it and it's just gone I don't know what I did but it's obviously on me I lost it and I need to just try to get my my practices better as I can because this time it cost me some money but with the new parts here I can continue my assembly and that's the part right there that I lost and again this is another piece as you can see it goes on the bottom of this metal post and that rubs up against the cam for the calendar so that when it turns over its it clicks over rather than doing it slowly and the cool part is again using a jewel for that means that it'll basically last forever and it can be lubricated better and most companies I would say would just use metal on metal there and Rolex said nope we can put a jewel there in a high friction area and we'll go ahead and do that and those are the little details that really stand out about this movement now if I could manage to not lose that jewel I would be even happier but I did and I never found it it's gone so this part that's going on now is a it's actually just a retaining spring it took me a while to figure this out because it's it's it has things that look like screws on it that aren't and it's also kind of a bridge that holds down the other parts as well so that part I'm pulling back there is spring loaded with that jewel underneath it and it's what pushes on the cam that turns over the date and there's our new spring in there as well yeah that spring I actually didn't break it had it had actually failed so when I took it out it it was already failed but I didn't notice and when I put it back in it wasn't holding the shape in any way I'm like what is going on with this spring and I realized that it had it had already failed so this watch needed some pretty serious work in the end aside from my the work that I created for myself again this is a reverse threaded I don't even know what to call this it's not a screw you can see it has these two kind of holes in the top and I just had to use my tweezers to do it I'm assuming that there's a special screwdriver tool that you need for that but I don't have it as of now okay so that frees up the keyless work to be installed now that we've got the motion work on there so I'm putting a little bit of grease on the clutch wheel here and I put some on the sliding clutch as well where it engages with the motion work this is the okk spring and the way that Rolex does the keyless work is almost identical to other Swiss watch companies this came fairly naturally to me based on my experience working on other ones the difference is the quality of parts again look at that yoke spring do you see how thick that is it is beefy I mean it has a beveled edge on it that thing is the real deal normally these parts are just stamped they're just stamped out of metal and they're fine I mean look they don't need to be super crazy but again this is kind of what I mean when I say over built right they they took the time to say you know what we're gonna build a part that is robust that will last forever for its given purpose here I'm greasing the winding stem and I can appreciate that you know when you first get into collecting watches most people think that Rolex is the best and then you get in and you kind of realize that Rolex is kind of like they mass-produce watches so they're kind of everywhere and you kind of go and maybe Rolex isn't so cool I like these these other things more and then as you are around watch people in the watch world more you kind of get a respect for Rolex where you go you know what they do a really good job these are super high quality watches that are real simple they're straightforward you know they don't do any crazy complications and stuff like that they're very usable day to day watches that you could wear and be happy with for a very long time and there's there's a level of appreciation that you get for that kind of watch making again the irony is is that your average person thinks that it's a super fancy watch you know and it is it's expensive right but there's so many brands that produce you know kind of delicate fancy dress watches or whatever that aren't Rolex at all Rolex tend to be much more on the sporty robust beefy side of things but your average person doesn't know that yeah so this one was quite a project for me as well with those two the missing parts and in the broke parts you know I had to send away for those they took a while to come in so this one was like one of those ones where I'd get it on the bench get rolling on it I'm gonna admit I was intimidated by it a bit not only because of the cost of the watch it was expensive I had to sell another watch to get it but also because I had never worked on a Rolex before and when you kind of get rolling and feel like you're figuring it out and then a part breaks or you lose one it's really frustrating you're just like this is never gonna come together but I finally kind of got back on track with it now I'm applying a little bit of grease here to the high friction point parts of the keyless works so now it's time to clean the cap jewels and as you can see I got it on the microscope here and they're pretty dirty underneath so what I do is carefully remove these put them in a solution called one dip which is a solvent which will take any dirt or oil that's still on there off of it then I separate them and reminding you that they are absolutely miniscule and I put a tiny drop of oil on the cap jewel and then put the bottom of the setting back in and then I grab that whole thing and drop it back into here and and that's how you that's how you do these it's very very small work it is absolutely tiny I mean I usually have to use a microscope or at least my powerful loupe to do it but as you can see it pops right back in and then that's called an Inca block jewel setting so that means that if you drop your watch that spring will move rather than it breaking the pivot underneath and that brings us to the bottom half of it and as you can see that's what the the jewel looks like right there that's the cap jewel and so what this is is this is a replacement capsule because while working on it I had it in my tweezers and I was attempting to put oil on it and it pinged away and normally it just flies you know a few inches away this time I lost it I searched everywhere and I could not find it and I had to send away for another part for this watch and this one was totally on me but it was another setback and another all right wait another week or two for this part to come in and I finally got it and there it is it fits like a charm thankfully and I've got it oiled up and I can now put the the setting on but this this watch at this point has become a saga I mean it is that is now the third replacement part that I've had to order for various reasons mainly relating to my skill my current skill as a watchmaker but frustrating nonetheless and there it is seated back in its place now that's the one dip right there so I'm gonna put the the palate fork and then the balance in it as well to give it a thorough cleaning and I kind of agitated there and then it's time to take the parts out one dip is a very powerful solvent and it will take off most of any oil or dirt that was left over on it at all and it dissolves fairly quickly too so I just use the blower here to to dry it and that means that the pallet for can go on now we're kind of starting to get up towards the moment of truth now the watch did want to run before even with that screw in there so I feel pretty confident that this one will - but there's just something about this this part of the process it's easily the most exciting part of putting back together a watch is to see if it's gonna work and then of course how well it will work so there we go we've got the pallet fork carefully put back into place very delicate pivot and now what I'm gonna do is wind up the watch a little bit because the palette Fork will hold the power in the watch and as you can see it'll it should just sort of tick over when I touch it and it does alright so here's the big moment let's get the balance out it's always tricky to get it to seat correctly and there it goes all right so we have ourselves a running watch and it actually looks like it's running fairly healthy at this point too though that's just eyeballing it when people say that when you hear watchmakers say that they're talking about the amplitude that's basically how much power is getting from the mainspring to the balance and the way you know that is how much does that balance swinging does it look like it's being tossed back and forth with good force or is it kind of lazily going back and forth and this looks pretty good to me now off camera I did lubricate the pallet jewel it's just I haven't found a way to actually record that but I did do that and now it's time to put on the automatic work again and this is kind of a tricky thing because you need those gears to engage but I learned a little trick from watching Mark Lovick over at the watch repair channel who I've mentioned before here but you know he's somebody that's a inspiration I think for for anybody doing watch making I took his classes and I recommend them but I did notice he was working on a Rolex it was an automatic once and he actually just turned the winding stem a little bit to get it to engage with the automatic part of the watch and so I did that and it worked like a trick so now I'm just checking to make sure that when I turn it that those gears turned and then that turns the watch and as you can see it does such a cool device an automatic winding it when you tell people that you don't have to wind your watch and that it doesn't automatically using gravity and the force from your hand moving around people are like what and especially when they realize how old that technology actually is all right it's time to put the dial back on and the dial is held on by a couple of screws on the side and now what I'm doing is getting the hands even though they're not on there yet at midnight and you know it's midnight because that's when the date starts to tick over now it probably should just tick over from one number to the next and I'm not sure exactly why it didn't just jump all the way over as you can see here it does jump over a little while later but it doesn't quite click over so that's something that I may look to look at in the future but for now I'm pretty happy to have this watch back together and working because the date doesn't stay halfway it just takes another hour or something for it to jump all the way over and sometimes it does jump over so I leave it for now but again I need to get it right on the midnight so that I can put this minute hand on so that the hands cross the indices at the correct time that looks pretty good again I can just test to make sure that the date wants to turn over at exactly midnight and there it goes and as you can see it goes at midnight as well now I'm gonna put the seconds hand on but that one you don't actually have to line it up with anything specific so it's a little tricky cuz the pinions so small but if you're patient it'll go on and then just a gentle push with the hand setting tool there and off it goes beautiful and I'm just using a little bit of Roddick oh here just to get any dust particles that maybe have settled or maybe even that we're already on the case I can just see a couple little smudges and I find that the Roddick oh can be useful to just clean that up slightly I'm using an air blower to make sure that there's no dust on the inside of the dial that would drive me absolutely nuts if there was dust in there after I put it on of course I need to take out the whining stem again to get the watch back in the case I have to say this watch is looking quite nice cleaned up beautifully and kind of excited to wear it make sure the whining stem is properly installed here we use one of these rubber balls to put the case backs on you can actually get them quite tight with it much easier than with your hand I do have a case back removal tool that's bigger but there it is a Rolex date just one of its most simple watches but it's absolutely gorgeous and I couldn't be happier with it you can see why it's such a popular watch for so long now there is still the question though of how is it performing now that it's actually running and been serviced hopefully close approximating properly and an answer is pretty darn good within two to five seconds today 264 degrees of amplitude is strong and no beat error at all so great definitely happy with that that's just a great running little watch so there you have it the Rolex date just this is the first time I've ever worked on a Rolex and I don't think it'll be my last at least I hope not in the end this was a journey I tested my patience no doubt about it multiple times I had to send away for parts and wait for them to come in the mail the frustration with that of course is is pretty high in the moment but this is one of the beautiful things about watchmaking or really any hobby worthwhile it's that it'll challenge you but it's worth it in the end and you get that great satisfaction of having a beautiful working timepiece at the end at least in the case for watchmaking so I'm gonna go enjoy my my day just I want to thank you for hanging out and watching this video here in wristwatch revival there are plenty of other ones for you to check out and i'm also on instagram at wristwatch underscore revival i hope to see you there and we'll see you next time

Channel: Wristwatch Revival

Views: 819,735

Rating: 4.828476 out of 5

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Id: xbN9ee8L7qA

Length: 44min 57sec (2697 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 06 2020