This $25,000 Rolex Explorer Was Exposed to Seawater!

hello there and welcome back to another video here on wrist watch revival my name is marshall thank you so much for coming along look at what we have on the bench this time around i honestly can't even believe that i get to work on one of these this is a very special watch this is a rolex explorer from the late 1960s this is a reference 1016 it's an absolute icon and it happens to be one of my favorite vintage watches in existence this watch came to me though under not great circumstances so i did a kind of a cool thing i got to do a news story for a local news station here about this about the channel and stuff i'll actually put a link in the description if you want to check that out but as a result of that i got contacted by a really nice lady named annie who said hey will you take a look at my watch it's not working i had her send me some photos i saw what it was and i said okay well what happened what was the story with this watching she explained to me that this watch belonged to her father now unfortunately he passed away a couple of years ago and he left her the watch now this isn't running and i asked her what had happened and she said that she went out to the beach she was wearing it and the crown wasn't screwed down all the way and she was doing some clamming and seawater got into the watch this is of course pretty devastating uh for a wristwatch yet her dad who you see here actually wearing the watch bought this watch in vietnam in the late 1960s and wore it every day of his life he's wearing it there he's wearing it there too after a triathlon this guy seemed like he lived a very active life and he wore this watch for that life so this is something of course that's extremely special to annie because you know when you when she thinks of her dad he was very proud of this watch this was something that he bought himself and that he wore every single day so obviously she was heartbroken when she realized that the the sea water had gotten in and that the watch wouldn't run anymore now what she did is she did the thing that you're supposed to do she went down to the local jeweler that that stocks rolex and they told her well we don't have the expertise of the tools to the parts and stuff to fix this watch but we'll send it to rolex in geneva it got there and rolex said no they aren't gonna fix it either and they sent it back to her now this is you know she was willing to spend whatever it would take to get the job done and nobody would work on this watch so i was kind of her last resort so what we have here is a watch that is not only valuable monetarily though it is definitely that as well probably minimum price for a watch like this would be about twenty thousand dollars this one's worth more because it's kind of a special version but that's not what she's interested in this is valuable because this was her father's watch and he wore it and she was like i said heartbroken that it wasn't working anymore and i couldn't say no look i this watch is iconic the story is amazing and you and i well we're gonna work on this thing today and try to bring this watch back to life first things first we got to take the back off and see what's inside don't be too much rust okay um there is rust that's bad let's see okay it looks like the automatic winding work still turns you can see the rust along the outside edge here and yes you can see some of the screws have completely rusted out as well this could have been worse um i'm not sure yet but right now there is rust there was definitely water in here this happened almost a year ago um again she took it in to try to get it serviced right away but but nobody would work on it so let's continue disassembling the watch and let's see what we find about uh how much damage is done um you know worst case scenario we'd have to replace the whole movement just at first glance here that doesn't seem to be the case right like just taking a look i mean there's still at least some parts that look fine but the fact that it's not running is pretty bad so we'll start off with the case the case screws these screws on rolexes are kind of interesting they they uh push up against the case to hold it in and rather than using clamps i'm going to try to clear away a little bit of the rust here with my screwdriver and some radico just to see if i can maybe break the seal around the outside because on a rolex movement you actually have to turn the entire movement inside the case let's see if that worked it's gonna okay it's budging a little bit have to be careful here but we do have some movement so we have broken the the rust seal on the outside we have to keep turning it until the screws line up with the slot right there and now we should be able to just drop the movement out of the case okay so that's a good start we have the movement out and of course we have to be very careful and remove the dial you can see more rust around the rim of both the dial a little bit but mainly the inner part of the movement we'll start of course by taking off the hands okay the hands come off fine so that's another good step for us moving forward this is a very tense time working on a watch like this that has rust damage you just don't know what's gonna stick and what's not now we can take off the dial and it looks like yeah the dial screws are rusted pretty well also we'll have to see if the dial is going to want to come off this one came out all right yeah definitely rust on that i'm using radico to just kind of clean up any debris let's see if the dial will come off now a little tough okay it did come away though so we'll set that aside and we'll revisit that in a little bit but for now i'm happy just to have it removed i'm less happy about what i see inside here though that is a lot more rust you see the keyless works is properly rusted and okay well this isn't the worst news so just some light rubbing with the tweezers does remove that rusting on the actual movement it does not however here you can see that that's a more properly rusted and likely going to need to be removed and you can see there's rust just sort of coming out onto the work surface here this is um well what i would say at this point is this is not the worst case scenario but it's definitely not the best case scenario so we'll start by removing the automatic winding works this whole module on the top is responsible for winding the watch when you move your hand around but we can just remove the whole entire module we'll take that apart separately and underneath hey this is actually pretty good news it looks like the balance wheel doesn't have rust on it and same with at least what we can see on the top of the movement let's take off the the balance and see how it looks because that balance spring is so tiny if it gets rusted it's just done you you have to replace it at the minimum but we'll see right now oh that looks good okay that actually looks very good okay so the balance looks like it didn't get any seawater on it and now we can take off the ratchet wheel which also looks like it dodged any of the seawater this whole upper part of the movement doesn't look like it was affected it looks like it was the water came in through the crown and went to the keyless works which makes sense that's the next stop but also made its way into the middle of the watch we saw the canon pinion on the other side looked like it had uh quite a bit of rust but it looks like it may not have the water may not have gotten through all the way to the other side of the movement and if that's the case that could be really good for us i'm gonna use my canon penny remover okay it took that right off so that's good although i can see that it's rusted underneath so yeah it looks like the water made it through there to the uh to the center wheel as well so we'll see how that looks like when we get the rest of this part off this is a phase where we're very much trying to assess how much damage is done and what needs to be replaced what can be fixed when i talked to the owner she told me um you know that she would prefer to keep as much of it uh original as possible right this is the watch that her dad wore every day so you'd like to have as much of that original as you can that makes sense but of course you know not at the expense of having it not run okay we can take off the crown wheel now and everything looks fine here and that's a relief because those crown wheel screws are very very small and it's very easy for those to to rust out and then it's extremely difficult to even get them out of the movement okay now we can take off the click in the click spring again working our way through the top of the movement this part seems to have for the most part dodged the sea water which is it's a relief now however we can get deeper into the movement here and start taking off both the barrel bridge and the train wheel bridge those are the two upper plates that you see there and that'll give us more information about how far the water got into the watch so let's take off the barrel bridge first and see what we're looking at underneath here hopefully there's not much in the way of rusting okay that's not too bad you can see the top of the barrel that's the big brass circle there looks pretty good we'll take off the ooh [Music] ooh okay okay well we can see that the water definitely got to that side of the barrel there's huge chunks of rust just floating around in here and that's going to need to be cleaned up it looks like there's rust down into where the barrel meets that plate as well and that is bad so unfortunately it does look like the water made its way through that part of the movement so we'll have to address that okay now we can take off the train wheel bridge and see what's going on under there is there rust uh ooh ooh okay so the center wheel won't move at all it's rusted solid so that's why the movement wasn't running at all that and and everything else you see but if the center wheel can't turn then you know the watch won't run and it won't tell time so we're gonna have to remove that we'll see how rusted in it actually is here oh boy that is pretty firm so it looks like that's where the water ended up coming through the most we can continue with the disassembly i want to be a little careful about how i remove that center wheel it's it's going to be a lost cause like i'm not planning on using it with that much rust on it it's just gonna have to be replaced but i i want to just make sure that i'm careful about how i remove it so that oh there's a lot of rust yeah so that it doesn't damage the the main plate continue disassembling here it looks like the pallet fork also dodged the water which is another lucky thing because again the pallet fork has very fine parts on it that can easily just rust away so even though the water did get pretty deep into the case it looks like it's hit a bunch of the bigger parts which is kind of what you would want all right so now let's take off the center wheel i'm going to use my tweezers to kind of carefully get underneath it and try to wedge it out if it'll come out yeah it looks like it's starting to give just a little bit if that's the case then i should be able to remove it give it a gentle twist and there it comes right out so that actually wasn't too bad i mean it was completely rusted solid but taking it out wasn't the worst you can see there's a lot of rust and debris around that hole as well and now on my bench so this is what it's like to work on a rusty watch i actually have experience doing this so this isn't my first time working on one effect you've seen me do them on the channel i'm going to use a piece of peg wood here to try to knock off a little bit of the debris from the top of the screws that go onto the setting lever spring because they're very thin on the top and it looks like they've gotten pretty corroded i'm going to have to examine those later to see if they're going to be reusable or not but mainly i want to make sure that i can get a bite on the screwdriver so that when i turn it it doesn't just cheer off the top of those screws yeah taking off that setting lever spring it looks like it's about done as well and you can see some water got underneath the minute wheel and the intermediate wheel as well last few parts to take off before we have this thing completely disassembled the yoke there's a setting lever and now the yoke spring deep breath this is stressful um you can see there's quite a bit of rust but look at this this is more like staining rather than like active rust like that's eating away at the metal and that's a good thing um so i might be able to clean that up without having to replace the main plate i'm going to take off these screws it looks like these were replaced because there actually is a clamp on these but that's not how rolex does it so these would have been replaced over some period of time so i'll probably have to replace them again now i can take apart the automatic winding works it's like its own little setup there's a little bridge and you can see there's those three wheels underneath it but this should come acro come apart fine and outside of a little bit of staining on the bottom of the rotor you can see on that outside curved part this doesn't look like the water really got to it so this looks like it's all fine just just in need of a service is all yeah right here and you can see that comes off with just a plastic stick there so that that's no big deal now i'm not going to worry about that part either now i can take apart the uh whoa whoa whoa the spring and it looks like it's okay it's okay it was just uh probably jammed up because well i think it's because of this so the arbor is actually stuck in the lid and i think it pulled the spring out with it and the reason it's stuck it's rusted that's right how many times have i said that word already this video uh so i'm gonna try to just push it out and there it goes so that's the arbor and it looks like it's toast as well as it took the brunt of that water on the other side of the movement so okay where are we at these parts here these are gonna need to be replaced that's too much rust i think um you know to to be able to keep it and so we're gonna have to replace at least those and then see what we've got coming down the line here taking a look at the case the crystal looks like it's pretty scratched up but otherwise in good shape i talked to the owner and she said she'd prefer to keep the original crystal if possible but would like it restored so i think i'll do that i'll restore this crystal rather than trying to get a new one now we can put everything in little baskets and stuff so that we can give it well let's just say it's first run through the watch cleaning machine with this type of rust it's common that it takes more effort to get it properly cleaned rather than just doing it through run one cycle on the watch cleaning machine but this is a good place to start so everything goes into this basket and uh then we can put it into the watch cleaning machine and get it going so here it is this is a three-stage cleaning process that initial one is just the cleaning and then there's two rinses and a drying cycle after that while it gets cleaned up i did want to mention i've got a patreon for this channel it's patreon.com wrist watch revival i want to give a big thank you to everybody who supports me over on the patreon if you like videos like this and this is the type of thing that you want to see come out and be supported that's the place to do it and you even get a cool sticker and thank you card in the mail no matter what level you sign up for okay so out of the cleaning machine you can see that there's still a lot of rust and this is going to need to be manually cleaned so i'm going to take i don't know half an hour 45 minutes with my peg wood here and just go through and manually de-rust this the best i can and this will let me see what is rust rust and what is more like rust staining and there is a big difference between the two and then what we'll do is we'll clean this base plate again and after about 45 minutes or so i would say this looks pretty decent i was able to get this thing mostly cleaned up and uh you know i'm gonna go ahead and and the parts that i think i can salvage like this minute wheel here i'm just gonna run them through radico get them cleaned up and then what what i'll do is i'll do a separate cleaning cycle for those in the ultrasonic cleaner as well to make sure that they're you know debris free now we can take off the winding stem and when i took it out i noticed that it was also rusted so it's got enough rust on it that i'm going to put it in the evaporator this is a product that removes rust it turns it into some other somebody's explained it to me in the comments before but basically it takes rust and and uh turns it into something else that just sort of falls away so now with all the parts out of the cleaning machine uh i can put them you know in the dust tray i've left the balance out as well i'm gonna clean that separately um just to be extra careful with it basically and you know we put the parts in these in these dust trays so that we can keep them here's the balance being clean this is called one dip it's a solution and i can use just an air blower here to agitate the solution around it and that'll get the make make sure that the balance is properly cleaned up and just given a little bit of extra special attention here just because this watch is uh you know in kind of bad shape okay so i'll set that aside now this is the ultrasonic cleaner so we can put the case uh the bracelet that type of stuff in here i'm just gonna go ahead and give it an initial run through the ultrasonic cleaner sends waves through the water and it has a little bit of solution and by the way there's the parts that i de-rusted as well that are going to get their second cleaning and what it does is um those waves go through the water or whatever liquid you use and they remove dirt and debris without any type of abrasive so you know for example the bracelet in the case you know these things i'm going to be keeping original on this watch but there's no reason not to clean them right especially with the bracelet because if you have a dirty bracelet it actually can create an abrasive in between the links and what can happen is over time that can lead to a looser bracelet all right everything out of the ultrasonic now we can take a quick look at the case once again and as you can see the crystal definitely needs some work um you know this was a well-worn well-used watch and it shows so we'll look at uh restoring the crystal and then as i mentioned before the case oh it's got this beautiful wear on it and i'm not going to be touching that thing so in order to remove the bezel i got this tool i wanted to be able to safely do it and this just basically lets those four clamps come in and remove the bezel itself and you'll see it separate out from the case here as i clamp it down if you try to do it from one side you can warp or bend things or damage them and you know i don't have any interest in that so there you go you can see the bezel coming off and this will give us access to the crystal by itself so that i can actually work on the crystal and also to make sure that i clean up everything else that's underneath this because sometimes there can be some dirt or debris under the bezel let's see what this looks like yeah there's some dirt under there you can see it nothing too bad the ultrasonic looks like it did a decent job but we'll run it through the ultrasonic cleaner again just to uh get any of that debris off of there in the meantime i can take the crystal out and we can put our attention to restoring the crystal now these are made of acrylic which is a really amazing material it's quite hard and uh very resilient but it does scratch you know it's not as hard as glass or sapphire so we will uh want to resurface this again you can buy a new one the crystals for these are very expensive and very very hard to find so this is a better option and i'm going to use my sanding sticks i'm starting off at a fairly fine grit compared to what i might normally use to sand something like this and what we're going to do is remove just enough material so that the scratches the deepest of the scratches are gone and then we'll move up the grits maybe two more and then we'll finish off with a liquid polish called polywatch so first thing we can take a look to see how it's doing i've there we go so you can see it's obviously fogged up but the scratches are mostly gone and now i can do the edge and then work my way up through the sanding sticks until i get to a place where i'm happy with it and then as i mentioned we'll finish with the liquid polish the poly watch and you can see it looks pretty good already but it does need that sort of final polish to make it really really shine nice and clear and uh so here we go this is poly watch and then i just made a little stand here out of radicos so that i could put some pressure on the crystal and not have it feel like i'm bending it or you know could crack it or something like that so again just give it a good polish down here with the polywatch and after oh you know good five six minutes of that take a look at what we came up with beautiful just like new almost so the deep scratches are all gone it's nice and crystal clear and that'll do just fine taking a quick look after the ultrasonic cleaning the second cleaning for this movement you can see the jewels look very nice they're in good shape they're clean there's no rust debris or anything like that floating around in there and i'm quite happy with the movement there unfortunately for some of the parts the rust is just too bad here and these are going to need to be replaced this is a setting lever spring as you can see it has some of that staining but also some legit corrosion and this is also gone that's the center wheel that was rusted into place there's the arbor and i'll just show you what a new one looks like next to it just so you can see that's what it's supposed to look like and of course that one's gone as well i'm also going to take a quick look at the winding stem that i put in the evapo rust you can see it did a great job of removing the rust but unfortunately the rust did a great job of removing some material from this stem the threads you can see at the top are smaller and then there's some from the base that's also gone so i'm gonna replace this thread rather than uh use it i don't wanna risk it breaking right like that's a really annoying thing to happen so i'm gonna just replace that as well okay now we can get underway with the reassembly and see if we can't get this watch running again we've got a lot of work to do on this thing still but hopefully it will run with the addition of some new parts some lubrication some cleaning and some de-rusting we'll start off with the main spring and since this is an automatic watch i'm using what they call breaking grease around the inside of the barrel this is where that spring will slide around and rub up against the barrel and the breaking grease lets it have the appropriate amount of friction so that it can stop sliding or if it does slide that it doesn't start tearing off material from the inside of the barrel so just a little bit we'll do now i can take the main spring winders just to safely put that mainspring back into the barrel you take the handle and then you pick the size that you think is right and yeah that looks about right then you attach it to the front this is a very much a specialty tool it's only good for one thing but it is quite necessary when you're putting back together a bunch of watches now i can put the mainspring on the winder here and then i can wind it into the winder and then i can use the winder to place it back safely into the barrel okay just need to make sure that this outer part is uh safely wound in as well just like that okay now i can take off the winding handle and that'll leave the spring in the tool and ready for me to put it back into the uh the barrel this is one of my favorite parts and that's why right there i love that sound it's a great feeling and now you can see the spring is back in there and safe now i can put the brand new barrel arbor in place as well and a little bit of lubrication on the top here for where it meets up with the lid which i will now put on using this little tool rolex explorer is an absolute icon you know this is the watch this a version of that watch was the one that was worn on the first time that uh mount everest was summited right this is kind of one of their claims to fame and it's also a watch that's been in production continuously since then you can you can buy them now theoretically okay we'll start with the train of wheels here as we bring begin our reassembly i have to say i'm really impressed with uh how well this movement held up to that rust this is a brand new center wheel by the way tracking down parts is the hard part a lot of times when it comes to repairing vintage watches this is likely why both the jeweler and rolex turned down the customer in this case was because of parts availability you can find them i found most of them on ebay you have to have patience you have to know what you're looking for and you have to be willing to pay just as an example just that center wheel that i put in was 120 dollars for just the center wheel that's a genuine rolex one but like wow okay now we can put the train wheel bridge on and try to get all the pivots lined up delicate operation there we go okay oh did it fall in let's see if it'll spin oh sweet hey this is why rolex are great one of the many reasons they they kind of are misunderstood now rolex is as a brand i think that most people think of them as like a luxury brand now like a high you know a high-end luxury brand and to be fair they have pushed in that direction so i don't blame people for thinking that but that is not what they were uh that's not how they built their brand they built it by making really tough really durable sports watches just like this one you know the owner's dad who wore this watch every day i showed you those photos right i mean this guy was riding mountain bikes and running triathlons and stuff like that in this watch that's what these things were made for they were made for climbing mountains and swimming in the ocean and doing that kind of stuff and that isn't the type of thing that you normally associate with high luxury right that you'd think more like gold or dress watches or something like that and this to me is the absolute beating heart of what rolex is actually about which is awesome over engineered watches and i mean that as a compliment that you can wear every single day and do basically anything in and that's why this is one of my favorite models because this one kind of exemplifies that for me okay so as we work our way through here the barrel bridge goes on click click spring click screw going on and now we can put the ratchet wheel on as well there we go make sure that it's seated correctly it looks like everything's spinning freely as far as the train wheel goes so that's that's a good news as well okay so there's the ratchet wheel in place and now we can put the crown wheel in place it has a few parts to it it's got this kind of washer at the bottom then this outer ring with the teeth on it and then an inner ring that screws down to the plate via two screws that part actually has three screw holes on it you can see the one in the middle and i'll show you later what that one's for that one actually doesn't secure it to the plate this one does though okay now flipping the movement over we can start to rebuild the other side this is what they call the dial side of the movement the dial sits on this part a little bit of oil on the on the barrel where it meets that bridge just to make sure that it's nicely lubricated now i can put on the new canon pinion like that also before i put on the minute wheel i'll just oil this jewel really quick we'll oil the rest of the jewels later but this one's going to be covered up so i just want to get that out of the way now okay and now we can turn our attention to the keyless works this is called the keyless works because if you have ever seen a very old pocket watch they have a little key on them that you use to wind up and set the watch and you used to have to carry that with you like attach it to the watch or have it in another pocket and when they invented this method of setting and winding the watch where you use the crown on on the top of a pocket watch or on the side of a wristwatch in this case they called it the keyless works because you don't need a key now that's funny because for us i you know i never had a watch that needed a key outside of a an antique but for them it was like everybody was used to using a key so now they advertise it as the keyless works okay putting in the new winding stem it doesn't want to go in all the way though and i think there's a little bit of corrosion perhaps on the tube there where that goes in so i'm going to take a broach this is a smoothing brooch and it allows me to very gently smooth out and open up that hole there and let's see if that worked yeah so that fits now so there was some some rust or corrosion on the inside of that tube and that's why i wouldn't go in yeah i'm not surprised though right like we're going to run into problems like that with a watch like this when it's been exposed to to sea water i mean that's the worst possible thing right like it corrodes metal and inside of a movement you know there's very small pieces of stainless steel also brass you know so stuff that can be really susceptible to corrosion so that's just part of the deal but you know our job here is to try to make the very best of this that we can okay now we can put the setting lever in i've already put in the the yoke as you just saw as well as the yoke spring and now i can put in our brand new setting lever spring and taking a quick look at the setting lever spring screws if you remember these are the ones that i was worried about that corrosion on the top and look they're quite badly corroded it's just black on top of that screw so i'm going to restore these and the way i'm going to do it is i'm going to put them in a pin vise and then i'm going to sand them i'm going to do this gently right i don't want to go overboard with this but that i don't want that corrosion on there and take a look at it now see how this top of the screw is nice and shiny that's all i wanted to do is just to get them back to that state so there wasn't still rust on them when i put them back in it also let me see how well the screw heads held up to that corrosion actually did pretty good okay so that's looking fine i can now lubricate the rest of the keyless works i'm using this blue grease that's like the heavy duty grease that we use in watchmaking by regular grease standards it's not actually very heavy duty at all but by watch standards it's the the thickest grease that we use okay now we're getting down the stretch and i can put in the pallet fork and then the balance and then we're gonna see if this thing's gonna run i have to say i have not felt so emotionally invested in a watch working on somebody else's watch carries a level of responsibility with it and after i heard the story of what happened to the watch and who it belonged to and all that stuff i can't help but you know really want this thing to to run quick check of the pallet fork yep power's coming down the pipe so here we go let's put the balance in and see if we can't get this watch running again please run okay get the balance wheel seated oh there it goes there it goes the watch is running again fantastic oh after being exposed to rust it lives again ah i'm so relieved it's funny it's usually i just feel happiness when i see one of these going excitement and i feel relieved to see this one going now taking a look at the dial i noticed something so this is what we call a dial foot this is what goes into the movement and secures it but look at the other side the other dial foot has corroded off it's gone it um was stuck in the movement i was able to to get that piece out but that's not gonna do we have to fix it and this is what a new dial foot looks like there's actually three options you can use what's called a dial dot which is like glue i'm not gonna use that you can use soldering which i'm not gonna do on this watch i'm not going to introduce heat to this dial or you can do the method that i'm going to do now and that is to replace it with the replacement dial foot so in order to do this properly we have to do something very very very stressful so i have to put this dial into a holder and what needs to happen is we need to mill away with this little mill tool point one of a millimeter of the back of the dial so that that new dial foot has a recess to sit in so that the dial can still sit flat and this is extraordinarily stressful working on such a valuable important watch and taking material off the back of the dial but i did extensive research and this is the best method that i found to do it so this is what i mean see how that dial foot has a little base if you secure that to the back of the dial directly it will stick up too far so what i'm going to do now is i'm going to use my screwdriver excuse me my tweezers here to score you just put a bunch of scratches in both where it's going to sit and then also the bottom of the dial foot and i'm going to use some epoxy to secure it and again this is this isn't fun i i won't lie to you this is legitimately stressful stuff to work on such a valuable watch and have to do you know these type of things what i ended up doing was practicing on a junk movement or a junk dial over and over again i did maybe five or six of those so that i could get a good feel for how that mill press thing worked so i felt pretty comfortable but still it's like you just hold your breath so now i can take some of this epoxy and put it into place here on the back of the dial where the new dial foot is going to go and now i can put it into place and what i want is for the base of the dial foot to go into that hole that i put again it's a tenth of a millimeter deep it's not much now we'll let it dry and when i come back we can take a look at it so the epoxy has now dried and i've got another tool that i can use this is a a little hand mill and what i can do is put this around the post and then turn it because as if you notice there's a little bit of the epoxy that kind of bumps up you know it gets displaced when you put it down and then it dries and i want this dial to be able to sit flush so i'm going to use that to remove the excess epoxy and then i can just clip off the top the dial foot's a little bit too long as it sits so i'll just remove that just like that and then i can just take a file to remove any burr that's on it just so that it doesn't have a rough edge on it again just being really gentle here this is the type of repair that will last the rest of the watch's life versus if you use the sticky dial dots where they dry up at some point and then you have that and a quick check yeah that feels very firm and i think we're good to go here with that dial foot so uh so we can breathe a sigh of relief and get back to work on the movement because of course we still need to get it lubricated properly so this is mobius 9010 that's a certain type of oil that goes onto these jeweled pivots here at the top just a little tiny bit that's why i like to do it on the microscope i mean i like to do it because i can show you uh you know what i'm doing but also it lets me be a bit more precise with it it's always uh something that in my mind you have to practice you know like i feel like i've never quite mastered it perfect but uh getting better and better every time we can also take off these cap jewels they have a little runner on them and then what needs to happen with these is this part needs to be cleaned in a solvent and then usually there'll be some dried on oil that you'll want to remove manually and then you replace the oil it kind of sits suspended on that part and then you replace it back onto the watch and it just holds oil exactly above that friction point and it lets it last longer that way and stay better lubricated so it's really a great system and you can see i'm going to put just a little dot of oil right in the center of the bottom of that cap jewel there we go and then what i can do is take the cap jewel gently flip it over and now i can reel and reinstall it back in and watch what happens when i put it into place do you see that circle of oil in the middle it's like a round part that's suspended oil directly above the pivot and that's exactly what we want to see then i can gently put this spring back into place this one's on the escape wheel just like that and then this one's on the top of the balance there's also one of these on the bottom of the balance and there's ones on the bottom of the escape wheel but i'm going to show you a few of them this one's actually a two-part setting so when i take this out in fact you can see it actually came in half there so that's the top capsule it's the same as the one that i just removed but this one actually has a full setting so if you look there we go i can use some radical that little putty stuff to take off the other half of the setting and then i'll clean both of these once again in the solvent just like that and that'll once again remove any oil or debris that's on there and now i can do the same procedure again i put a tiny drop of oil in the middle then i replace the setting just like this and now i can put it back into the watch and again the idea is that it suspends the oil directly above the pivot and ooh ooh that doesn't look right okay so take a look at how the oil sitting underneath that cap it should be a circle like the other one and it kind of looks like a like a shoehorn a horseshoe or something like that you know it's not the right shape so what i have to do is start over again so take it out put it back in the one dip put that drop of oil in and then redo it again let's see how it looks this time there we go now we've got a nice little circle of oil right in the middle and that's exactly what we want those little details matter you know it'll if if the oil is not sitting in the center like that then it can run out the sides it can get dry and not work properly let's see how this watch is running after being lubricated hey that's pretty good plus four seconds plus two seconds a day the amplitude's a little on the low side at 209 but i figure with what this watch has been through i'm not super shocked by that i'm now going to take out the rubber gasket that goes on the crown tube again this is where the water ended up getting into the watch so it's always good to replace those whenever you do a service just to you know give it a better chance of having water resistance in general watches like this that were designed to be made waterproof originally will actually hold up pretty well but won't hold up to the specifications that they had when they were first made so what i recommend for watches like sport watches like this is if the gaskets have been replaced and all that type of stuff then you can wear it you can wear it if it rains you can wash your hands in it it's okay what i don't recommend is taking in the shower or going swimming on these expensive vintage watches because you really don't know unless you do like a full pressure test how waterproof it is and it's very difficult for these very old watches that have kind of seen a lot of action to uh to be fully water resistant like they once were so i i would recommend playing it a little on the safer side but not to the point that you don't feel like you can wear your watch for just day-to-day stuff you know just take it off if you jump in the pool okay so now we can continue with putting the top part of this movement back together this is the center seconds pinion and the extended center seconds wheel here so that i'm just going to use my hand press tool to put this back on it seems like it would be the right size yeah there we go and now if you remember on top of the crown wheel i mentioned there is that center screw hole this is actually what it's for it just holds this little this spring in place that keeps the center seconds pinion in place and when i say center seconds pinion what i mean is this watch has a seconds hand that sits in the middle like most watches and this little thing that i'm screwing down puts tension on the actual thing that that hand sits on so that it rides smooth and so that it doesn't fall out of place it's a very thin spring it's it feels almost like you know foil or something like that okay now we can put the case back together as well and that means that we're going to use our rover press to do that so remember it's the case the crystal and then the bezel that goes around the crystal and we need to press that back into place as well so there's the case and there's our restored crystal looking good and now i can put the bezel on and then i can use a die that presses just around the outer part of that bezel and gently click it back into place just like that that's one of the ways that these watches were water resistant as well and take a look the case looks really nice again no polishing done on it no no work on the case at all that was this is very much going to be left in the condition that it was in when the owner's father had it and that's i think awesome that's the way to do it for sure and then if you remember that little gasket that i took out uh just a minute ago this is the new one i put it in the silicone that makes it a little more supple and puts a little bit more waterproofing on it and then i can just gently put it back into place and there it is so that's a brand new one of those and then there's also one that'll go on the back of the watch here as well like that and i'm going to do the same thing using this little speed lubricator thing it it cleans it so that there's no there's no like dust or debris on the gasket which gives it a better chance to have a seal and then like i said it puts that silicone grease on it as well okay these are brand new case screws again the other ones they had been replaced and they rusted out so we're going to go back to original rolex ones this time and this is the hour wheel going in this is going to set us up so that we can put the dial and the hands back on speaking of here's the dial and this is also a good chance to see if that dial foot's working properly and it looks like it's sitting well and with that in place it means that we can put the hands back on too there's the hour hand going on and this watch doesn't have a date function which is by the way one of the things i really like about it it keeps the dial symmetrical and clean and i like that look but it also means that i can put the hour the hands on whichever as long as it's on the hour it's fine and this is the seconds hand that i was just talking about going on being pressed onto that pinion and now we can put the case on as well and once again we just have to rotate the movement in the case until it lines up properly with the side and that also means that we can now put on the automatic winding works again make sure that they're engaged properly and then there's three screws that hold it into place rolex has a word for automatic they call it a perpetual and now we can put in the whiny summit as you can see it's far too big that's because it's brand new so it needs to be trimmed down to size so we'll do that as well this is something that happens when you do replace a bunch of parts on a watch and you can measure it up and then mark it with a marker and then you can clip it off and what you generally want to do is leave yourself a little bit of wiggle room there and then you can use a file to deburr it to make sure it doesn't have any sharp edges and then you can also use a file to reduce its length by small amounts if that's what you need to do this is loctite if you've worked in uh automotive industry or a lot of industries a lot of places used loctite this is a what they call a thread locker you put it on a thread of a screw and then you screw it in and then it dries and it holds it in place the one that we use for watches like this is actually the weakest of the thread lockers you don't want it to permanently stay that way you want to be able to take that out again if needed but this will keep it from coming unscrewed just accidentally it looks like that's all ready to go and now we can put the case back on the watch as well and we are in the home stretch of what was probably the hardest restoration that i've done this was a non-running rusted rolex and now it is back in action and i gotta say this is one of the best feelings you can get from this hobby is bringing something like this back to life and then getting a chance to deliver it to the owner i honestly am honored just to have been able to work on a watch like this that was so important and so valuable in many ways not just monetary but also uh other ways and uh i'm thrilled with how this watch came out um again this is one of my absolute favorites and uh i can't believe that i got to work on it and i can't believe that it's back in action there it is on the wrist of the owner as i gave it back to her and her lovely little dog maggie as well um looks good right that's what you want to see and there it is uh out in the wild as well what a journey this one was uh definitely the most stressful restoration i've done but also the most rewarding i'm really grateful that you were able to come along with me for this one and i want to thank you for taking the time to do so um i do have an instagram for this channel if you're interested in catching up on in-between project updates or some of the watches for my collection you can go over to wristwatch underscore revival on instagram other than that i just wanted to reiterate my thanks to you for hanging out with me and going on this journey i can't wait to see you next time we'll see you then

Channel: Wristwatch Revival

Views: 7,879,706

Keywords:

Id: xasm3GFL7mM

Length: 52min 5sec (3125 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 11 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/cthulhufhtagn19]

Rolex has a shortage of watch repair techs.

[u/seetheeye]

I didn't expect to sit and watch 52 min video about watch repair but here I am. Loved this.

[u/steezerino]

I started watching this a few weeks ago as a curiosity thinking "who would watch a watch being repaired". Ended up watching the whole thing and loving it!

[u/otnavuskire]

This YouTuber is also a well known Magic: The Gathering commentator.

[u/ThatCheshireCat]

Practically fucking ejaculated when I saw the video was close to a hour, I LOVE these fix-em-up videos, electronics too.

[u/georgemathers]

Wore my deceased father’s $25k vintage rolex clamming. mud and salt water—what can go wrong?

[u/_Erin_]

Marshall is like the Bob Ross of watchmaking.

[u/ashigaru_spearman]

Its fun to watch and listen to people who are masters of their craft.

[u/DoubleMakers]

Be careful watching watch repair videos. You will most definitely get addicted.