This Beat Up, Non-Running Omega Seamaster Has Big Potential! Vintage Watch Restoration

hello there and welcome back to another video here on wrist watch revival my name is marshall thank you so much for coming along this time on the bench we've got an omega sea master 120 and this is the stuff that dreams are made of at least when it comes to buying repair watches off of ebay a couple of things to pay attention to uh that i that i pay close attention to with auctions like this these never say why they're not working this watch was listed as a non-runner but they don't say why i dropped it it was under the ocean for 20 years it just hasn't been serviced they don't say so you're taking a gamble there basically with the movement and then the other thing interestingly that you're gambling on is actually the dial the dial is of course such an important part of the watch both aesthetically but also functionally and then when it comes to vintage watches like this it's really important too and the crystal's so badly damaged that you can't really tell what's going on with the dial underneath the keyless works is a little difficult to pull but it does seem to be working at least somewhat again this watches is not running and if you're new to the channel i want to welcome you along this is what we do on this channel i i'll pick up a watch from a friend or off of ebay or somebody might send it in to me and i try to restore it i try to get it back to something that somebody can enjoy and use and you know we can save a little a little piece of history as well you can see there's some debris already falling off of this uh just having taken off the case back not great news let's take a look at what this thing looks like oh oh wow okay there's a lot here um first the movement looks actually quite good but why are there screws and parts just in the case that so this looks like a case clamp the screw to hold it in and then an extra screw that looks probably the same that is bizarre that must have backed itself off somehow and this is kind of a double-edged sword on one hand it's not all bad if if this is part of the reason why the watch wasn't running well that's an easy fix but it's pretty obvious this watch hasn't been opened in forever let's take a look at the balance wheel uh okay okay well there's good news and bad news the good news is the balance staff isn't broken the bad news is the wheel doesn't spin freely there's something holding it up and that's not really where you want to be right there is where one case clamp goes and then across it opposite on the movement down at the bottom there right there that's where the other one goes so why are they just floating around the case who knows and we'll have to solve this mystery as we go for now i can take off the uh the stem so i can take the movement out of the case and take a look at the dial and see how we did with that it's beautiful oh my look how pretty that tile is oh it's lovely the the loom the glow-in-the-dark parts are this nice creamy golden color and the dial looks like it's in perfect shape even the printing looks great on it okay so we got really lucky with that part so that's fantastic and now we just have to see if we can get this movement sorted out and running again and if we can this is gonna be a really nice watch and a really nice pickup as well these old omegas gorgeous watches really well made and they're also really popular start by putting the hands i like to use these are called like a membrane box it has kind of suspended plastic you can see there and it squishes it between two layers of that so that the hands are kind of suspended and not bumping up against anything now we can take the dial off i do want to be extra careful with this dial because it's in such beautiful shape i honestly this that exceeds expectation by quite a bit and i think it's going to look absolutely sick with a new crystal and there's another screw that looks like a dial screw maybe or i don't know something something on the outer case that's what those screws look like with a very thin screw head on it i just put this in a dial holding box again just for safe keeping flipping it over you can see this movement has a calendar mechanism and we'll start by taking off this plate that kind of holds the the calendar in place it also holds the jumper spring for the calendar that's the spring that's um in the jumper which is what actually pushes on that metal ring and provides some tension so that it kind of clicks over i'll show you that when we get to that point now wait a minute this watch is running now what is going on so i take it out of the case and it starts running interesting and also really exciting because just the fact that that wheel's now spinning freely means that it's less likely that there's actual like damage to it and it's okay it's not really running running but it's trying to and it's certainly oh well okay now it stopped again i'm gonna try putting a little wind in it and just see if it'll run and now it's stopped what is up with this thing i'm gonna use an air blower now to try to get it to run and oh it really wants to but as you can see it's barely going let's put it on the microscope and see if we can see anything maybe with the balance spring that's that spring on the lower left part of your screen there sometimes that gets bent but it looks fine yeah i can get it to start going and then it just stops again there and then it stops yeah there's something jamming it up it could just be that this watch desperately needs a service you know oil from these movements when it dries it actually it's kind of ironic it it does the opposite of it of its intended purpose it actually dries into kind of a gunky kind of thick gunky substance that can actually attract grime and dirt and act as an abrasive which of course is the exact opposite of what you want from a lubricant so there's a movement ring along the outside here that i take off first because you know then i can put it in my movement holder movement rings are for all different types of watches it basically means that they could make a movement like this this is a omega 563 but it's part of a broader family of movements that they made up to the 565 and they ran these for i don't know 10 or 15 years or something and movement rings just mean you can take this movement and put it into a different case you can change the case you can have special cases you can have bigger smaller whatever and you can just make a movement ring and use the same movement okay well let's get underway with the disassembly of this thing first we'll take off the automatic winding bridge this whole part that goes over the top its job is to provide support for the wheels and for the rotor that wind the watch when you move your hand around throughout the course of the day you technically don't need this to run a watch like i could just put this back in put the movement back in and just have to wind it up every day and i would just have a manual wind watch i could just leave those parts off but of course this is a sports watch this is a watch that was meant to be taken diving and so you want the automatic because it's very convenient okay what we're going to do now is let down the main spring and that means that if there's any wound up power still in there like i wound it up a little bit we want any tension from that spring to be gone and uh before we continue with the disassembly and if you've watched my channel before you'll know what happens if you don't do that so now we can take off uh the bridges on the top there's usually two bridges on movements like this and this one's no exception we've got the train wheel bridge right here this one has three jewel holes on the top you can see those are the ruby jewels there that beautiful red color it's so hard to replicate that color on really anything else i love that color and then the other bridge is the barrel bridge which we'll tackle next for now though we can take out the train of wheels because we took off the train wheel bridge that's what holds them in place so we can go ahead and whoa wait a second do you see what i see there's the other case clamp all right we finally figured out this has to be why that watch would run for a little bit and then stop the case clamp actually worked its way all the way down to the escape wheel and was just sitting on it and as you know these things are so delicate they don't you can't have a big hunk of metal sitting on something like that it will stop it so great news across the board this is likely what was stopping our watch and if we do this thing you give this thing a good service i bet we can get it running again and you put that in combination with that beautiful dial and i am one happy watch restorer i'll tell you that we'll continue to take apart the calendar works here after the canon pinion comes off which i already did and now we can go for the crown wheel and the ratchet wheel before taking off the barrel bridge these parts here their main job is to aid in winding that's what they do when you turn the crown it turns one of those wheels which turns the other wheel and that uh winds the main spring we can take out the ratchet wheel now this has kind of a two-part ratchet wheel on the top and there's the other part there and now we can continue before we take off this bridge though there is a little tiny tensioner spring and that holds the center seconds pinion in place so that's what the seconds hand actually sticks onto and turns and it needs to be held in place under just a little bit of tension and that little part will come out right there okay and it looks like three screws holding down the barrel bridge before we do those though i will take off the uh the click now that we call that the ratchet wheel because like all things that ratchet they go one direction but not the other and the clicks the actual method by which that happens it is the ratchet ratcheter if you will and the click spring is what keeps tension on the click and it's a little tiny jumpy spring so gotta be careful there we go don't want to lose that one and now we can take off the barrel bridge these old omega movements are just beautiful they're really nice to work on too omega's still one of the biggest watch manufacturers in the world they have some extremely popular models and they have really heavy marketing campaigns uh around a few kind of big ips if you will one of them is james bond for you fans of james bond you'll know that you know the daniel craig version wore an omega they even have a special james bond version and then the other is around space travel specifically uh the moon landings in the 60s astronauts that went up there were wearing an omega watch and they uh omega does not want you to forget that but they make a great watch they really do all right disassembly almost complete actually at least good chunk of the way here we can take off the pellet fork bridge and the pallet fork thrilled by the way that this movement has no rust maybe a little tiny bit of staining around those clamps but you know no no like structural anything in fact aside from being dry as a bone needing a service quite badly uh it is it's a fantastic shape it's beautiful flipping the watch back over we can now finish taking apart the keyless works this felt a little bit gummed up when i was uh you know kind of inspecting the watch when i first got it and it's a little bit of a weird setup oop jumpy little thing that's a setting lever spring because this thing what is i i don't really understand what that does when we put it back together i'll try to sort it out um it has to do something with the calendar for sure but i'm not sure what and now that i've taken it apart i can't really visualize like how it went back in so i just have to kind of sort that out later now i can take out the yoke although it looks like it's held in place or held underneath here and this means that i'm going to need to take off this tensioner spring which which holds down the setting lever and when you take apart a lot of watches like this especially of this area you'll find that they all fall into one of two categories this is one of them where it's like a spring-loaded setting lever that you just push down from the other side you saw that when i took out the crown the other ones actually screw down and you unscrew it a little bit to take out the crown i it feels like the swiss watch industry never really quite landed on which one was the right way to do it which is a very kind of swiss approach you know that they tend to uh think uh it for these watches that there's kind of a right way and a wrong way to do it i think a lot of the time but they never really sorted that out um you see both you really do both methods they both work fine though so okay we'll just throw the balance back on real quick just make sure that it's lined up there we go looks like it's spinning beautifully now so yeah uh that case clamp was definitely what the problem was and uh i just put it back on so that when we put it through the watch cleaning machine it will stay safe now we can take apart the main spring barrel this is where the the main spring is housed and there it is right there that's what it looks like when it's unwound looks pretty similar when it's wound up it's just all all the coils are towards the center rather than towards the outside okay take out the barrel excuse me the arbor and then i can remove the spring from its barrel housing here see if the spring looks ancient and tired or actually okay and it actually looks okay yeah looks fine all right we still need to take apart the automatic winding bridge this actually does this is very small as you can see how close up i am but um this does have multiple gears underneath it that all have to be held in place this houses the reversing gear and that way when that rotor that i took off spins around when you move your arm it doesn't matter whether it spins clockwise or counterclockwise it will wind in both directions which makes it very very efficient and if you look right there that wheel that you can see that's a reversing wheel it actually is two wheels sandwiched on top of each other and uh one can spin one way and one can spin the other way that one right there okay and that is now disassembled i don't need to take apart those three screws on the bottom that's to replace the post that the rotor goes on and they did a really nice thing by making that modular but yeah we don't need to do that this time so taking a look at the case the crystal's clearly beyond repair um that is that is obvious um we're gonna have to make a call on the rest of the case you know i like to have a def touch when it comes to restoring watches like this and that crystal oh my god it's ridiculous i'm gonna okay well it did actually come out so that's nice um let's just take it off there we go the bezel you know it looks okay it looks fairly worn but like it's intact even the loom dot at the front is intact and take a look at this so this black ring that you see around the edge this is what that debris that was coming out was that used to be a gasket and this my friends is what happens when you leave a watch for 50 years and don't do anything these rubber gaskets turn to this crusty dust that is really difficult to get out of there it creates an absolute nightmare of a mess and this is why one of the reasons why it's a good idea to have your watch service from time to time the watchmaker will not only serve them service the movement but they will also replace any gaskets that need to be replaced and make sure that they're in good shape too so that they don't turn into a pile of black dust on my bench like 40 years later so i'm just grabbing an old pair of tweezers to just get in there and try to pry that out best i can and it's left me a lovely little mess here and while i clean this up i did want to mention that i've got a patreon for this channel that's a way that you can support the content creators that you love and if you like this channel you like what i'm doing here you can go to patreon.com wristwatch revival and you can sign up it's you can pick the price you it's whatever you want it's completely transparent and any level that you sign up for you get a thank you card and a wristwatch revival sticker in the mail and i wanted to say thanks to everybody who supports me over there it really means a lot okay we'll continue with the case disassembly here let's get that bezel off of there and you can see underneath that's the spring that actually keeps the tension on the bezel so that it turns around and then here's the case itself and oh yeah there's more grime under there yeah this is just kind of the stuff that builds up when you wear a watch for years and years or just even when it's in a drawer you'll see stuff like this so i'm just gonna again use the old pair of tweezers just to sort of knock off the the stuck-on stuff but i'm gonna let my ultrasonic cleaner do the majority of the work because it does a great job of getting in there without any type of abrasion abrasion and i can also take a piece of peg wood here to really try to clear out the best i can around the bezel and around where that that ill-fated gasket once lived and we'll see how cleaned up we can actually get this thing by the end we need to make sure there's as little debris as possible in there so that i can put a fresh gasket in and that it'll sit correctly and not have you know bumps or irregularities and take a quick look at the case back here again this is the part that actually interfaces with that um gasket so what you see is some of the melted on gasket onto there too so again just want to take off the the rough edges after cleaning this is what the watch looks like in kind of its orbital pattern here looks like a planet with all of its moons around but a beautiful movement and there it is all laid out okay now that it's all clean and ready to go we can start the reassembly process in this case we'll start with the main spring barrel and that means that we're going to need to do some barrel grease here some breaking grease for the inside walls of the barrel this is because this is an automatic movement and automatic movements require this because the uh mainspring will actually just slide around that inside wall and you need that breaking grease to provide the right amount of tension because the watch will just keep getting wound as you work your way through the day and move your arm around i'm going to use my main spring winders now to safely securely put this mainspring back into place this keeps it flat and concentric you can do this by hand but it's almost impossible to not contaminate the mainspring with some oils and stuff from your fingers if you don't wear finger cuts but if you do like i'm wearing here little bits of rubber will actually get stuck between the coils and that of course is is very undesirable so it's really tough um and the main spring winder is the right tool for the job plus listen to this sound this is one of my favorite things in all of watchmaking oh yeah that's it's so good right like that you know when the balance wheel the wheel kicks back up when you fix a watch when you put the mainspring back in when you finally get the the uh the train wheel bridge on and all the pivots line up there's just so many little moments along the way i'm gonna use a little bit of medium viscosity oil on the top here just because the um cap here for the barrel does interface with that and it's good to have it lubricated we use uh broadly speaking three types of oil in a watch it's more like five or six for specialty stuff like that breaking grease but generally speaking you can think of it in terms of like high friction medium friction and low friction applications that red stuff i put on that's medium okay so here's the escape wheel going back into place as we start to rebuild the train of wheels here one important note there is no longer a case clamp holding it down and i'm thinking that's gonna drastically improve the performance of this little uh watch if you're a collector of vintage watches you'll know that the prices have gone up a lot yes for pretty much everything this watch was even in its the state that i got it was 2 000 on ebay just to give you an idea for how much these things go for not sure what to expect from it um you know if i can get it all running and looking good okay so we've got the barrel bridge back on which holds the center wheel and the barrel itself and that means that we can put on the third fourth and then the escape wheel that we had on before it's a little bit of a dance um the design on this particular movement is really really good uh very very smart way to lay out these wheels but it does make the reassembly slightly tricky mainly the the wheel that you see at the top there that one is actually raised up high enough to be able to interact directly with that center seconds pinion that i told you told you before that the seconds hand actually goes on to and that's really nice because on a lot of watch movements even omegas they will uh actually do a longer pivot on that and then put another wheel on top and this is a much more elegant solution to that problem it's just makes putting it together a little bit trickier but as you can see we got it that's right train of wheels is back on and you can see that they're spinning freely now so that's great and that means that we can move on with the reassembly here with the crown wheel this is that hp 1300 oil that's that medium viscosity that i mentioned before of course it's very important to use the correct oils but it's also interesting because on most watches that i at least that i work on i can't find or i don't know where to find a uh a schematic right because you can find in a schematic it's called an oiling chart and it will actually tell you where to put every bit of oil that needs to be put on the watch and what i'm usually working from here are kind of the best practices that i know uh from having you know learned the way that i learned so it's kind of a you know doing the best i can type deal you can put the click click spring into place now and get that click replaced there it is kind of funny i actually had uh with this watch i had my nightmare scenario happen uh i was moving the watch to where i already had a watch in the watch cleaning machine so it was kind of up next and i was moving it over to where i was gonna be moving it into little baskets for the watch cleaning machine and i dropped the dust cover thing with all the parts in it on the ground in my home office where i do all of this work that you know i'm not a professional i don't have my own clean room or whatever and it dropped on the ground and in my office there is carpet and i just looked at i i just stared at it for like 30 seconds and just said oh no uh because this watch in particular this watch has a lot of very small parts uh with the calendar works and stuff little tiny screws that type of thing and then i got down on my hands and knees prayed to the uh to the watchmaking gods you know to george daniels and breguet and and whatever and i grabbed my magnet and my flashlight and i started going what i ended up having to do um was go back and watch the video of me taking this apart and just cataloging every single screw every single spring everything to see what i was missing and i don't know if i've been a good boy this year or what but i actually managed to find all the parts uh which i'm gonna just call that divine intervention because i just could not believe it but uh needless to say it made me very very relieved and very happy that i was able to continue with this project even though it did add a lot of hours to it because you know taking that time to make sure i had all the parts still was very time consuming putting together the keyless works here and you see this blue lubricant i'm using now that's a grease so on the small medium and large that we talked about before if if you want to do t-shirt sizes that's the large that's the heavy viscosity stuff and that's because the keyless works actually does require quite a bit of friction between metals to work so you want to make sure that you use some really good kind of heavier lubricant on that area kind of working my way around here with the yoke spring there we go and i'm using that black plastic stick that's it does help me position it a little bit kind of my other hand but it's also a backup plan oh okay this happens all the time by the way if you're starting to try this hobby out if you noticed when i was oiling there i accidentally got the yolk out of its position on the sliding clutch it's not the end of the world but that is spring-loaded now that i've put that spring in so it can fly can move stuff around so just stop what you're doing gently put it back into place and then continue with the build again if that happens to you now we can put the tensioner spring for the setting lever in place and then this thing so still not 100 sure what this is or where it goes but this isn't we don't figure that out right now anyway because it doesn't actually interface with anything just yet so now we can get the setting lever spring into place this acts as a protective cover that holds that the minute wheel in place as well and let's see how it wants to engage okay that seems like it's uh it's happy now we can get out a little bit more grease and i'm gonna put it in the teeth here of where that spring engages again because that metal just slides along that other piece of metal it is metal on metal under tension and that usually results in wear and sometimes even little shavings or whatever so using the heavier lubricant in that spot is really important but it looks like it's working fine and that means we can continue with the build here on we call this the dial side of the movement for for obvious reasons and the these little wheels are the ones that actually push over the day that you know day of the month disc that we uh took off way back at the beginning if you look at this part i'm putting on right here there's a little knob on the top right there that's actually what grabs the edge of the of the day disc and moves it over now we can put on the hour wheel this is what the hour hand actually mounts onto and now we'll bring in the day disc here as well and right now it's just going to be kind of set into place because it doesn't really it's not really doing anything until that center plate comes down that's what holds it in place and gives it its tension and additionally if you look at the right where my tweezers are that actually lines up with that little knob thing and that's how that interacts so i can't quite get it to sit right but if you look right there where i have the tweezers that is now engaged with a little jumper and that is what does it and what that actually is is that's a quick set for the date if you pull the crown out to position one that's setting the time like on a normal watch but if you pull it out to the next one it actually jumps the date over one day not twisting it but pulling the the crown to that third position will actually jump the date once and that way if you don't wear like watch when i do it here so there's set hand setting and boom jumped over one day so that way if you don't wear the watch for a week and the date isn't right you don't have to sit there and wind it through seven days worth of winding you can just go click click click click click and you're done and off you go okay back on the other side of the movement we can put the pellet fork in and we are starting to get really close to a verdict here on if this watch is going to run and if so how well i am going to be so excited if i can get this thing running and looking good okay just making sure that the pallet fork pivots are properly in place and it looks like they are okay okay so now i can put some wine in this watch and then we can put the balance in and that's the moment of truth that's going to tell us whether this thing's going to run or not i'm really hopeful that it will let's see if it goes just have to get everything lined up okay not quite come on come on yes there it goes it is running again this is so awesome to be able to find a watch like this and just get lucky you know i've had them you've seen them on the channel where they're rusty in there or you know the hair springs all bent up and it's like well i'm not gonna be able to replace this without you know a bunch of replacement parts or buying a donor movement but this thing is running and i am so happy to see it it really is one of the most beautiful things you can see and now what we can do is we can oil the the pivots so this is using our small t-shirt size our lightest viscosity oil and as you can see really kind of a microscopic amount of it if possible and once we get all of the joules this one actually is the is the second hand and it takes the medium viscosity we also of course have to clean up the balance jewels here which are they're a lot different than the other jewels they're held in place by a spring which is the shock protection system this one's called an inca block so that's one big difference i just took off the cap tool which is the other difference is that there's actually two joules here not just one and uh they need to be cleaned spotlessly and lubricated specifically and then put back into place and that's part of what helps your watch to run so efficiently this is a solvent called one dip that i'm putting these in and this helps dissolve any leftover debris any of the oil that may still be there that has dried off it will dissolve all of that for us so that we can get these things cleaned and put back into place and here we go that's a nice clean jewel and now i can take my oiler and put just a little bit of my lightest viscosity 90 10 oil for those you getting it and then all i have to do is put this setting back on top oh no i mean it sounds so easy didn't i so if you do that i just messed up the oil it's all over the place now that's not gonna work so what do i do start over no big deal you put it back in the solvent uh you take it back out you kind of dry it off it it evaporates pretty quickly on its own and then you start over again this happens that oil needs to stay in the center of that jewel and you need to put the setting on top of it so that the oil stays there if it gets to the edge it can leak out once you put it in and then it won't last very long and you'll have dry uh pivots you know within a way too short of a period of time uh for the watch so as you can see now there we go a much better shot and we can put it back into the movement this is the upper balance jewel there we go and then i can just close up the inca block shock setting this is the this is effectively okay that bothers me did you see that piece of what is let's get that off of there there we go this is uh why you can drop your watch off of your desk and not have it break back in the old days it would actually break you'd have to take it to a watchmaker most of the time when you dropped it nowadays not so much and this technology has been around for you know 70 years now or so you see there's kind of a fiber on top of that joule as well i'll take care of that when we take it out of here this is the bottom setting it also is kind of interesting because working on a microscope things look a lot bigger than they are i mean that fiber is probably not even really visible to the naked eye i know it looks like a big hair you know you're like oh no there's this huge it is so funny how absolutely tiny that actually is in real life but thankfully it was just sort of sitting on top and we were able to get it anyway so same setup here for the bottom jewel hopefully we don't drop one on top of the other this time but uh you know learning etc and just make sure to inspect it to make sure if there's any anything on there at all just grab a piece of peg wood and just get you know scrub it manually clean it that's all it really takes then you put it back in the one dip just to make sure that there's no residue on it of any sort and we can repeat the same process that we did before interestingly i use actually my biggest tweezers for this i used to use smaller ones because i thought small tweezers for small things right but it turns out the small tweezers just spring load that jewel look at that by the way much better and you actually want the biggest ones i got a tip on instagram from that and i was like okay i'll try it out and i bought they're called double zeros those tweezers the biggest ones and it works so much better i used to have the little jewel just slip out of them all the time and it's really frustrating and now that doesn't happen okay so we can once again just replace the shock setting here and we now have a well oiled uh jewel and then we can also just finish by oiling up the the jewels on the bottom on the other side of the movement as well and with that being done let's just throw it on the time grapher just like just to see what it does without any adjustment of any sort oof well it's going to need some adjustment it's running pretty fast and a little bit of beat air there too but this is what it looks like after adjustment how absolutely incredible is that between zero and minus two seconds a day literally no beat error and 250 something degrees of amplitude this thing is a runner it is awesome i am so thrilled that not only did we get it running but it runs really really well kind of makes me think that this watch hasn't been has been neglected a bit maybe just stopped running and got thrown in a drawer or whatever okay we're not done yet with the movement though all of that like i said before can be done without the automatic winding works but we do need to put those back on so first i will use a solution called lubetta which is kind of like a cleaner and lubricant for reversing wheels so remember when i said there's like three main lubricants that we use well there's also like 10 extra ones you know for specific requirements um but they're not 100 necessary but i do happen to have that one and it's it's specifically for these reversing wheels and now we can put in these two gears it's interesting the gear i just put in interacts with the bottom of the reversing wheel and this one actually sits up higher and interacts with the top of the reversing wheel you see how it only hits the teeth on the top half there and the other one only hits the teeth on the bottom and now we can put the plate back on this actually has four holes there for those pivots but they sit nice and flat so it's actually quite easy to put them back on and i'm also going to use a little bit of the lightest viscosity oil here just to make sure that these things can spin nice and freely okay this is that center uh center seconds pinion that i mentioned before and you can see how it snugs right up against that wheel that i was talking about and interfaces with it without the need for any other way to get that power over there really cool design this tensioner spring is wafer thin and so i'm going to hold it in place with the plastic stick and then try to just screw it down this is a little bit awkward because you can only kind of one-handed operation after you get it pinned down but as you can see my my plan worked so now we can put the automatic winding bridge back on top as well it's important not to force this you want to get it seated and then actually just wind the watch a little bit and there you'll see it kind of engage and then you can push it down all the way that's because those teeth have to line up and if they're not and you're trying to screw it down they'll just push up against each other and maybe even break okay now the case needs some attention we've got the movement running really well and and basically ready to go back in the in the case but um as i mentioned before this case needs a lot of help manual cleaning hopefully did quite a bit for it but the ultrasonic cleaner is where the truth will come out about how this case looks and what condition it's in we also have to make a judgment call on if we want to polish or you know it restore the case in any other way but i want to make that call after i've seen it clean from the ultrasonic cleaner because that's kind of how it's going to look and if i'm happy with it i'll just stick with it and if i really feel like it needs some work then i'll then i'll do some work on it so let's take a look well first off wow it actually looks really nice and yes there is some wear on the back of the watch for sure you can see that this is a well-loved watch although you can still read the uh sea master tested to 120 meters on the back so that's nice here's the case itself and yeah you know it has the same type of wear pattern on the edge but i like it i don't mind that at all and i'm not going to touch there will be no sanding there will be no chemicals there will be no polishing of any type on this case i love the way this thing looks it's honest it's well worn and it is going to stay exactly how it is every project you have to make a judgment call and on this one i'm not touching that case i think it looks great so that means that we can continue with the casing of the watch that means we have to put that movement ring back on that i mentioned before look how gorgeous that movement is too is that not just stunning it's a real shame because when they made this watch they hadn't come up with display case backs those are the case backs that are that have glass so that you can look inside and see the movement and it's crazy to think that these are actually just hidden away from view but that being said look at this screw that's the screw that hold down holds down the balance and it's bugging me yes i know it's going to be covered up by the case back but it just doesn't look good it's kind of rusted and crusty on the top so you know what i'm going to do i want to restore this screw this is just watchmaker stuff right like who does this but it's just bugging me enough and it not it's not going to take too long then i'll grab one of my sanding sticks one of the fairly high grit ones which means fine you know this is a thousand grit and i'll run it through three or four of these thousand two thousand five thousand seven thousand something like that and uh i'm just gonna you know shine it up a little bit it just was bugging me that's it and i know it's gonna be covered up here you can kind of see what i came up with after the first when i put it back in the movement um i'll try to show you a little better here it is there you go much better huh and it only took a few minutes to do that as well so that looks a little bit better even though i'm about to put a solid case back on it it just would have bugged me so now we can put the new crystal in place as well i'm actually using a regular crystal on this though the crystal that was in it before was a tensioned crystal it has a piece of metal on the bottom which is typical for dive watches um i actually did order one so i'll be putting that on after um but you know when i work on these dive watches do not dive in these like they have to pass a pressure test to to know that for sure and these old watches it's very difficult to get them to do so my normal goal with watches like this is you can wash your hands and if it rains on you it's not going to just flood the case but if you submerge the watch if you go swimming take a shower you are you're risking it all let's put it that way all right the bezel tensioner ring will go on now yeah it looks like that's working fine and as you can see the ultrasonic plus all that cleaning we did really got that horrible uh rotten uh gasket out of there but we need a new one so i'm gonna clean up the uh clean up a new gasket it also uh puts like a layer of silicone grease on the outside of it so that it's uh extra water resistant and supple so that'll go in there like so and now we need to put the hands on since this is a calendar watch we need to get it to exactly midnight and that's right when of course the calendar switches over to the next day right because that would be 12 midnight and now we can put the hour hand on if you're doing a watch if you're putting the hands on a watch that doesn't have a calendar you can put the hands anywhere you want as far as like what hour it is you could say it's three or at six it doesn't matter as long as they're lined up properly but on a watch with a calendar mechanism you gotta put them at midnight and you have to make sure that the movement is where it's going to be at midnight as well here's the minute hand going on now just a quick check and let's see how we did see the calendar starting to go what time is it when it actually clicks over just a little bit before midnight that's good enough for me and now we can put the seconds hand on as well need a little bit of a smaller adapter here for my hand press tool gentle gentle okay and a little bit of air blower here just to make sure that there's no dust or anything like that on the inside of the crystal or on the dial or hands or anything and we can case this thing up still can't get over how beautiful that movement is it's it really is a shame that we have to put a a solid case back on it but now whoever ends up owning this watch they'll know it's there you can replace the winding crown and winding stem again a little bit of pressure and uh should just click right into place and there's the there's the infamous case clamps that were really causing all the problems with the movement still curious how those clamps came out i it almost feels like somebody took them off and didn't put them back on just because like what are the chances that both of those screws came off but who would do that it doesn't make any sense either well we can replace the winding rotor now this little piece of metal holds it in place and just a quick test to make sure that when i turn it that that wheel that winds it is turning in both directions so yes that direction and yes that direction too so that means it's working fine and then bittersweet we will put the case back on now so now we can't see that beautiful movement but it also means we're just about finished with this project and look at how sick this watch came out i am so happy with it i'm gonna put a a strap on it here as well i don't put a leather strap on i mean these type of watches can wear most straps but look how awesome this watch is this gorgeous dial the beautiful patina on the loom the hands and it happens to run fantastically well to boot what a fun project omega seamaster 120 brought back to life and uh now somebody can enjoy it again thank you so much for joining me on my journey here i love it that you take the time to hang out with me as we uh explore watchmaking and vintage watches as a hobby it's really fun for me and i hope you enjoy it as well if you want to catch up with me on instagram um i've got an instagram page there it's wristwatch underscore revival and i post you know like in between project updates or sometimes watches from my personal collection and stuff over there you can stop over and say hi thank you so much again we'll see you next time

Channel: Wristwatch Revival

Views: 3,267,089

Keywords:

Id: KY8nU7BOM34

Length: 52min 57sec (3177 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 28 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/coinman180]

In watchmaking school our tolerances for diameters was +/-.03mm and lengths were .05mm. Boring the holes for jewels was /-.01mm.

[u/ShaggysGTI]

I got into machining first because of my fascination with watches and clocks… it’s so fun looking at mechanisms under a microscope and trying to figure out how each was made.

[u/McAfeeC]

I have fallen down the rabbit hole of his videos, pretty therapeutic.

[u/Hanginon]

OK, you/he just kept me up for an hour past my bedtime. And so worth it, what beautiful precision.

[u/thor7171]

The amount of precision involved in watch making and repairing is crazy.

[u/TheRinger1976]

What do you reckon he sold it for after the restoration?

[u/Substantial_Pop2396]

Haha I know him (Marshall Sutcliffe) because he is a big Magic the Gathering personality and commentator. I’ve heard he was into watches as well. This was pretty cool.