Vulcain Minstop 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 i've got a vulcan min stop on the bench today this one dates to somewhere in the 1960s and i got this one off of ebay it's in a little bit of rough shape the the crystal could certainly use replacing and as you can see the pusher is missing from the side but otherwise it looks like it's in nice shape it said it was running on the ad so we'll check that out as well and see how well it's running and of course if it is and there's the stem for the pusher this is a min stop and this is a type of watch it was actually made by multiple different companies at the time and it its primary function was actually to help you remember how much time you had left on a parking meter which also inspired the design for the front and it has a really cool complication rather than a chronograph that starts a stopwatch and then stops this one just resets this running timer to zero just like that so you push the button on the side which is currently missing and it resets to zero and then it starts counting up from zero to 59 minutes and that's it that's all it does it's really basic but when you need to know if 10 minutes has gone by it is really easy you push one button and then look down that's it let's put it on the time grapher and see how it's running okay well the rate's not great the amplitude's a bit low the beat error is not great either but all told that's actually not too bad um this probably just needs a service a little tender loving care and i bet you we can get it back uh to going pretty well so first things first this has a compression case back so i'm going to get my case back knife and open this thing up and let's take a look at the movement all right and there it is happily running away this is the duro 471-4 movement and look at that it says west germany vulcan company west germany which definitely dates it you know after world war ii and before late 1980s when uh when there was a west and in east germany before they reunified so kind of a interesting historical artifact there and look at that the movement and the dial come out in one easy motion here and uh yeah the dial looks great actually it's a beautiful dial it's a silver maybe trending toward champagne dial i always use one of these dust covers by the way to make sure that the parts are all together and as you can see the pusher actually just fell out of the case it's just sitting there loose this is the part that the the button actually actuates on which then pushes the corrector inside the watch i've got to be careful with that but yeah so this goes into here now this is a bit of an issue for me because i've never replaced a pusher on a watch and even though i looked around a lot to try to find some videos and stuff to help understand like the basics of pushers how they work and how to replace them i couldn't find anything or very little so this one we're going to have to go at it on our own and really try to figure it out these are one of the big challenges that you face with hobbies you know sometimes you can find videos all over the place with the show you how to do things and sometimes you can't and you have to figure it out for yourself and that's what we're going to have to do here but onward we go first we just need to take off the hands i'm going to use these hand levers to do so i prefer these to the presto style tools that some people use mainly i think that these give you a little bit more control over the pressure and they don't put quite as much pressure on the sides of the hands either just want to be careful with the hands while they're sitting on top of the dial particularly just to avoid any type of scratching this cell really does look quite nice though all right so first we can take off this movement ring it's a spacer or a movement ring it basically holds the movement in place when it's inside the case so that things aren't rattling around in there and then we can go ahead and take off the dial itself i just love these little watches they have a cool little story to them they have an actually useful function i mean i'm serious if you're if you're making spaghetti or whatever and you just you know you know it takes 10 minutes you throw the spaghetti and you just hit that button on the side of your watch and you can just look down and see how much time has passed at any point it just couldn't be simpler all right so there is that actual big sub-dial counter thing so we'll take that off first and it's actually attached to the hour wheel as well it spins off of it when when it spins so does the disc above it's just that it can be reset individually here's my canon pinion remover and that'll take the canon pinion off i always find this tool very handy for doing it and let's get this thing in a movement holder and of course the first thing we need to do is as you know this watch is still running and that means that the main spring inside of the barrel is still wound up and that has a lot of potential energy in it that's the energy that runs the whole entire watch so it's better if you can to go ahead and say the way we say it is let down the mainspring it always feels like you're disappointing it but really you're just taking the power out of it and the way to do this is pretty simple you just move the click out of the way that's what keeps it from unwinding normally and then you actually put the crown in your hands kind of firmly and let it slowly unwind in your hands like that and once it's out of gas you'll see the watch just come to a stop naturally now that it's safe to work on we can go ahead and take away the most delicate part of the watch that is of course the balance that has the balance wheel the balance spring balance bridge it has the jewels it has the shock settings there's just a whole lot that can go wrong if you leave that on there and then maybe say you're taking off one of the bridges and your screwdriver slips right oops well that can easily break the pivots on the top and bottom of that balance wheel so it's best just to take it away straight away and then you don't have to worry about it and there we go now we can get to working on the top part of the watch here so the first thing we're going to do is go for the barrel bridge so that's the big bridge that goes across the whole upper half as it sits here and you see a little bit of discoloration there as well perhaps it's rust it could also just be some type of staining from an old oil or something along those lines so nothing to panic about but something that we'll definitely want to look into now we can take off the ratchet wheel screw and the ratchet wheel itself i always like to check they call it the side shake that's how much the wheel can move around in its pivot and sometimes those ones for the the barrel there can get worn out pretty significantly so i like to usually just give it a quick check before i take it out now i can take off the click screw the click and then the click spring underneath it quite small and delicate here really not the kind of part you want to lose or break so it's worth taking just an extra minute for those parts and now we can get the whole bridge off of there i just love these old watches from the mainly from the 60s they just have so much charm to them especially these ones that where people were really trying to innovate all right so there's there's the barrel bridge off and it looks pretty clean again this movement looks like it's in fine shape it's just not running well probably because it hasn't been serviced in a while but that's what i'm here for and that's really kind of what you're hoping when you get an old watch like this that it just needs a little bit of a service rather than some extensive repair work with a whole bunch of replacement parts and things like that now we can take off the train wheel bridge this has three jewels on the top which you can see one for the center wheel there in the middle as well as the escape wheel and off it comes so that reveals the rest of the train of wheels sitting underneath and as you can see the wheel underneath in the middle actually has its own separate little bridge here so i'll need to take that out it's also jeweled jewels of course are those red kind of bearing things that's what they really are bearings they're they're not about fancy they do look beautiful incidentally but this is kind of a classic example of form follows function they needed them to make the watches more reliable last longer and also have more precision less friction and they happen to be that ruby red color because they are synthetic sapphires and that's what rubies really are they're a type of sapphire and even though they can make them in different colors they kept them these colors because people got used to it from when they used real ones back in the day and they're awesome they're gorgeous they have a real aesthetic to them it's kind of a unique color as well okay well it looks like the pallet fork has its own bridge here as well and it's kind of in the way of that middle wheel so we'll just take it out of the way too as we work our way down to the bottom and now comes the pallet fork and now can we take this wheel out yeah there it comes no problem and then there's also this little gear over here but it's stuck on and i can't quite take it out so instead i'm just going to flip the watch over and we'll start working on the other side and as you can see this this side of it has this other gear here but it seems to be attached as well and i'm trying to figure out what's going on this has to have something to do with that running stopwatch feature that i showed you at the beginning and this arm right here is actually how it's reset i know that because that's what the pusher pushes pushes up against so that has to be what that does but for some reason this other gear won't come out this one right here and it seems to be press fit on so i'm going to leave it alone for the moment and we'll explore that further in just a bit in the meantime i can make some more headway here on getting the keyless works and the motion works apart the motionworks are the part of the watch that transfers all that work on the other side into actually telling time with the hands and the keyless works are what you let you set the watch and wind the watch and this is a kind of a cover that goes over all of the works and then also includes the setting lever spring on it oops and by the way there's a spring underneath that too apparently and there it goes right there that was the yoke spring just flying off still this one wheel doesn't come up so let's take a look at the other side and of course it is actually attached to that small gear that i saw they are one in the same and i'd like to get those apart so that they can be cleaned i'm actually going to take an attempt here with my hand levers and see if i can't just pry them apart because they're usually just friction fit and there we go they came right apart so on the top i get this little tiny pinion here but on the bottom the big wheel fell off and as you can see on the bottom there's a heart-shaped cam and that's how the whole mechanism gets reset that big long bar i took off earlier presses up against it and creates some friction against it and since it's heart-shaped it has to slide along the edge until it can't slide anymore and right when it stops is when this thing's at zero it's genius design they use it for a lot of different types of chronograph functions and they used one here as well okay so now let's take apart the main spring barrel we'll take out the the barrel arbor and then we'll get the mainspring out of here and see how it's looking of course i always want to be careful here when removing the mainspring as it is actually quite a powerful spring and it can come unraveling all at once and you know if it hits you in the face or in the eye that could be pretty bad and but even if that didn't happen you could just damage it get the spring all bent wrong okay so let's get everything into the basket so that it can go into the watch cleaning machine and get a good thorough clean [Music] i wanted to show you at least a little bit of how i break these things up i don't organize them in a particularly specific way for myself i do try to keep though the bigger parts away from the smaller ones because in the watch cleaning machine they actually get spun around a whole bunch and i don't need huge pieces slamming up against the really delicate stuff so i try to kind of separate them that way and as you can see i put the bigger pieces like the barrel parts and the actual bridges and stuff in their own containers that aren't up against other parts i'll put the balance back on the main plate here so that it can go through the cleaning and in this top basket i'll go ahead and put the main spring itself so that it can get clean because this main spring seems to be in fine shape and may not need to be replaced if you have easy access to them it's not they're not particularly expensive and it's not super hard to replace them but if you've got a good one there's no no shame in redoing it so let's take a look at the case while that's in the cleaning machine and figure out what we're dealing with first things first this thing definitely needs a new crystal this is actually a special type of crystal that is a tensioned crystal so i'll have to look up one of those in the meantime let's take off these uh these pins and we can get to looking at the back there's some corrosion here on the case but after i start to to wipe on it with a piece of paper i realize it's not actually corrosion it's just gunk it's just dirt so you know a good cleaning here with a piece of peg wood to get all the big chunks out and then a run through the ultrasonic cleaner should have this case looking fantastic and i'm really happy about it because that is plated and you know that's the kind of case that can really deteriorate over time now one thing that we have to pay attention to here is this gasket though because this gasket looks like it's been on for quite a while and it will likely not be doing its function anymore because it's it's melted and it's flat the really good news is it still comes off pretty easily sometimes they get stuck but that gasket's definitely worn out and i'm gonna need to replace it okay so here's a really interesting stuff i got this machine this tool here that is made to take out press fitted pushers and the the case tubes that they go with so this is my first time using it but basically it's a simple tool that gives you some pushers some some little settings here that you can use to just shove out whatever's in there now after looking at it for a while there's two different types of pushers there's screw in and press fit and this one i believe is a press fit and this is a tool that you can use to take out press fit so here we go let's see if it works and if we can get this pusher tube out and there it goes it came right out so here it is now that's outside of the case tube or outside of the case and that's a little tube that it goes in now when you replace a pusher as it turns out you actually replace that part as well so you can see where it went in the case and now i've got a new pusher that i got and the first thing we need to do is there's a little thing called a c-clip this is just a tension clip that we take off of the pusher shaft here and then there's a spring and a cap and then there's the pusher tube and those are the four parts that make up a pusher they're actually pretty simple so i'm using some radico just to make sure that this the c-clip doesn't go flying on me and also just to help stabilize it while i take it off and there it is right there kind of down in the in the radical and the way this ends up working is you put the case tube in the case and then you put the spring and the cap on and then you put that c-clip on the other side of the pusher to keep it in place so there we go there's the tube the spring the c-clip and the button all separated and there's the old tube there that we're going to be replacing so the first thing that we need to do is use the other side of my new tool here and this is set up to put in these pressed foot press fit case tubes so what we're going to do is put the new case tube roughly in place and then we'll use the press to securely press it into place and it's just friction fit it does have a o-ring below it too though to make sure that it stays put and let's see if we can get it to actually seat itself here and there it goes yes just like that so this actually isn't too hard at all and i'm glad that this ended up going so smoothly at least this part of it because there we go i've got the new case tube on it now i did have to do a lot of measuring to order the right one of course now the tricky part is the shaft on this is too long right as you can see it's already hitting the corrector and i need to make sure that i trim it down to the correct length so that i can have this in the watch and it will not damage it by pushing in too far but also it's long enough to reach so what i'm going to do is kind of eyeball it here and then use my end cutters here to clip it and then i can use a file to kind of take the burr off and then eventually work my way down slowly until this thing is the right size so i've mocked it up here after doing all of that and i'm a little worried now because it doesn't look like it's quite long enough and you see the gap here i actually want that pusher as it sits to be up against that corrector when i'm not pushing it down and look it technically touches it but it won't go far enough so i've committed the carpenter's sin here measure twice cut cut once i cut too much and now i'm going to have to order another pusher so i'm going to send off for an order for that and we're going to get back to the reassembly of the watch here definitely a frustrating uh mistake on my part but you live and you learn and it certainly could have been worse those pushers cost about 15 so it wasn't a cheap part but also you know it wasn't 150 bucks or anything mainly it's the time honestly because now i have to wait for it to arrive in the mail again and you know it's going to take a week and a half or whatever at any rate you live and you learn and uh for for those of us who are amateurs at this and do it as a hobby this is par for the course uh you know you can never really be perfect with these things let's get this mainspring back in the barrel first i put on a little bit of mobius 8200 that's a mainspring grease that's a very thin layer of it basically just to keep corrosion and make sure that nothing gets stuck together but you really don't need much that is my preferred method to do it i've seen other people do it other ways and i i don't really like how they do it when people just put a bunch of oil on the top of the spring after it's inside okay here we go let's get this mainspring back in i love this sound oh it feels so good and the main springs back in its barrel and now we can put the um the arbor back in as well basically just have to make sure that the hook is lined up best we can i'm also going to put a little bit of oil on it before i put the cap on because the cap actually does contact the top of the barrel arbor there so it creates some friction i got this little tool off of ebay for i don't know five or ten bucks or something that helps you put the lid back on a little more securely and i like it it works fine just like that okay so now that that's all back together we can get to kraken on the actual movement itself now out of the watch cleaning machine of course the balance is still on the main plate because well that's where i put it and i need to take it off first for the same reason that we talked about before i don't want it sitting on the watch the entire time i'm working on it when the fact is that's the last part to go on the watch okay i'm gonna put a little bit of hp 1300 where that center wheel goes and we'll start from the bottom and work our way up there's that special little bridge just for the the wheel at the bottom there and now we can get the train wheels in place and then put the train wheel bridge on as well and just make sure these are seated and engaging correctly now i can put the escape wheel in place i'll tell you if you're looking to get into this hobby i definitely recommend it it reminds me of working on cars if if you've ever been into cars as an automotive enthusiast or had your own car that you've worked on i you know i used to work on cars with my dad and our friend mikey and you know i i really enjoy those times and i don't have the setup now to do it i live in an apartment and don't have the space and i got to tell you this watchmaking hobby has really kind of helped fill that role for me and uh that's one of the reasons that i recommend it because i can do this on my desk you know i have quite a bit of tools now over the the last you know year and a half two years that i've been building up and they all fit in a box you certainly can't say that for cars uh unfortunately so what what i'm doing here is the escape wheel jewel is actually capped that means that it has a jewel that has a hole in it and then on top of that a flat cap jewel to keep it in place and so that needs to be cleaned separately so i used the peg wood there to clean off any remaining dust dirt debris that was trapped underneath then i put it in a solution called one dip which is a solvent that helps clean it now i'm going to dry it off and then what you do is you take some mobius 910 which i'm taking out of the oiling thing there and you put just a little dot in the middle and then you replace the cap jewel on top of the bridge and then you uh you screw it down and that's it you do have to be careful when you put that cap back on because if you slide it around too much then all the oil comes off and just gets makes a big mess of it you have to do it over again and there we go so now i can put this bridge back on now that it's been cleaned and oiled properly i just have to make sure to line up the pivots from these wheels and i'll often use one of these little holders a little plastic stick here that i got just to put a little bit of light pressure because that helps the pivots find the jewel holes and then when they when you do find them it can help you keep the bridge in place that way you don't have the disaster scenario which by the way picking up screws is apparently difficult um of one of the pivots gets out of its hole and then you tighten down the bridge that will snap off the pivot in a heartbeat so you know you just want to be careful to make sure that all the holes are fully aligned and that nothing moves and so what i like to do is just check as i go i'll tighten down the screws not all the way but like you know loosely tighten down and then just make sure that things are spinning freely like this and there we go they're still spinning okay and that gives me the green light to now go ahead and tighten down this bridge fully okay and now i'm going to put the setting lever screw in here you almost always want to put these in first when it comes to these barrel bridges because most of the swiss watches are designed such that the barrel bridge actually has a hole in it that that screw peeks out from but that doesn't go through and if you look closely you can see where that is right there at the top of the movement and again now that i have the bridge in place i want to just do a quick check to make sure that that uh that the barrel is all lined up correctly because well it's the first wheel that's the one that actually spins all the other ones and you can see when i spin it it actually spins pretty freely so now we can put these screws in get the barrel bridge locked down now i'm going to get some hp 1300 that's the lubricant that we use for mid mid tier viscosity if you will like the not super heavy load but not the super light load either and for example i'm using this on the uh couple of parts here but one of them is where that arbor sticks up because that's a fairly high friction point and then the one i'm doing on here is for the crown wheel because it does spin as well and again the hp 1300 okay now we can put the crown wheel on and make sure we pick the right screw that's particularly important here because it's pretty common practice to use a reverse threaded screw for these so if you look closely i'm actually turning this to the left lefty loosey to tighten it down and that's fairly common that's mainly because the crown wheel goes the opposite direction and you don't want it to spin and then back out the screw basically it means that it as long as the watch is being operated in a normal fashion that turning motion could never grab the screw and actually back it off and take it out okay now we can put the setting lever spring excuse me now we can put the click spring and the click in as well as the ratchet wheel and this one on the other hand is right hand thread like normal righty tighty lefty loosey and again just a quick check to make sure that everything's spinning correctly and it looks as if it is okay now we need to put in this uh this little part that is the other side of the the special wheel that runs the the chronograph style function and i'm realizing that this really needed to go in before the barrel bridge because it actually has a tiny little pivot hole on the top so i'm gonna be merciful and i'll speed this up but this is kind of a classic error where now i got to take this bridge off so that i can put this part in now the good news is that's not too hard i don't need to take off the crown wheel or anything like that so it's not a disaster but this is one that i should have done prior to putting this bridge on but it's kind of weird this isn't normal um to have this extra functionality and i forgot so there we go again not a huge deal i'm just going to speed it up for you because well i'm just putting this this bridge and associated components on the same way that i just did but this time we've got that little wheel on there and that does engage directly with the barrel and that's what actually turns that counting that counting up clock that we have on the front now as you can see on the bottom here there's also a capped jewel so that's going to need to get the same treatment that the other one did where we take it out clean it up with the peg wood put it into the one dip and then carefully lubricate it replace the cap and then screw it back down so that's what i'm doing here it's not uncommon to use cap jewels like this on parts that receive a particularly large amount of wear like for example the escape wheel or the balance so this is that resetting wheel that i had shown you before with the cam on it on the bottom the heart-shaped one and it's just friction fit so i'm going to use my hand setting tool to push it back into place and there we go now i can get to going on this correcting arm that actually does the resetting so it pushes up against that cam and wherever it's at it slides along the length of it until it's on the thickest part and that means zero on the other side and you can see it moving when i spin it and then resetting when i push it back that way no matter where it's at it always resets it to the same thing a little bit of grease for the canyon opinion here i like to use my more sturdy tweezers to push this down then i can put the minute wheel into place a little bit of hp 1300 for the setting wheel and now i'm kind of working my way through the keyless works here putting some grease on the stem and this is the clutch wheel and the sliding clutch these are all part of the keyless works the part i mentioned before that lets you set the time on your watch as well as wind it up and there we go you also can notice that as the movement turns so does that wheel on the other side which makes sense because it's running off of the regular movement now unfortunately i've just recognized that i've got an extra part here and i remember what it was there was actually a spring underneath this correcting arm that helps it go back to zero basically to reset itself back to a position where it can be pushed down again and i neglected to put that spring under the first time now thankfully not a huge deal here as i just need to take it off and then get everything lined up now this proves to be a bit of a tricky operation uh i'm using one of my my sticks here to hold it down while i get the spring in place and then finally can tighten down the screw but um yeah that's kind of one of those things again where when you get a movement that has a different type of complication and you haven't worked on it very much see now now this arm goes back on its own thanks to that spring underneath and that's something that you just have to figure out and learn as you go now i'm going to use my actually my finger here to hold this part back because the problem is with the spring i need to put in this this uh shouldered screw that controls how far that arm can go but it keeps bumping up against it so i'm just going to use my my finger even though usually i don't use my fingers like that um i think it's probably not the best idea to do so just generally speaking just because you don't really know how much pressure you're going to be able to uh to apply at any point okay so now that we've got that back together we can get back going on these keyless works here and there's a little tiny plate that covers up the minute wheel there now we can put in the setting lever this is a little bit of a tricky operation because we do have to make it so that the threads from the setting lever screw which actually come in from the other side engage with the setting lever and that can just be a little bit tricky so i like to hold it in one hand and then just gently use my finger to hold it in place and then i can use the screwdriver to get it just like that and now you can see the setting lever is engaged the way it should be this is at 9501 grease so this is the heavy application stuff the blue grease and this is going to go on the yoke the yoke engages with the sliding clutch and it has a pretty big spring here the yolk spring but popped right in i'm gonna try to get a little bit of grease in between it just because that is a high friction area one of the things about friction is that it doesn't only slow things down or you know make things difficult to to keep going for a long time but also it can actually create a byproduct basically tiny shavings of metal if it's not properly left looked after and that's part of the reason why people recommend getting your watches serviced you know every whatever five seven years i know there's some people who say i just literally never get my watch service until it breaks and that can work um i actually don't think that that's like completely crazy but that is the risk that you're taking is that there was a perfectly preventable preventable uh issue that was creating some type of you know shavings or dust inside of your movement that then got worse and worse and worse until part or parts had to be replaced also of course it'll just tell better time and all that okay so now we can put the setting lever screw and that cover plate that i mentioned before into place a little bit of grease and as you can see i'll use the radico if i go a little bit too crazy with the grease and now we can just give it a quick test to make sure that it's everything is working now the next thing we need to do is clean and oil the cap jewels so we're gonna get on the microscope here so that you can see how this works these are uh you know shock settings they're called and they're basically there so that there's some amount of upwards and sideways movement that can happen to the balance wheel pivots without just having them break which is what they used to do all the time is just break but somewhere around the 1950s these uh shock settings became popular and they do a really good job so here we are i'm putting it back in after having done the same treatment with the one dip the peg wood and then the oiling and then there we go i can just put it right back into place and we can move on with our reassembly process so now we're actually getting fairly well down this stretch here and i can put in the pallet forks always got to be careful with this little bridge because it needs to engage with the pallet fork pivot but not and it has to engage fully if you tighten this thing down and that pivot is out of whack it will break for sure the pivots on these are absolutely tiny i mean really really small so again we're just going to give it a quick test before actually tightening it down and there we go that's what we want to see we want to see that pallet fork jump back and forth under the tension from the spring and now it is the moment of truth we will now put in the balance and see if this thing will run again this is the moment when you're working on a car when you sit in it and put the keys in after having worked on it for a long time and then see if it's going to start back up and it does look like it wants to run here and that is always the best sign even if it does look a little bit low amplitude it can take a minute for the um oils to settle in and then also you have to make sure that the watch is fully wound many people don't know this but one of the big challenges with that a watchmaker like somebody who actually designs and builds watches faces is that the watch has more power going through it when the mainspring is fully wound up than when it's not there's actually a gradual decline in power from when it's fully wound until when it's just barely still going and that can really mess with time keeping and look at that now it's really kicking up and ready for life and i am thrilled to see it it alway really every single time you work on a watch and it kicks right back up it feels fantastic it's the reason to do this hobby now that being said i'm noticing that when i'm winding up this watch it won't actually hold a full wind and it seems to be slipping the main spring seems to be slipping on the barrel arbor and that just is weird to me so i need to investigate this and as loads as i am to undo the work that i've already done we need to figure this out so i once again am going to be taking off the barrel bridge so this is now the the second time i've had to take it off and putting it back on will be the third time it went on but we got to get this right because it will not wind up all the way and i don't know why so i'm going to take the bridge out because clearly it's able to take at least a little bit of power but not quite enough and i'm going to investigate this situation and see why this is happening perhaps the arbor is worn out or the spring itself the hole the hook that it goes into isn't uh intact anymore but what i actually realize is that this is a left hand mainspring which is very strange most all swiss ones this one's in west germany so maybe that's why i don't know are are right-handed but this one's actually the other side thankfully for my main spring winder kit i have the left hand spring ones as well so that's what i'm gonna do here i'm gonna go ahead and rewind it back into the watch replace this uh this arbor and then see if that'll fix it now i thought that i had had it in there correctly but i apparently must have overlooked it because obviously if it goes in the opposite way it won't hold the the wind in the same fashion so same thing we did before back into the barrel a little little bit of lubricant on there and then i'll use this special tool to snap the barrel lid back into place and back into the watch it goes to see if it'll actually hold a wind and you know you know on a manual wind watch that you get to the end of it at some point and by the way yes this is the third time we're putting on this barrel bridge um that it'll stop and that wasn't happening before that was my big clue that something was going on and you can see right away the balance kicks back up as well and now it's not slipping i can keep winding the watch until i get to the very end as well as the balance really kicking up into full force here so very happy that i was able to sort that out don't know how i did that in the first place or why it's left hand but onward now we need to joule excuse me to oil the jewel holes here the challenge with this generally speaking is to put is not to put too much it's to put sort of the the right amount but it's a very small amount compared to how much you might think and that's why i prefer to do this generally speaking on the microscope because that's really one of the only ways that you can tell how much you've put in like that was the right amount there i'm also going to take a little bit of the hp 1300 and put it around some of these high friction parts for this corrector i don't know actually what i'm supposed to put here because i don't have a diagram for it but those did seem to be high leverage parts and i figured i should put something there so i did now we need to oil up the top half of the setting now that that's in place i can put the shock setting back down this is a spring it's a brass spring but they're extremely finicky so you do have to be very careful with them and there we go now the settings in place and we can put it on the time grapher and see how it does oh very nice wow only plus two seconds a day a reasonable beat error now the amplitude's actually a little bit high but uh that could be for a number of reasons or maybe it's just really high but yeah wow this thing's actually running way better than we had it before so i'm very happy with this okay so this thing came back to life properly and we can move on to our new pusher that's right it came in the mail as you can see this one is back to the full version not the one that i trimmed too short or frustratingly so so we're gonna have to do the same operation that we did before and that means taking off the c-clip like that and then disassembly in the pusher now the good news is this is the exact same pusher that i had ordered before so that means that the case tube i can just hang on to but i don't need to replace that again and once again i'm just going to eyeball about how long i need it but i'm going to be much more conservative this time so i'm going to use a sharpie to mark off where i need it to go and then use my end cutters again just to trim off that part i'm just double checking that i'm not over trimming here and there we go now that should be too long still though so once again i'm going to do a quick test fit and i want it to rest right up against where that corrector is but not too far and once again not too short like we had before so i'm going to remark again and just clip off a little bit of the end and as you can see that's the difference i mean it's not that much but it makes all the difference in the world now i can use this file real quick just to make sure that it doesn't have any burs on it and there we go that's what we wanted to see that's how we wanted this thing to look and uh it's pretty cool that i was able to mock it up so that you could actually see it working inside the case as well so now what we do is we put the pusher in and i'm holding it in with my thumb and the spring is in there which is why i have to hold it and then i put the c-clip with it in and the c-clip actually just prevents it from coming out that's its whole entire job just like that okay so with that done we can get to putting this crystal on now this is a tensioned crystal so it hasn't they called it an armored or a tensioned crystal it has a piece of metal at the bottom that basically pushes out against the edges of the case so these ones can't be bent in the normal way they're simply press fit on so i'm going to use a flat bottom for my rubber press and then the correctly sized upper die i am going to use a piece of plastic here just to prevent any possible scratches the truth is the dies are pretty smooth and they do a good job of not scratching but hey better safe than sorry and then i can just press this into place and once we hear it click then it should be good there we go and that should be it take a look at it here perfect looks beautiful and we've got our tension ringed crystal on there which means we can now do our final assembly so let's get rocking on this and figure out how it works so i'm going to put the hour wheel on first and then i guess i put the spring there in between and then i put this on this is a little bit confusing and i realized no actually that's brain thing goes on top and now this is a tricky business because what you need to do here is line it up so that it actually resets to zero and if it's one tooth off it won't reset to zero now they've been really kind and they've put a line up here where it goes but also i'm kind of working against myself here there we go right to zero because the watch is running which means that it's constantly turning and i have to i have to adjust it accordingly but now i can put the dial on and the hands hour hand goes on first then the minute hand it's always a challenge to get these lined up but also somewhat on their post so that you can push them on and i'll even use the hand setting tool to sort of align them properly and then just a quick press and of course a quick check to make sure that they're not scraping or hitting any of the indices or that and that they stay in alignment properly and it looks like it's okay so now i can put the seconds hand on these ones are quite delicate as well and there we go now i can use my hand blower here to make sure that there's no dust or debris on the inside of the crystal or on the uh on the dial and also we have to remember we got to replace that gasket so i'll put it on the the silicone charger that just basically puts a bunch of silicone on and around it and then there we go now we've got the new gasket on so that helps create a better seal and we'll keep moisture out of it now we can put the the case on here i have to kind of work it around where the pusher is but not too bad and then of course the winding stem can go in quite proud of this one i know that it might not seem like a big deal to have replaced a pusher but without any guidance having figured it out myself makes me feel good now i have confidence that i know how they work and i could do it again on another watch it's just a matter of getting the right measurements and understanding if it's a pusher that has a that's pressed in or that is screwed in okay now the case back can go on it has a couple of grooves for the pusher and for the crown so you just got to make sure that that's lined up but otherwise it just press fits on and i have to say this thing came out gorgeous it is beautiful i put a strap on it real quick just to see how it went and just giving it kind of a couple of quick tests to make sure it sets and all that kind of stuff but i gotta say this thing's in gorgeous shape it cleaned up beautifully it runs nice it's got a brand new pusher on it and really i couldn't be happier with it a fantastic little watch with a cool some somewhat unique function to it that's actually relevant and useful and yeah what a great restoration i'm really happy with how it came out and i hope that you enjoyed coming along the ride with me if you're interested in these type of watches they often have the trade name men stop and as i mentioned they were meant they were made actually by quite a few different companies so you can look up men's stop to see if you can find them around i want to thank you for joining me i love it when you take the time to hang out with me and uh see what we can do about restoring a watch this one was a bit of a bumpy ride but we got through it and what a cool watch on the other side i also want to mention instagram if you'd like to follow me there i give some in-between project updates that kind of thing is wristwatch underscore revival over there and i also want to mention my patrons i have a patreon to help support this channel as you might imagine making these videos is very resource intensive both time and money wise and i'm not a professional watchmaker or anything like that so this is just my hobby if you like what i'm doing and you'd like to help support me you can go to patreon.com wristwatch revival and find out you even get some cool benefits for doing so and i want to thank kelsey stan dustin brenton adam caleb russell james samuel tony max mitchell adrian drew kyle erica trevor robert squirrel lute derga lewis williams rudy dominic brad mikey and sorin for supporting me on there thank you so much and we'll see you next time

Channel: Wristwatch Revival

Views: 56,708

Rating: 4.950026 out of 5

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Id: DXwkLSl6d-I

Length: 56min 18sec (3378 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 19 2021