Confessions Of A Watch Killer.
Today, I was once again trying to bring my Dad’s old eighties Quartz back into service. The other day, I took a punt on a movement, and it fit the dial etc. (Keeping in mind, working out what it needs is basically guess work for me at this point) Then the flipping second hand broke (after I carefully straightened the others because they were a bit wrecked too — likely by me in earlier repair and cleaning attempts) and I order a new set of hands. That arrived today, and don’t fit — but I took a chance on using the original hour and minute hands, and using just the new seconds hand. Then I snapped the stem on the new movement. Thank god it was a cheap one for the sake of experiment.
It’s a shame, because I did a nice job making the case and bracelet all neatly polished and brushed with my hand-finishing skills. Here’s the photo from when I mentioned it before:
Not too bad? Shame I have basically given up the project until summer.
I like cleaning and polishing things, especially watches. I also, for the most part, really hate getting (or leaving) scratches and dings in the things. So I did for my Pagani (which has got scratched, and dinged — sometimes from making the mistake of cleaning it with the same sponge as the dishes, at the same time as the dishes, some from me having to fix an annoyance on the bezel, there’s a recurring theme here…) to deal with some scratches that I couldn’t unsee. To the eye, it’s not a bad job. Or so I thought. Which is when I took the photo you see at the top of this article.
It looks awful, doesn’t it?
The reality is, I am a fiddler and tinkerer, and fixer of things — who for some reason, really has a poor success rate with watches. (And only watches, I have replaced parts on my son’s Nintendo switch so often that it’s like the gaming console of Theseus. Works fine.) Pretty sure I will not stop, and will hopefully get better.
But I live in fear of eventually letting the tiny dings on my Orient get to me, let alone owning a ‘luxury’ or ‘grail’ watch, because I am not sure I can be trusted not to wreck those come the time.
So, what do you lot think? Give up on the repairs, the polishing? Give up on the watch necromancy? Does every watch collector — particularly those without the budget to go to a professional, or with sentimental pieces that no longer run and won’t be touched by a pro — get into taking apart and putting together?
Or, hope against hope, am I being too harsh about how bad that bracelet now looks?
Maybe next time I should let it get more than ten months worth of scratches.
Any tips?
Fortysomething stay-at-home father. Descendant of tinkerers, engineers, and owner of many pencils, tools, and arcane measuring devices.
My entire business is developed around doing this. Resurrecting old watches. All I can say is gentle and patient. Especially setting the seconds hand on a quartz lol.
Polishing looks reasonable to me. I’d be happy with it.
My entire business is developed around doing this. Resurrecting old watches. All I can say is gentle and patient. Especially setting the seconds hand on a quartz lol.
Polishing looks reasonable to me. I’d be happy with it.
Thanks. I moved from cape cod to hagerty cloths, which I prefer 😆 (and basically scotch rite for brushing)
I’m usually good with fiddly little things, even on my dining room table work set-up (or sometimes on the bed with a box lid lol) but I have outright lost the old hour hand now, and really have no clue where to even reasonably get the hands xD
That’s encouraging though. 🙂
The first watch I restored was an heirloom for my wife. It was brutal. I worked at it , probably 5 hours just setting the hands. Take them off, do it again. Bent the seconds hand. Order another. Once I was satisfied, I got a ton of compliments. People started asking if I could fix watches for them, friends I didn’t even know liked watches.
Stick with it. The satisfaction of it far exceeds the frustrations.
I'd be more than happy with what you've done! You're being way too hard on yourself!
Any tinkering I've done has made things MUCH, so I leave it to people with more patience and know-how now 😆
I'd be more than happy with what you've done! You're being way too hard on yourself!
Any tinkering I've done has made things MUCH, so I leave it to people with more patience and know-how now 😆
Always best. 😉
Tips.
Use the right tool for the job. The right tools are not cheap. Cheap tools are often worse than useless
Have patience and take your time
Watch YT on the subject videos; there's plenty available
Don't be too hard on yourself and be prepared to make mistakes
Don't work on anything you aren't prepared to bin. If it's expensive or means something to you... leave it until you are more confident and adept.
Ask questions here if you're unsure. There are plenty of people here who can advise (myself included)
Enjoy it
Tips.
Use the right tool for the job. The right tools are not cheap. Cheap tools are often worse than useless
Have patience and take your time
Watch YT on the subject videos; there's plenty available
Don't be too hard on yourself and be prepared to make mistakes
Don't work on anything you aren't prepared to bin. If it's expensive or means something to you... leave it until you are more confident and adept.
Ask questions here if you're unsure. There are plenty of people here who can advise (myself included)
Enjoy it
I mostly use the right tools for job. Mostly. (Not going to lie, in some cases my Swiss Army knife has been more handy for certain things — the little screwdriver in the corkscrew is significantly better for resizing folded metal bracelets than any watch tool.) And I mostly follow all these points — tools don’t have to be expensive though (my first spring bar tool was a modified screwdriver with a groove cut into it) and frankly there comes a cost benefit ratio.
I am lucky though, being a third generation toolbox having person, and have a father likes to make tools himself when we need one for some random thing. (Hence the homemade spring bar tool)
I am unlikely to wreck anything enough to bin, but the quartz watch in question has been defined as for experimenting on by its original owner (Dad again) and the only reason I am working on it is because of my own sentiment. There’s a lumibrite of my own that is FUBAR largely because of the cheap alloy it was made of mind you.
God loves a tinkerer, and so do we. No don't give up, do the old research get advice . And polishing is an art, so easy to get wrong so try it on a bit that's not always in the line of sight ie near the clasp. Mind you what you've done on the Pagani looks pretty cool. It's a learning curve and you never stop learning.
Hey I've being doing it for years(not on watches mind) and this is the result of my efforts today
Tried to move the H links up to the top of the strap(it's still got blood on it😖) So no ones perfect(me never) time,technique and tools, don't get disheartened we learn more from fails,keep trying and enjoy.
God loves a tinkerer, and so do we. No don't give up, do the old research get advice . And polishing is an art, so easy to get wrong so try it on a bit that's not always in the line of sight ie near the clasp. Mind you what you've done on the Pagani looks pretty cool. It's a learning curve and you never stop learning.
Hey I've being doing it for years(not on watches mind) and this is the result of my efforts today
Tried to move the H links up to the top of the strap(it's still got blood on it😖) So no ones perfect(me never) time,technique and tools, don't get disheartened we learn more from fails,keep trying and enjoy.
Reversing the clasp end and the watch-head end? I don’t think I would have the patience for manually modifying a mesh — just looking at the edges of those links there worries me lol. Nice job!
On the Pagani I am lucky it’s not so much modifying as restoring, but I did also put a mirror polish between the lugs pretty early on, when I switched to a NATO and got some curved spring bars, and some jumbo ones, just for options.
I want to get a seamaster style bracelet for it, with clasp, but think the only way I will get one that fits perfectly would be to buy a whole Pagani SMP homage, which is an expensive way to get a strap. Mind you, if they do a P.O. homage (like the 1729 which has dual calendar) on an SMP strap, I could then chop and change between the two, as this bracelet is more P.O. whilst the watch more SMP. (One of those huge differences which me makes me squint at the clomage concept in this specific case at least… the model has gone more that way, but only because customers on Reddit and the like pushed for changes that bring it closer to the NTTD it was selling as an homage to.)
Reversing the clasp end and the watch-head end? I don’t think I would have the patience for manually modifying a mesh — just looking at the edges of those links there worries me lol. Nice job!
On the Pagani I am lucky it’s not so much modifying as restoring, but I did also put a mirror polish between the lugs pretty early on, when I switched to a NATO and got some curved spring bars, and some jumbo ones, just for options.
I want to get a seamaster style bracelet for it, with clasp, but think the only way I will get one that fits perfectly would be to buy a whole Pagani SMP homage, which is an expensive way to get a strap. Mind you, if they do a P.O. homage (like the 1729 which has dual calendar) on an SMP strap, I could then chop and change between the two, as this bracelet is more P.O. whilst the watch more SMP. (One of those huge differences which me makes me squint at the clomage concept in this specific case at least… the model has gone more that way, but only because customers on Reddit and the like pushed for changes that bring it closer to the NTTD it was selling as an homage to.)
Oh it's a shambles and one for the bin, had a go and failed, thought it would be easy, but at £22 not the end if the world.
With you trying to get a seamaster strap that fits your Pagani you can try a generic one and maybe with a dremmel and some patience might get a good result. That's the problem sometimes even the hommages themselves shy away from getting it too close,and of course like you said the public voiced their preferences and they 'listened' but when you want 'it' you gotta have 'it' and 2nd best won't do, I know I quest for the perfect strap for the watch(and spend a lot of money and time doing so) .
Oh it's a shambles and one for the bin, had a go and failed, thought it would be easy, but at £22 not the end if the world.
With you trying to get a seamaster strap that fits your Pagani you can try a generic one and maybe with a dremmel and some patience might get a good result. That's the problem sometimes even the hommages themselves shy away from getting it too close,and of course like you said the public voiced their preferences and they 'listened' but when you want 'it' you gotta have 'it' and 2nd best won't do, I know I quest for the perfect strap for the watch(and spend a lot of money and time doing so) .
I prefer it when they aren’t too close, but close enough to have the features I like design wise (at the end of the day, if it was truly about functionality rather than design, we’d all buy a solar G-Shock and call it day, and even rolex would have to shut up shop) and naturally at a price within range. (Saying that, both my Pagani’s are eBay purchases, and I don’t think I knew my Accurist was a bit of an homage when I bought years back…)
I did look at a few generic ones, and odds are I would get lucky and it would fit (that seems to be the way of it when I go bargain hunting… must be one of my grandmothers working some charm as my personal saint of thrifty shopping — my rubber strap looks like it was made for my Orient, but only cost nine quid. Mind you, it may be something boring like geometry and maths) but always held back as I haven’t found one with the clasp style I would prefer. Mind you, I could probably fit new ones. Ironically, at thirty quid a pop, it’s over half what I paid for the watch 😆 but also, only two NATOs. Or about a fifth of a NATO at Omega prices…
I change my strap all the time anyway, think partially because of not wanting to repeat myself on wrist shots here. (Ha! It’s about 90 percent the Orient of late.) So between my natural flighty behaviour with straps, and not wanting to buy a Dremel (except as a bloke of a certain age, of course I want to buy one, at the same time) I will probably keep window shopping. Tomorrow I reckon I will tape the bracelet to the coffee table and take a different grit and grain of polishing/burnishing cloth to it. Have a theory to test about which one would work best.
I'd be more than happy with what you've done! You're being way too hard on yourself!
Any tinkering I've done has made things MUCH, so I leave it to people with more patience and know-how now 😆
It’s always worth owning a couple of tools though surely? Thanks. 🙂
I prefer it when they aren’t too close, but close enough to have the features I like design wise (at the end of the day, if it was truly about functionality rather than design, we’d all buy a solar G-Shock and call it day, and even rolex would have to shut up shop) and naturally at a price within range. (Saying that, both my Pagani’s are eBay purchases, and I don’t think I knew my Accurist was a bit of an homage when I bought years back…)
I did look at a few generic ones, and odds are I would get lucky and it would fit (that seems to be the way of it when I go bargain hunting… must be one of my grandmothers working some charm as my personal saint of thrifty shopping — my rubber strap looks like it was made for my Orient, but only cost nine quid. Mind you, it may be something boring like geometry and maths) but always held back as I haven’t found one with the clasp style I would prefer. Mind you, I could probably fit new ones. Ironically, at thirty quid a pop, it’s over half what I paid for the watch 😆 but also, only two NATOs. Or about a fifth of a NATO at Omega prices…
I change my strap all the time anyway, think partially because of not wanting to repeat myself on wrist shots here. (Ha! It’s about 90 percent the Orient of late.) So between my natural flighty behaviour with straps, and not wanting to buy a Dremel (except as a bloke of a certain age, of course I want to buy one, at the same time) I will probably keep window shopping. Tomorrow I reckon I will tape the bracelet to the coffee table and take a different grit and grain of polishing/burnishing cloth to it. Have a theory to test about which one would work best.
Sounds like your going to have some fun getting it right. Oh you got to get a dremmel or a dremmel 'hommage' from lidl, every bloke has got to have one(even if they don't need one😁) I was using mine the other day in watch hq(the spare bedroom) to pare down some jubilee end links for a vintage piece for the wife(she wasn't best pleased, as usual).
Very funny....at least you are enjoying yourself..
Redid it with a different grit, taped to coffee table, listening to Michael Palin. Then washed it thoroughly (using some of the wife’s hair conditioner with Afghan oil — Shh.) and knocked back the brushing with a Hagerty polishing cloth, and brought up the high polish with the same. So, that’s maybe slightly less damaged by my repair and restore attempts.
The inside of the bracelet is untouched by me, so I use it as control, as it were.