A gift from the watchmaker. Only took me a few months to get running...

This watch is junk. But it's my junk, so I love it. This watch was given to me by my watchmaker when I first expressed interest in taking up watchmaking. It ran at the time and it uses the dreaded Baumgartner BFG 866 movement. The movement of this watch was the first movement I ever took apart; it's still in pieces, actually. I threw in an identical movement of a watch branded Rosmary, (yes, without the "e") which was a Hong-Kong-assembled 866. Naturally, I swopped out some plastic parts for the metal counterparts of the watch's original movement. Here's what I did:

Notice that the "Made" of "Swiss Made" is stamped out and replaced with "parts?" Buying one of the cheapest Swiss pin-pallets and assembling it in Hong Kong to save money. I can only imagine that the next cost-cutting measure would have been child or slave labour. The movement was assembled by Algor watch company, likely another brand cranking out low-end jobbers under mysterious names that have vanished over the years.

The original plate looks like this:

I used this one in resurrecting this Rottery, because it technically isn't assembled in Hong Kong. It was, fifty years ago, but not anymore. It should rather say "assembled at an oaf's desk in South Africa." There was another piece in the keyless works that sort of holds everything in place (if you've opened one of these up, you'll know exactly the part I'm talking about) which was made of plastic. I replaced it with the metal part of the Rottery's original movement. So the movement inside it has at least two original parts, everything else is from the donor.

I lost the dial screws the first day I had the watch, so the dial is actually held on with some Rodico. That's a solution that, in Afrikaans, we call a "spoeg en plak" job, translation, "spit-and-paste." It's not pretty, but it works, I guess. One day I might bother myself to find those little adhesive strips to attach the dial with, but I suspect I might be waiting for the day that never comes. The movement beats with a healthy amplitude, and it beats loudly. If you scroll through my profile a bit, you may find two posts about my first venture into watchmaking. It was this watch's original movement.

I serviced this watch with an oiler that my watchmaker gave me. The donor movements were from a plastic bag full of movements that he gave me with it a few weeks back. I am truly indebted to him. That's the whole reason I wanted to get it running again. I wanted something to mark our relationship and serve as a reminder that we both started out by working on the same pin-pallet movement. So, I'll wear this ageing, cheap watch with pride.