The £20 Watch Repair Challenge!

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Hello and welcome to the channel. If you're new here, my name is Mike. We're jumping straight in with this tiny, and it is a tiny little watch that I picked up at the weekend at the Birmingham Watch and Clock Fair here in the UK. And I was on a mission to find a really cheap watch that we could have a bit of fun with on the channel and prove that um watch restoration, watch repair, watch making, whatever you want to call it, um can be done on a budget and uh you can get a lot of enjoyment. Uh this is a little date pointer watch as you can see here. I'll show you more of that in a moment. Cost me £20. That was the budget I set myself. Ironically, I've already started this video with a sort of dive type watch that I bought at the last watch fair, but I'm now waiting for parts. So, you're going to probably see this one before that one. And that one is the same sort of thing. Buy a cheap watch. See if we can have some fun with it. So, I in desperation, I bought this little thing here. It's called a Dor.

[00:01:03]Uh, it's got 21 jewels. Says it's waterproof.

[00:01:06]Excuse me. I debate whether it's still waterproof. it tries to run um and it's got um a date track all around the side of the movement. A bit like the Orus.

[00:01:21]People know the Orus date pointer.

[00:01:22]They've been going around for a long time and um you can still get them now.

[00:01:26]I I'm led to believe. So, if we just quickly wind this through 12, you will see that the little crescent moon there jumps over to represent the next day. This watch has seen a lot of hard life. You can see that the white hands, well, it's been painted. Let's face it, they're not original. They might be original hands, but somebody's painted them and painted them badly. Uh, but equally, they've painted them so they can actually see the thing. I've sort of put this in certain light positions and you can't read it at all.

[00:02:00]It is quite a small watch. I think it is 33 and a half 34. Um case was once goldplated. I feel someone has either scraped off all the gold plating or it's um just come off and we're down to the bare brass. But funny enough, that gives it an interesting patina. It also gives me something to work towards. So, in this video, we're going to strip this movement down because it's stopping and starting.

[00:02:28]We're going to see if we can get it going. Uh, what the movement is, how this date operation works. I'm sure it's going to be pretty simple to be fair, but I've never seen inside something like this before. Uh, see if we can improve the hand, see if we can improve the case and just try and give it a new lease of life. I mentioned an Orus.

[00:02:49]Here's my Orus date pointer, which in itself is a little bit strange. This was bought once again at the Birmingham watch and clock fair uh off a stall of a friend of mine actually and um I paid I think it was £100. I loved it. I thought it was really good. Uh all running and serviced. However, on future research, I could never find a black dial Orus um date pointer, which is a bit strange.

[00:03:23]Whole internet can't seem to find one.

[00:03:25]When I start looking at this under the microscope, I can see that the Orus and the the 12 and the indices have been painted by hand with some sort of gold paint. Um but the movement's correct.

[00:03:39]It's an Orus movement. The date track is correct. So, you know, anyone watching who's seen one like this has got one like this, just let me know in the comments. Right, that's enough waffling.

[00:03:50]Let's crack on and have a look inside today's project.

[00:03:57]Right, before we dig deeper, this is it on the time graer. And yeah, we just got static, haven't we? Really, it's took ages for it to even pick up a trace. And uh that is not looking good at all.

[00:04:10]Maybe this 20 idea is not a good one.

[00:04:15]Right. Anyway, let's get a bit closer.

[00:04:19]So, here we are on the microscope. You can just quickly see the dial and um yeah, you can see it's all really faded.

[00:04:27]All the gold has flecked off the indices, unless of course they may have been coated with tritium. But I think this is going to end up being a fairly lowgrade uh movement. And you can just about see the date track. Of course, we're just getting some reflection on the light from the um the crystal there. So, the main event is this.

[00:04:53]Just look at this. Right. So, um, I was looking at these watches and thinking, well, it's a jewel count of 21 jewels, so it's going to be a reasonable movement. I have this kind of process in my mind that the higher the jewel count, generally the better the movement will be. Um, and it doesn't catch me out all that often, although I have done a 21J pin pallet movement on this channel, or it was a 23, I can't remember. And this is another pin pallet. So pin pallets are basically where you have the pallet fork which is down here. This thing that's just wiggling back and forth and it's got a little metal pin on it. And the Swiss lever escapement has uh jewels on them. Now I'm led to believe and people will pick me up in the comments rightly or wrongly here is that back in the day the Swiss lever escapement with um the jeweled on the pipe fork was patented. So anything not coming out of Switzerland couldn't have it. This brand here, Vertzi, Vertie, something like that, is German. I'm pronouncing it terrible. So my German fans that are watching, I do apologize for ruining your language with my uh utter incompetence. Um, so yeah, but it does look really, really basic, doesn't it?

[00:06:16]Um, and I'm debating whether the 21 jewels on the front is accurate, too.

[00:06:23]Clearly, we're missing a cover here, which would normally have another two jewels in it, I feel. So, I think as we strip this movement down, we'll try and do a jewel count as we go along. Um, because it could also signify that at some point in time, it's had a different movement put into it. So, let's get it um into a movement holder and start finally disassembling the thing. So, I just need to strip the hands off.

[00:07:01]Let's remove the dial.

[00:07:09]Right there. There we go. Look at that.

[00:07:11]Um, basic basic basic basic. Um, no wonder it was 20 pounds. But at least we're now getting a movement reference of uh 57 stroke 8. So I'll be able to do a bit of research on that and figure out um the rough date of this movement or the range of this movement. Clearly this arm here is the actuator I think for that um date wheel. So it's going to be a bit like the same as a um a normal conventional date display if you like. I can already see that there's just a little um upright post on this uh wheel here which is assuming the owl well it must be the owl wheel.

[00:08:02]Um or is it trying to think now? But either way, that's going to go around.

[00:08:06]It's going to knock knock that over every 24 hours, isn't it? Of course.

[00:08:09]What am I talking about? So, yeah, that's just going to knock that over.

[00:08:13]And then this little spring here is retaining it. Just curious as to where the actual spring is though because it's it's solid and I want to put it in a movement holder ultimately. So, let's just get set up for that. get the other cameras on the go. And um yeah, welcome to the world of cheap watch repair. No one would normally tackle something like this. It's certainly not economic to do it. Um for me, it's a little bit of fun.

[00:08:45]Right, finally get on to some proper work. I've got to say though, this thing is crude. Like crude with a capital K.

[00:08:53]I'm going to just zoom in on this microscope for you. And you can just kind of look first of all, I mean, look at look at all the the pitting. Well, the just the crudness of how this has been stamped. Uh presumably it's been stamped or rough machined. Uh here we go again where you I would expect to see another dual plate here. I mean, I'm now actually debating whether this thing's going to be any any good. It seems to be missing stuff, doesn't it?

[00:09:30]This wheel, which I said was well, wrongly said it was the hour wheel. It's the calendar wheel, basically. It's it's set to one side, and that's just got a ratio to go uh once around every 24 hours, isn't it? Um, but yeah, look, I mean, look at all the wear up here.

[00:09:47]Look. But, you know, someone's loved it and um let's just carry on and see what we can get done uh inside this thing.

[00:09:56]Should be a bit of a laugh if nothing else. You tell me in the comments, right, whether you would take something like this on, whether you'd get some fun uh and experience or enjoyment from such a movement.

[00:10:14]Extremely dirty again though. Look at that. So, this this spring here is just screwed at the top.

[00:10:34]And maybe there's a pin underneath it.

[00:10:35]I'm going to leave that in situ to be honest with you. If you'd watched my last video on the the Citizen, um I regretted taking out the click spring on that one, didn't I? So, um I'm going to learn from my lessons.

[00:11:00]It's got a strong cannon pinion, which is good. I have seen this kind of setup before. Um, as you can see, it winds and then if we pull the crown to setting position, it's just moving that out the way, that little arm.

[00:11:20]So, let's get that screw out.

[00:11:23]Roco to the rescue.

[00:11:33]It did rescue kind of.

[00:11:38]So that's how it's come apart.

[00:11:43]So we're going to, as always, just try and make a mental note of the position of everything.

[00:11:55]In actual fact, look, there's a spring here as well. I didn't notice that.

[00:12:04]Can we Can we remove that? Should we remove that? How do we get it tucked back underneath there?

[00:12:19]Right, I'm leaving that in position because I think this bottom plate will come out when we mess around on the other side. Maybe that then gives us access to that spring.

[00:12:35]So, this is what I'm referring to. These this little thing here should be here as well. Far as I'm aware, they're kind of decorative really. It's just up the jewel count. But clearly, it's missing and it's missing on the other side. So, somebody it's probably been used as a donor watch or they've fallen out over time. I mean, look, there's another one there. I didn't even notice it. Another one there.

[00:13:00]Maybe it has got 21 or would have had 21 jewels.

[00:13:05]Maybe I'm giving the whole thing a disservice.

[00:13:14]There's the cannon pinion. Now, I'm going to leave these in place for now. Um, and we'll flip it over and have a look on the other. There's a big screw here as well. Look.

[00:13:35]So, undo the screw for this to get the stem out and the the the uh the winding pinion wheel.

[00:13:43]What's that screw for?

[00:13:47]We'll find out soon enough, won't we?

[00:13:51]Equally, there's a This is the click actually for the barrel. I mean, God, I'm racing away with this watch. It's fully bloody wound.

[00:14:00]And um that is an unexloded bomb waiting to go off. And I didn't even think about it. And now the problem is I've took everything off.

[00:14:12]So the moment I move that, the whole thing's just going to go mad. So I'm literally going to have to put a lot of this back on. Ah, the joys. Right. Okay.

[00:14:24]Okay. Back to square one. That fitting that just took ages. It was an absolute flipping nightmare. So, I'm not looking forward to it later on. So, just going to put some wind on so we can get the click spring out the way and then safely and controllably let the main spring down or disarm the bomb as I like to say.

[00:14:51]So, there we go. That was well, we'll call it mistake number one. I do like my mistakes. And I mean, I call it a mistake. It's not really. I'm just learning the movement. I've never been in this one before. Don't know. It's nuances. Um, but I just like to show everything that goes wrong when you're doing this as much as everything that goes right.

[00:15:20]Okay, let's flip it over and have another look on the other side.

[00:15:25]So, when I look at the balance here, certainly the hair spring. Just trying to get that into focus.

[00:15:32]Not 100% sure.

[00:15:36]Looks a little bit sort of stretched out. It could be just a deception for the for the terminal curve. Um, but we'll see.

[00:15:44]It's still a very delicate part and for that reason it needs to come out early on.

[00:15:53]And it's not easy because there's such a big gap between the bottom of the plate and the top of the plate. And I need something to pry with just cuz it seems to be quite stuck. I'm going to my biggest screwdrivers. I've never used these. There we go.

[00:16:22]So, it could be my worst fears.

[00:16:25]The hair spring doesn't look that centric to me. It could be a little bit magnetized, could be a bit of dirt, could be the way it is. Uh, I don't like messing with hair springs, as many of you will know if you've watched the channel long enough, because it normally ends in disaster. But we'll see what happens after cleaning. Just a note as well, this is a jewel that has a sapphire. It's just very clear.

[00:16:51]Sometimes you see those rather than being the sort of pinky purple color, they can be transparent as well. They're all synthetic.

[00:17:00]And then quickly, this is the pin palette that I'm referring to. So you've got a an entrance and exit pallet if you like for the escape wheel which is how all the time is released if you're not really familiar with watches.

[00:17:17]Um everything goes through a trade of wheels which you'll see in a moment from the power source which is a main spring and it gets down to here called the escapement. This is called the escape wheel and this will tick and tuck trying to do it without damaging anything. So, this will go back and forth. And as it does so, it releases. Well, this is the the balance spins around that little jewel I've just shown you, the transparent one. Comes through here, goes all the way around here, comes back, kicks it, and as it does that, it releases um a little bit more power and a and one tooth at a time. Off it goes.

[00:17:54]That's kind of a very rough way of describing it all. Um, what we're seeing here, of course, is these pins, hence the pin pallet, rather than a jeweled escapement, which runs generally a lot smoother.

[00:18:23]So, it just looks like we have this screw and this screw to remove the top plate. Strangely, you would think that there was one there, but then that's the Was that the balance screw was holding it down as well? I think it was.

[00:18:46]And the moment of truth.

[00:18:59]It looks like most of the trains coming with the bridge.

[00:19:03]Indication of extreme dirt.

[00:19:10]So look, here's the some of the wheels.

[00:19:17]on the escape wheel here. Let's just zoom in. Look, there's a great big long hair which is been tangled around everything and that won't have been doing it any good. See, equally all the copious amounts of old dried oil and grease and dirt, that won't be helping either.

[00:19:40]And the fact that it's won't even hardly come out the jewel tells you that cleaning on this is going to require quite a bit of probably pre- cleaning in the ultrasonic before we put it in the proper cleaning fluids.

[00:19:58]And the last wheel is this one.

[00:20:06]And all we have left is the barrel.

[00:20:15]What's really interesting is this is the the banking pins and they do look at an extreme angle to me.

[00:20:34]So I'm a bit flummxed as well by the barrel. It doesn't seem to just pop out like most barrels.

[00:20:42]Ah.

[00:20:44]Ah.

[00:20:48]We've made a bird's nest. Yay.

[00:20:52]I wasn't expecting it to do that.

[00:20:55]Why has it done that? The barrel just doesn't come apart.

[00:21:01]So, oh dear. Right. Okay. We might be off to a really bad start.

[00:21:08]the 20 pound watch. If this main this main spring might be knackered, sometimes you can rescue them. I don't want to spend any money on this watch particularly because it's just not something that I'm particularly going to wear.

[00:21:24]Just curious as to how that's happened.

[00:21:33]Yeah, the bottom of the barrel is is is on a spring.

[00:21:37]It's the click, isn't it? I suppose that's cuz I didn't take it out.

[00:21:44]Right. Okay.

[00:22:01]Ah, there we go. Actually, if I zoom out, I am zoomed out.

[00:22:09]It's actually a recoverable that main spring. Doesn't look too bad. Still don't quite understand why the barrel hasn't come out.

[00:22:19]It can't possib Well, can it? Can it be screwed in?

[00:22:26]Of course it can, Michael. Yes, that's the most obvious thing ever.

[00:22:38]Crazy.

[00:22:45]Yep. The barrel is screwed to the main plate.

[00:22:51]That's weird. I don't think I've ever ever seen that before. Does any of you look at all the wear on the plate as well? Look.

[00:22:59]So, in theory, we can still strip this down further to get to some of those springs on the other side, but I don't know. We've just had mistake number two, haven't we? With the uh main spring error there. So, you know, do I really want to remove this plate to access that spring and that spring? There's nothing else that I can see going on other than removing these little jewels, of course.

[00:23:32]So, yeah, for now, I'm going to call that strip down. Hope you enjoyed the first part of this video. If you did, hit the thumbs up. Uh, comment below uh what you think so far. Is any of you still watching? I mean, it ain't exactly a highrade movement this, is it? But it is a bit of a fun and watching me fudge all this. There's not many parts. Um but yeah, man, that's going to be a lot of cleaning. So, I think I will remove these and um actual Yeah. No, I'll have to remove them. I was going to say maybe they're different sizes, but I don't think they are. Right. Okay. Onwards to the cleaning.

[00:24:16]So before we go cleaning, we need to do a jewel count because I'm suspecting something rather fishy here as many of you also are, I'm sure. Right, this is the train bridge. We got four jewels.

[00:24:30]We're missing two there in theory. So let's call that six.

[00:24:36]Seven, eight, nine, 10. There's also one, maybe two there.

[00:24:45]So, we'll be generous and say 12. The main plate 13 14 15 16 17. And we also had another one of these missing. So, I get this movement at 18 jewels, which is still reasonably respectable, but it isn't the 21 jewels that is marked up on the dial.

[00:25:09]So, I will wonder what movement was originally in this watch.

[00:25:15]That could be an interesting detective thing. I'm going to be on Google later on tonight, that's for sure. You can see this jewel down here. Let's just get a bit closer. This jewel is smashed and cracked. And to be quite frank, I am not going to start finding a jewel for that and pushing it out. It's not going to be worth it. We're going to just see now on damage limitation. We'll clean it all up. We'll rebuild it. Even with the existing dodgy mainspring and just see what sort of crappy performance we're going to get as a result. Uh I don't want to keep you too long in this video. So, um cleaning. I think I'll just skip the cleaning. I'm going to put it in the ultrasonic. We'll do some um pre- cleaning that way to get rid of all this old dirt before then running it through the main L&R automatic cleaning machine. Then we'll start some of the rebuild and possibly in the rebuild we will then be able to tell you perhaps a little bit more history depending on what I found. Just look at the state of it.

[00:26:21]Uh well then this is the hobby. It's fun. Like I said before, like, subscribe, all of that uh business. And um I'll see you on the other side of the little montage. You're going to see the cleaning machine.

[00:26:52]Heat.

[00:27:18]Heat.

[00:28:29]So, everything's been cleaned and uh now time to start trying to assemble the thing. Main spring. Well, I'm going to try and hand wind this into the barrel.

[00:28:39]I know that's always still frowned upon, but I did do a video on hand winding many years ago. Um, I just feel that this thing isn't it's so difficult. I'll show you in a moment. I also think it's probably quite set. And by set, I mean there's not a lot of spring left in it.

[00:28:55]These old type of springs like this, they do after a while just set in their positions and lose their springiness.

[00:29:00]However, I've been on um ramped, if that's how you pronounce it.

[00:29:07]Just trying to see if we can get that in the phone. It's shot. Uh 1950 onwards.

[00:29:13]And this one's actually telling us that it's 21 jewels.

[00:29:19]Um, however, there are many different variations. If I click back and go to 17 jewels, which is another great site for movements these guys, I mean, they're showing one here with pretty much zero jewels. Lots and lots of discussion over the movement itself, different variations. Look, here's some of the jewel plots. They've even got photos of the movement. Look, stripped down.

[00:29:45]Slightly different escape wheel to the one that we've got. Um, yeah, really interesting. They've changed this site.

[00:29:52]They never used to have this sort of information. Uh, look, and they're telling us here that they got 164 degrees dial up and dial down. 189°. And I'm not surprised with a main spring like this. Um, you ain't going to get a lot of lot of rock. Plus, it's a pin pallet. Really low grade movements. And um you know, I'm still debating whether making a movie over this um was a good idea. Anyway, there we go. Just a bit of information. If any of you have not seen this site before, then go and check them out. Pretty useful.

[00:30:28]So, just going to try and point this down a bit.

[00:30:33]The barrel.

[00:30:37]So, you've got the barrel here. It's got a little tiny hook. Let's just zoom in.

[00:30:42]Actually, there's a little hook up the top here for the main spring. As it's a manual wide, you don't put any oil in there.

[00:30:50]And then, strangely, well, I say strangely, that's the arbor, which is sort of on the ratchet wheel.

[00:31:00]Um, so the plan is just to try and wind it in and then somehow get that in the center loop. And hopefully once it's installed, it might find its own position and um well, you know, hold some tension.

[00:31:18]Strange strange way of doing things.

[00:31:22]So, we have the little hook and then on the main spring there's little bridal at the end here.

[00:31:28]Look. So, that kind of goes in place.

[00:31:36]Just before I move on, just wanted to just sort of show you something. Finger cuts. I love and hate finger cuts. I know they're necessary. Um, just don't like them. I always find them really, really tight. And um, so I cut them. I think I've shown this in another video, but it's time to show it again. I just get a bit of wire cutters. It's all right. I'm not cutting myself. And I just cut that blooming elastic bit. And you can, but you can peel them off sometimes.

[00:32:03]Oh, on this one it's it's completely knackered it. But normally that bit just comes off. There we go.

[00:32:11]I haven't cut through it enough.

[00:32:15]And then you can work with those happily without it stopping your blood circulation. So there we go. All of them cut and uh my fingers can breathe. I should probably buy a bigger size to be fair, but um when you buy these, I buy them probably in a thousand or something daff like that. So, being tight, I um won't buy anymore.

[00:32:37]First wheel is the Escape.

[00:32:46]Next one up has this long pinion. And that's for the second hand.

[00:32:51]Just a bit blindsided. I can't quite see that jaw from the angle I'm at.

[00:33:05]Now that sits really really high.

[00:33:09]So in some respects the next wheel should have possibly be fitted first cuz I've now got to scoop it underneath.

[00:33:30]Like so.

[00:33:32]Now, with these pig pallets, you never know exactly where to oil or what oil you should use. Um, I'll be using a bit of gut instinct.

[00:33:43]Just want to get the center wheel in.

[00:33:53]And then of course we've got to fit the crazy barrel.

[00:34:06]Yeah, I kind of thought that. I was wondering whether it was upside down.

[00:34:13]You'd think that highly decorative like sunburst brushing would be facing up.

[00:34:29]Okay, now I can see from the microscope it's not quite lined up with the hole.

[00:34:34]There we are.

[00:34:38]Just now got to find that screw in one of my little pots.

[00:34:48]And then it's anyone's guess really if it's just going to tighten up, but it has no messing because the click's still on the other side, which is good. So, we just got to try and stick on the train bridge.

[00:35:14]Now, I did look at that broken jaw. I forgot to mention um and it's broken.

[00:35:19]There is small chips, but the hole still looks a little bit round to me.

[00:35:24]And I'm still adamant that we're doing this for 20 quid. £20, that's all we're paying. I don't want to spend any more money on it. Sad to say that despite me liking every watch under the sun, I don't think it needs any more money spending on it.

[00:35:57]There's a lot of scratches on this train bridge and they're not from me, but It's quite difficult to to to see in there cuz normally I'd move the barrel which would then cuz there's no ratchet on it, it would move all the train. But this this occasion the ratchet sorry the the the click if you like is still there. I think they're all in position.

[00:36:38]I can just about see the jewels. I'll have a look down the microscope because I'm just doing this by eye.

[00:36:47]I'll take you with me.

[00:36:53]And there we go. Look, we can see that that's in. That's in. That's in. Of course, center wheels in. So, three screws and we're good.

[00:37:02]Next up is the pallet itself, which I'm guessing is not going to be all that easy.

[00:37:13]Plus, I'm got it the wrong way around.

[00:37:17]So, I kind of got to get the pins on the teeth, put the bottom pin in its jewel hole, and do it all without breaking stuff.

[00:37:32]And whilst trying to keep it in in shot for you guys, I don't generally like pin pallets.

[00:37:51]So, as you can see, this is an absolute horror.

[00:38:08]So, I do wonder with these whether you should even fit this before you build it.

[00:38:23]Sorry. Before you put the train in It's mad, isn't it?

[00:38:58]You got all this trouble and the jewel sits on like a little island, this outcrop over this hole just to catch you out.

[00:39:22]Go on now. It looks so now the pin is underneath the bloody escape wheel. I swear in the 1950s when they designed this, they said in 70 years time there's going to be people on this thing called YouTube and they're going to be filming this watch and it'll drive them mad and we'll have the last laugh.

[00:39:49]That's definitely the sort of joke bomb that uh would have some longevity in it.

[00:40:03]But yeah, I'm going to give up. I'm going to just take the train off, drop that in because I think that must be the way it's done to be honest.

[00:40:12]There you go. This mistake number three.

[00:40:15]We're going to call this a mistake. I am.

[00:40:25]It is the devil's work. I can tell you that.

[00:40:32]And it's a pressure points like this where you're trying to push these things down, the pivots can go and snap on you.

[00:40:44]So, I'm going to resort to sticking a screw in and just lightly nipping it. Right, I've removed the because if it was in position, I then couldn't get the escape wheel in. God, this thing's a nightmare.

[00:41:03]Now, it looks like it's in, but the back of the escape wheel is now overlapping the center wheel.

[00:41:10]Oh.

[00:41:21]Hooray. There we go. And we do this.

[00:41:26]We do this for fun. I think this is fun.

[00:41:30]Get stressed out. tried to put a tiny tiny pivot into an even smaller hole on a main plate on a 1950s watch that's worth 20 pounds.

[00:41:44]Right. Okay. I'm going to mess around.

[00:41:45]Put that um pallet on and we can move on and get the train bridge back on as well.

[00:41:51]Actually, now it's time for the D side.

[00:41:57]Not particularly difficult. Um but equal measure it will be difficult purely because of the mechanism to wind the watch was a horror earlier on to put back on.

[00:42:28]And you can see it's all really badly scratched and worn. And you know, the only thing I can try and do here is just put down a load of grease to be sure.

[00:42:51]You know, I was once told never to um, you know, put oil on the plate like this just because that's not where it sits.

[00:43:03]And that's probably quite true. But on this occasion, that wears there for a reason, isn't it?

[00:43:11]This is like a recess almost. That probably do. It's overkill. I'm using the uh the Seikko S4 grease. So, I'm doing this just looking at the screen.

[00:43:22]So, if it looks like I'm budging it, well, you'd be right. I am bodging it. I had to turn down the light on the microscope so I don't get too much reflection so it films. And that means I can't then look down the microscope.

[00:43:38]Let's try and gauge it.

[00:43:46]You'd know it, wouldn't you?

[00:43:58]There we go. They're going to fit on there.

[00:44:01]And then I've got to transfer it all over to the movement. Just making sure they're sitting down, which they are.

[00:44:07]Okay, good.

[00:44:10]So, from what I can tell, this bit randomly sits there.

[00:44:20]And the really difficult part is this because there's a little hole at the back that has to go over that little spring and then all sit down.

[00:45:10]So, one of the wheels has fallen off, but the little spring is in place. This took me ages before That's kind of it is.

[00:45:39]And then we have this like hub thing which then should centralize everything. should being the word.

[00:45:57]And then I've just suddenly thought, can I actually get the bloody minute wheel on there before I screw everything up?

[00:46:09]But I mean almost mean that literally.

[00:46:32]Now the minute wheels in using an old oiler and that sound means It's gone home.

[00:46:56]Zoom out a bit. And yeah, we can wind now. Look. Okay.

[00:47:11]However, it's not it's not engaging the hand. Well, it's not engaging the the minute wheel for some reason.

[00:47:25]And I think I can see it down that little hole.

[00:47:32]What is going on there? It's all out of bloody position, isn't it?

[00:47:39]That gear is not in the right place.

[00:47:47]It just doesn't take it far enough across, does it?

[00:47:53]I've got something wrong. I think I don't know what I've got wrong.

[00:48:01]Like, subscribe, leave your comments below. Um, let me know how badly you think I'm doing.

[00:48:11]20 pound watch. These cheap movements are harder to assemble than a blooming chronograph with a moon phase.

[00:48:20]Okay, I resolved it. Essentially, I just needed to screw down the setting lever here.

[00:48:27]It was still loose when I removed the crown. And I've put copious amounts of grease on the plate. And now you can see, look, it engages fine.

[00:48:39]Winds the main spring fine.

[00:48:44]So we jump from one problem to another.

[00:48:47]So I'm not going to concern myself about the coils on the handspring because sometimes I've seen them like this and you put them in the movement, they run fine. What I'd like to do under normal circumstances is oil the jewel. The jaw on the balance really does improve amplitude. And on this one, there's screws that hold it all together. See those two screws there? So, that wouldn't normally be a problem because I can move the gate here or the boot open and I can remove the stud. But the stud is normally screwed. And on this, it's just push fit. So, it's friction fit.

[00:49:24]And I don't fancy pushing this out from the other side and then fuffing around trying to get it back in. I've kind of got no blooming choice.

[00:49:36]It's pushing me towards that.

[00:49:39]I don't think if I undo the boot, I've got, you know, will I have enough room even just to get the auto oiler in there? In many respects, that's the only thing I can try.

[00:49:51]Wow. There's just no gap here.

[00:49:54]There's a small recess.

[00:50:00]It just doesn't bloom in turn.

[00:50:08]There's no there's not enough room in there for a screwdriver to actually get any purchase to turn the damn thing either. I mean, this is just this is your worst nightmare.

[00:50:41]Now you can see it's just chewing it up.

[00:51:00]Can I just move it across and just chance my arm? This be really really crude.

[00:51:09]I don't I don't think I could weave an oiler through that without getting oil on the main spring.

[00:51:27]This is definitely cowboy cowboy watch making.

[00:51:44]I don't even think any oil came off. I mean, this is not how you should be doing it. Trust me.

[00:52:04]Well, I definitely saw some oil go in.

[00:52:10]Here's a watch keeps giving.

[00:52:13]Here's the moment of truth.

[00:52:16]Can we get the balance in?

[00:52:28]I can get the bands in, but it doesn't want to go.

[00:52:50]Now then, there is a jewel on the other side. One of those little cap jaw things I haven't put on. So, I'm just wondering if that needs to be fitted in order for it to run because it just looks like it's sitting a bit too low.

[00:53:09]And then there you go. I've turned it upside down and it now wants to run. So, there's this little jewel here. So, I'm guessing there's a bit too much slack.

[00:53:18]That's why you have those little caps over the top. Holds it in position. I'm hoping anyway. Otherwise, I've got a broken pivot on my hands.

[00:53:34]And this is one of the tiniest screws you'll ever encounter.

[00:53:52]Just got to tighten that up, turn it over, and hope it runs or keeps running.

[00:53:59]And now you can see it's running perfectly well.

[00:54:04]It doesn't look too bad. Looks a little bit slow. What you have to do on pin pallets is actually put some oil on those pins. Um, it makes all the difference certainly on time graph readings. Um, and I might just try and see if I can demonstrate that by putting on the time graphs at first and then trying to oil them and putting it on afterwards.

[00:54:29]And that's what we're getting.

[00:54:33]177 amplitude. Uh, pretty much still a snowstorm. BTO are not going to be able to change on this one because that requires um messing around with the hairspring.

[00:54:44]I'm not doing that. The rate is fluctuating like crazy. So, we're going to oil the pins now and we'll put it back on and hopefully should clear a little bit of that up. They never run perfectly, but with the amount of jewels this has got, it might give us a better trace to work with. So, it's pretty much like oiling pallet fork, only a little bit crudder. You can use 9010.

[00:55:10]See, now a lot of that just went on the plate rather than the pin, which is not ideal. But then where's it going to stay?

[00:55:24]I'm going to try and drop a little bit on the other one.

[00:55:35]Now, realistically, what we're looking for is to get enough oil.

[00:55:41]I've just seen something going around on the escape wheel, which I didn't like the look of.

[00:55:49]Definitely something stuck on there.

[00:55:51]There we go. Got it.

[00:55:55]Yeah. So, we're just trying to get a a wick again, really. So, I mean, an another counterargument is to actually oil the teeth, which I've done before when I've been able to get one of these running and get in there. If you're careful enough with the oiler, you can come across here like that and just sort of touch the uh touch the teeth of the escape wheel kind of like that. I'll demonstrate that again.

[00:56:34]Maybe you saw that. So, I'm just going to sort of go around these do do a load of the teeth for as many as I can.

[00:56:43]As I said, we want to get that running as smooth as possible.

[00:56:47]And there you go. So, it still looks pretty rough, but we can almost see a tick in a talk. Doesn't like me talking either by looks of things. Um, so normally I would be horrified by a reading like that, but um, beggars can't be choosers with this one. Pin pilots don't always look very nice, and this thing is 70 odd years old. So, I think what we'll do now is do some cosmetic stuff. Oh, just finish building the movement. Cosmetic stuff, get it in the case. It might run a little bit better when it's in the case as well. Um, so yeah, let's crack on. Still got a bit to do. So, let's get the wheels on. These have cleaned up lovely.

[00:57:32]All back to nice and golden.

[00:57:38]24hour calendar wheel if you like.

[00:57:48]Put a tiny bit of 9010 on the side of that.

[00:58:06]Not quite sitting down.

[00:58:15]There we are.

[00:58:17]So theoretically that's the movement complete. Just want to do something cosmetic on the hands now. Uh and a bit on the case. The hour and minute hands have been in a bit of um acetone.

[00:58:30]Just wanted to strip off that white paint. The red bit on the day pointer I'm keeping red because I believe it possibly was to start with.

[00:58:40]So as you see all that white paint's going to clean off these quite easily.

[00:58:46]So, I'm going to do that. Give them a little wipe down. Slight rub down with um the Bersian hand tool as well.

[00:58:58]And then I'm going to mix up some loom and just try and give it a bit of a tint.

[00:59:13]So, I've mixed up a little bit of loom and then I got a bit of a brown acrylic paint.

[00:59:31]Wasn't too sure how it was going to mix.

[00:59:35]Doesn't seem to be going in very well.

[00:59:37]It's quite bitty.

[01:01:28]Here we are with the hands fitted on. A little bit of brown paint that uh flexed a little bit in the um loom. Sort of almost makes it look a bit like it's got patina and rust. The whole hands are um patined heavily. Get some better shots later on. Looks good though.

[01:02:11]Wanted to spin this in my lathe. Made it make it easier, but the dome crystal is too shallow for the jaws to uh pinch onto.

[01:02:23]So, I tend to highlight them with a marker pen. That way, when I start sanding away, I can see which is the um the deepest scratches and whether I'm underneath them.

[01:03:04]going be here a little while. Okay.

[01:03:32]Wow, that stuff really really works.

[01:03:36]Although it is a bit of a parody from those videos you see of someone that finds a Rolex next to a river all buried in mud and they wipe that cream all over it and it comes up brand new.

[01:03:48]Well, in actual fact, it is a sort of metal polish and it did do some of the work. The rest of the work's been done on my polishing machine. Now, obviously, this is brass, so this will tarnish. Um, but you know, it's come up all right and it's a lot better than it was. So, without further ado, let's put it back together, show you the finished watch.

[01:04:11]And here is what the finished watch looks like after all of that hard work.

[01:04:16]All 34 mm of it. In many respects, I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out.

[01:04:23]I like the uh how I've managed to restore the case a little bit. I do know that's going to tarnish in time, but it looks quite nice right now. The lizard strap matches it very well. 16 mm strap, by the way. Um, so yeah, I've enhanced it. I was actually pleased with the loom. It's never come out really well on the camera, I don't think. But I think it matches quite well. And I now can see the indices, sorry, see the hands, tell the time quite easily and haven't got to look at that lurid um white paint that was put on there. The watch itself is keeping reasonably good time. I would say at the moment it's at least over a minute fast a day and I've not been able to improve it on the time graph. I've actually stripped it back down again and cleaned other things but to no avail.

[01:05:12]I'm actually now thinking that perhaps it needs those little capsules that are missing. Perhaps for instance the escape wheel which is a pivotal part of the movement to be fair could be sitting too high or too low because the jewels are missing on both sides of that one I believe. Um I've looked for a donut.

[01:05:35]I've got you know 50 odd pin pallets in a tray which you can see now. All of those are all old Swiss pin pallets and this is the German one. I've been on eBay. I can pick one up, but ironically, well, not no surprise really. They're all in Germany. Um, and to get it to the UK, by the time I've paid for it, it's about30. And I'm not sure really that this watch warrants putting that sort of money back into it. I mean, if you've got one of these at home and you don't want it, then obviously contact me. Uh, because I'd love to steal those capsules and just see really if we can get a better trace. Um, but I'll put that on the back burner. I've got plenty more watches like this to be bringing to the channel. I still hope that you've enjoyed this one. It's not commercially viable to do something like this, but it was interesting nevertheless. Uh, I've learned some new skills and uh, didn't really progress with improving the watch too much other than visually. Um, like, subscribe, leave your comments because I read every single one. Try to reply to as many as I can. There's various links in the description, ways you could support me or buy watches from me, things like that. And thank you again to all of my patrons for their support.

[01:06:47]I'll be back very soon once the parts arrive on the skin diver and you'll be able to see that video then. So, bye for now.