So I have not updated this blog in quite a while, and some have wondered if I am still in the business of repairing watches. I am but the volume of work out there is very large so I really don’t have a lot of time to update this blog.
I do get the odd project in that is something other than just a standard service, and those tend to be watches in bad shape, like a 1978 Omega Speedmaster I received from a customer in the US. The watch had been sitting in a drawer for over a decade and when he tried to use it, the watch would not wind or set. It turns out that it had water get inside the case before he put it away, and that of course lead to a lot of rust. Fortunately the rust was somewhat selective and didn’t affect the entire movement, so this one could be restored without having to replace some critical, and costly, parts.
Rather than show just a few photos of it and write a lot of text, I tried something different this time – I made a slideshow of the service, showing most of the steps involved. It ended up being very long so I cut the time per photo to just a couple of seconds – might be too quick but you can always pause the video if you want to look at a particular photo closer. It’s on my YouTube channel, and the link is here:
1978 Speedmaster Mechanical Restoration
I call this just a mechanical restoration because I didn’t do much in the way of cosmetic work. The reason for that is to keep the costs down at the request of the customer, but also to preserve the history of the watch. All the mechanical parts were assessed to see if they could be used again, required some sort of repair, or had to be replaced. I cleaned off contamination that would cause further problems down the road. So the movement was made fully functional and performs much better than Omega specifications call for, but other than replacing the crystal, crown, and pushers, I didn’t do anything else to the case or bracelet, like refinishing.
Hope you enjoy the video and I hope to get some time to add a few more things to this blog in the coming months.
Cheers, Al
Archer Watches Blog 