The satisfying part in repairing and restoring a watch
is when you're bringing it back to life.
My name is Roland.
I'm the founder of RGM Watch Co.,
and we've been restoring watches for almost 40 years.
We're going to be restoring today
a vintage Rolex military pocket watch
from the World War II era.
The first thing that we'll do
is we will visually examine it as one piece.
All the parts are original parts on it.
Certain things will be refinished and improved;
other things will be left the way that they are
to preserve the original.
But when it comes to the mechanics of the watch,
of course that's all vital.
In the end, we wanted this watch to work very well,
but we wanted it to look good, too.
When disassembling the watch,
generally the first thing we'll do
is remove the case back and look at the movement.
The movement is the mechanism inside the watch.
It would almost be like saying the engine in a car.
I can see, visually,
if there's anything that jumps out to me that's broken.
I'm going to remove the balance bridge
and the balance wheel.
The balance wheel is one of the most fragile parts,
so we want to get that out, off to the side.
Next, we will remove the winding wheels.
At that point, we can generally remove the barrel bridge,
which is over top of the mainspring barrel.
Then we would move on to removing the train wheel bridge.
Then we're kind of getting it down to where
we're going to have wheels by themselves.
Of course, that escape wheel will come out.
And then we basically have it torn down to the basic parts.
Now that we have the watch disassembled,
the next step is to start the cleaning of the parts.
We have different types of cleaning baskets
and trays that we can put those parts in.
We have little teeny cylinders that screw together
that can hold tiny parts.
The main cleaning basket itself has trays,
so that's very useful in keeping the parts organized
and also preventing them from being lost.
We will generally start in a tank ultrasonic.
It's just helping to really ultrasonically loosen
the dirt particles.
We will then manually clean parts also.
With pocket watches, we often have to scrape the jewels,
do a lot of manual cleaning,
a lot of scraping and cleaning, pegging the holes,
and things like along those lines.
We have a glass jar with hexane in it,
and we use that to clean parts at the bench.
We just use air to dry the hexane,
which will dry quite quickly.
And then at the very end it will go
into a watch-cleaning machine.
It has a solution in it for cleaning,
but it also has the physical agitation
of the basket turning back and forth.
So the combination of all that
will really get the parts very clean.
Then they'll be rinsed the same way,
and then it goes into a drying sequence
where it's also spinning,
and that prevents spotting and things like that.
Now that we have the preliminary cleaning done,
we can get into actually doing the repair
and the refinishing of certain parts.
In repairing this watch,
a very crucial area is always the escapement
and the balance, hairspring.
That's sort of the heart of the watch.
This particular watch is not running.
The work that we're doing is going to rectify that.
Here we have the balance wheel
being put on the poising table.
It will be lightly touched and turned.
So, when we find a heavy spot,
we will then remove a little bit of metal.
This is a very crucial aspect
of getting good timing out of the watch.
Sometimes, especially with older watches,
when we get it, the hairspring has been maybe mistreated.
So we need to try to get the coil spacing nice and even,
and then we want to make sure the hairspring
is flat over the balance wheel
and not tilted or touching something.
So there's minute adjustments we have to do with tweezers
to get the hairspring back into the proper shape.
The only part that was replaced
in this watch was the mainspring.
That's where the power comes from.
So we have to take the mainspring
and replace it with a new one
so that the watch will have enough power to run properly.
So, the new mainspring,
wound into the mainspring winder,
is being pushed from that tool
into the watch's mainspring barrel.
And then the barrel arbor will go
in the center of that mainspring,
and then we have a lid that will go onto the barrel.
Some parts, it's more aesthetics.
The watch hands were in pretty rough shape,
so we made the decision to remove
most of the rust and oxidation.
That way, we could get them looking much nicer.
Sometimes, depending on the watch,
the engraving would have paint in it,
so we will redo that, we'll clean that really good,
and we'll put a black enamel paint in there
and then let it dry.
Then we can read the name on it nicely again,
the way it originally was.
On this watch, the case was a challenge.
Someone had tried to remove the bezel and the back
with a knife at some point in its life
and damaged the threads.
So we had to carefully rework those threads
so we could screw the back and bezel on.
The case obviously had damage.
Some people like their cases polished on old watches,
and other people like to leave them original,
with that patina on it.
We'll make an assessment, you know,
restoration versus preserving what's already there.
In some situations, where it was already polished
or the case is damaged,
the best solution may be to polish it.
Now we're starting the reassembly.
We're putting in the escape wheel,
fourth wheel, third wheel.
We're putting in the mainspring barrel,
the center wheel, the bridges that hold them down.
We'll then put in the winding wheels.
Certain things will be lubricated.
There's a number of different types of lubrication
we have to use, different oils and greases.
Then the balance will be attached to the balance bridge,
and then, of course, that'll be dropped
into the movement also.
The satisfying part, you know,
when you got things cleaned
and you first put in that balance
and there's those first few ticks
and it's running and you're looking at it,
and you may be the first person
to see this watch running in maybe a half a century.
You know, that's a very satisfying moment.
On the dial side, there are setting parts.
We also have the minute wheel and the hour wheel.
From that point then, basically,
it will then be put back into the case.
And then we'll check how the finished watch
is actually running.
This watch certainly is in far better condition now
than it was the day we received it.
I think it represents a nice vintage piece now.
It's a pleasing example
of this early Rolex military watch.
And it is, it's a beautiful watch.