Restoring a Vintage Rolex Submariner with the Original Box, Paperwork... Even the Receipt!

Hello there and welcome back to another video here on Wrist Watch Revival. My name is Marshall. Thank you so much for coming along. This time on the bench, I guess we get to do a little bit of an unboxing. Check this out. This is very, very rare. You do not see this often. This is a Rolex Submariner with all the original box and papers. This is the pamphlet that originally came with the watch right here. As you can see, you got this little folder envelope thing to put your warranty in. This one even has the original receipt somehow. You can even see the original price. $1,156 was paid for this Submariner. Just to give you an idea, a modern Submariner costs about $10,000 or $11,000 by comparison. As you can see, we have the original box in that Rolex green. Look at that watch. It's even in kind of the cool display case still. Incredible to see all of these things together. You just rarely see that. People tend to throw these away or lose them. For collectors, this is a very big deal. You can even see, look at that, Geneva, Switzerland. This watch is really sweet, by the way. Check this thing out. This is a Submariner, so a dive watch. When these were originally made, these were made more as a tool watch rather than anything you'd consider high-end or classy or fancy or however you want to put it. They were expensive for their time. That equivalent price of $1,156 these days, as of recordings, about $3,500 adjusted for inflation. A brand new one of these will cost you about $10,000 or $11,000. It shows you where Rolex has gone since those times. They've moved upmarket, as they say. Check this out. There's a bunch of dirt caked up inside where the lug hole goes. I'm going to try to clean it out. Wow. This watch was definitely worn. It has an interesting history to it, too. Oh, boy. Desperate need of a cleaning, no doubt about it. Oh, yeah. This one might not have been cleaned before. That's a lot of crusty gunk that's been built up in there. That means that this watch has been properly worn. That lines up with what I was told. The owner of this watch, Aaron, he actually inherited it from his father-in-law. Interestingly, his father-in-law also inherited it from his father-in-law. It's kind of being passed down through the generations in a non-traditional way. I think that's really cool, too. The original owner bought it brand new in Barbados as he was traveling for work. He was a dentist with the Air Force. He purchased it there and didn't wear it very much. Now, you might think, well, how did all this gunk get in here if he didn't wear it very much? Well, he ended up passing it down to his son-in-law, as I mentioned. He did that while he was still alive. His son-in-law loved it, apparently, and wore this thing a lot, like all the time. That's why you can see some wear on it. Even though the watch is in really good shape overall, it just really is in desperate need of a cleaning. That crystal is in pretty rough shape, too. He wore it a lot. He passed away, unfortunately, about four years ago. Again, he left it to the current owner, Aaron. He was wondering what to do with it. Aaron is not a watch person, not a collector, and was kind of going, what do I do with this thing? He actually ended up making a post on Reddit asking them in the watch subreddit, hey, what do I do with this? They mentioned me. They said, hey, you should get a hold of that guy. He actually did find me. Now, all of a sudden, I've got this watch with all this stuff sitting on my bench. Take a look here. This is taken off the case back. I've got a special tool to do that, particularly for watches like this that seemingly have been worn pretty hard but not serviced or cleaned much. That machine is really good. Let's Aaron told me that to his knowledge, this watch had never been serviced, the movement, though it has, as I mentioned, been worn quite a bit. I think he actually might be right. People say that all the time, but then you open up the watch and you can tell that it's been serviced a lot. It'll even often have watchmaker marks on the inside of the case back or you can just see whole bunch of wear and scratches and stuff. This doesn't though. This movement looks like it's in absolutely stunning shape. This may be the first service that it's ever gotten. As you can see, as a testament to the quality that Rolex does put out, the watch is still running. Oh, man, look at that dial too. I know it's a simple dial, but that is in remarkably good shape, although I do see a little bit of discoloration. See, do you see this on the top? That's interesting. I've never really seen that pattern before, but I'll say you can't really notice it when it's in the watch. Yeah, it wouldn't bother me at all, but the condition of the lume in the hands is really, really nice and same thing with the dial. One of the reasons that Aaron tracked me down is because Rolex and other companies have a reputation that if you send your watch, and particularly a vintage watch to them, that they will replace parts. They will polish or even sometimes over polish. Basically, their goal is to try to get the watch to look absolutely brand new. That means, oh, the dial has a little bit of wear like this one does or some discoloration, just replace it. They'll just grab one, they call it a service dial, out of their boxes of dials and they'll throw a new one on there. They'll do that with the hands as well and then when it comes to the case and the bezel, they will aggressively polish or replace where needed. Now, I have to say that's the reputation that they have, but from what I know these days, that is not the case. They will not do that, I don't believe, but people still are worried about it because they had done that for so long, but I think that they understand the value of these vintage watches now and I don't think it's as big of a problem as it used to be. Let's put this thing on the time graph for to see how it's doing just to start off as a baseline. Yeah, see, I mean this is kind of what I expected. It has low amplitude and it's gaining 13 seconds a day, but if this watch really hasn't been serviced in like 40 years, that's actually really good, but it could do a lot better and that's what our goal is going to be today is to get this movement serviced and running much better than that hopefully and back in the movement and then we'll do a couple of tasteful replacements where needed to get this watch looking its best so that Aaron can wear it and that was the part that really caught me about the email that Aaron had sent me was that he wanted to wear this thing and that's what I like to hear. These are valuable watches. This one with the box and papers and stuff, it adds a decent amount. Collectors really like that kind of stuff. It kind of proves the provenance of the watch and it tells a story with it and I wouldn't be surprised if that added 20-30% to this watch's value and these type of watches, I don't know, 10 grand, 15 grand, they can definitely be worth that much depending on which model and all the little things that collectors love. So yeah, with the box and papers, this is a very valuable watch, but it's also freaking bulletproof. It looks great. It wears awesome. It should keep really good time by the time I'm done with it and I would definitely suggest wearing this as often as possible. So we'll start disassembling this watch, taking this whole thing apart. We're going to just strip it all down. Every screw, everything's going to come apart and then we'll completely clean it and then reassemble it, lubricate it, test it and get it back on the wrist of its owner. That's what we do here. That's what I do here anyway. You get to join me. If you want to try it yourself, by the way, I do recommend this as a hobby and I started a website with my friend Alex to kind of help people get onboarded into the hobby. I had so many people asking which tools to get and I realized when I started how difficult it was to pick them. So I curated toolkits that we sell. I have a website called Sutcliffe Hanson with him. That's our last names and there's a link down below if you'd like to look or maybe if you know somebody that would be interested in a gift or something like that. We have toolkits that even come with movements so that you can practice on them. We also have online classes. We partnered with Mark Lovic who runs a channel here on YouTube called The Watch Repair Channel. It was where I got started. He inspired me to begin this hobby and I partnered up with Mark because he has just, in my opinion, the best tutorials on the market. So we sell those on Sutcliffe Hanson as well now. So far so good as far as the disassembly goes. Nothing really standing out as being worn in honestly any way. It's kind of not only is just the overall condition of this movement remarkable but man it's clean. Like the seals and stuff really held up. That's the train wheel bridge there and now I can take out the trainer wheels. That's the center wheel, third wheel, fourth wheel. The fifth wheel isn't called the fifth wheel. It's called the escape wheel. The escape wheel then leads to the pallet fork. The pallet fork is held on by its own individual bridge so I'll be taking that off separately. Yeah I'm a big fan of keeping watches kind of in their natural condition though I've done it numerous times on the channel here where the owner really wants the watch to look brand new or to be redone for some reason and I'll do that too. I think that each person gets to decide what they like and what they want the watch to be and I've heard a lot of different reasons for both sides of it. The most common one for keeping the wear and tear on the watch is that it's kind of the watch's history. Each little ding and scratch that these watches get are from the person who wore it. You know so this is for example a situation where Aaron maybe could remember his father-in-law you know when he looks down at this watch and all those little nicks and dings that are on there were put on there by him and his experiences in life and I think that that's cool but I've also had people ask me like I said to restore the watch because they really felt that the person wearing it would think that it was kind of a fresh start or a you know something that was new rather than representing something from the past and I think that that has a cool vibe to it too. Okay Keyless Works comes apart quite easily on these watches. The last thing to take apart disassembly wise is the Automatic Winding Works. This is an automatic watch. Some people get confused about the difference between mechanical automatic and quartz watches but there's a reason why they're confused. It's because one is part of the other meaning that automatic watches are mechanical watches. They're just the ones that you don't have to wind up using the crown. You can just simply wear the watch and the movement of your arm will move this thing that I'm taking apart here around. It's a weighted oscillating weight and it's weighted way towards the outside. Wow look at all that dried up oil by the way at the base of that. Yeah this really may not have been serviced. It's crazy but anyway and then there's also manual wound watches but those are both mechanical. Quartz watches are the ones that take a battery and those are kind of a different thing. I find those a little less interesting than these mechanical watches though they are more affordable and they're actually more accurate as well. Okay now I can put the balance and the balance wheel back on the movement. This is called the main plate that I'm putting this back onto and that way I can put this whole thing into the watch cleaning machine. You'll see it in a little bit but I'll put it in and it gets submerged in a few different fluids and kind of agitated back and forth and that's a good safe place to have that. Another thing that we'll need to put some attention towards are these gaskets. That one actually looked like it was in okay shape. I'm still going to replace it but sometimes those gaskets can turn into this kind of vulcanized rubber state where they basically kind of melt and fall apart and they're just an absolute nightmare to deal with but this one held up really just fine. This one has a modern mainspring in it as well which I believe that this watch I guess I could just look at the look at the receipt but I think it was 1984 that this watch was purchased so these type of springs were in existence by then. Here's a cool tool that I like to use for this portion. It's actually a tool for taking off bezels and I actually have two of them that I need to take off of this watch. The first is the outer bezel. This one you can actually just take off with a case knife or a pocket knife but I like this tool because it kind of pushes in from four directions at once rather than prying on one side and putting pressure all on one angle. Wow yeah this thing was definitely worn. Yeah I can't wait to get this thing cleaned up. Yeah to say the least goodness sakes it's pretty dirty. As you can see this one has another gasket and I'll go ahead and take that off now and I'll keep trying to remove as much of this gunk as I can and then this is a little bit weird but there's supposed to be an additional inner bezel that holds the crystal in place and it must have come off with the other part because it's not here but there's no way that it would just be gone like that would be extremely weird. Ah there it is yeah so this is it kind of attached to the bottom of this bezel. The bottom of the outer bezel is supposed to be hollow up until there's a spring and then the the bezel insert which is the black part that has the numbers on it so I'll have to fuss with that in a little bit. For now though I can put all of the parts into these little mesh baskets that keep them together and make sure that nothing goes flying away when they're in the watch cleaning machine. You can put parts like this next to each other quite safely because they're submerged in liquid so they don't really ever get enough momentum to slam into each other. Okay let's take another look at this bezel and do you see how there's this inner metal ring so first what I can do is yeah there we go I can take out the aluminum outer bezel which is this part here this marks time or you know it has functional use as far as that goes but this is the weird part is that this inner bezel it did come off and it is not supposed to be attached to it. That thing is supposed to hold the crystal down. I'm going to actually use my rober press here to see if I can't free that up because it's jammed in there probably because of all the dirt and debris and it shouldn't be at all. Let's see if I can remove this separate these two parts oh man oh there it goes okay yes and I and I do see all the things that I hope to see underneath which is a very thin tension spring on the top there the outer bezel and then that bottom part is the most is the innermost bezel as well. That is really strange though that it was stuck to the inside I mean I guess it's just because of the muck but I haven't seen that before anyway we'll have to address that in a little bit but for now I can put all the watch parts into their basket and then into the watch cleaning machine this one is from probably the 1940s but it's doing a perfectly fine job for a hobbyist watchmaker like me if I was a full-time professional watchmaker you know trying to get as many watches through as I could I'd have to buy a much more expensive and elaborate setup but for somebody like me who does this as a hobby this is just fine. While those watch parts are cleaning I did want to mention I have a Patreon for this channel it's kind of the way that I support the channel and if you'd like to support me and the channel you can go to patreon.com slash wristwatch revival there's a link down below you get a a thank you card from me as well as a wristwatch revival sticker that you can throw on your laptop or your water bottle or whatever and that's just my way of saying thank you for supporting me and I did want to say thank you to everybody who supports me on Patreon it really does mean the world to me. Okay and while that finishes up we can take a look at this case and it really desperately needs to be cleaned so I've got my ultrasonic cleaner here and we'll throw the bracelet in here which is actually in fairly clean shape as well as the rest of the case components I did my best to clean off you know the majority of the gunk with that wooden pegwood just to try to get the majority of it off but there's nothing like an ultrasonic cleaner for getting into the little bits and as you can see I mean the dirt starts to come off almost immediately upon firing this thing up and we'll let it run for about 25 minutes once it gets up to temperature and you can already see the water has turned kind of a dingy color and yeah that's pretty normal you know for a watch of this age that is in need of cleaning on this level and I'm just glad that I have the right tool for the job here these ultrasonic cleaners are so good at cleaning places that you just really can't otherwise but the key is they do it non-abrasively right so like I don't have to get a whole bunch of you know sandpaper or that type of stuff to get the the cleaning done I can get the vast majority of it done with this and look how sweet this thing looks all laid out and cleaned up beautiful movement and a beautiful watch I cannot wait to get this thing back together and running again and now to dry off the parts I get to use this little fan that I found I showed it on another video it's called a Kika fan I'll put a link on Amazon link down below for it but just been really impressed by this thing I kind of want to sell them on Sutcliffe Hansen but I don't know how to to make that happen but I just these have been really really cool for just doing little air blower drying it just puts out like a ton of air and I found a few different uses for it for like getting the crystal ready to put the the movement back together and particularly for drying off stuff out of the ultrasonic I you know you can just leave it in the windowsill or whatever and it works okay but I've just found this thing to be such a handy tool probably good for other stuff outside of watchmaking that I haven't tried yet anyway I'm going to continue I didn't take out the gasket just yet from the inside of the crown tube here and it's often a lot easier to take that out after it's been through the ultrasonic cleaner where before sometimes it can get kind of stuck in there and you're you have to kind of just destroy it to take it out which is fine I'm going to replace it anyway but I just found it can be a bit easier and then another thing I noticed and this I think explains how this thing got stuck do you see that crack right there there's a these are made of kind two layers of metal and this bottom layer has a noticeable and even a little bit rusty of a crack on it and so that is gonna I'm gonna need to replace that now when it comes to this bezel here this thing I did not put into the ultrasonic if you noticed and the reason for that isn't because it can't take it it's aluminum and it'll hold up fine but there is one part that I was worried about it's called the pip and you can see it at the bottom there it's the little glow in the dark dot and those are this might be the original one to the watch at this point I'm assuming that it is and that's actually quite rare they fall out pretty easily and so people replace them with aftermarket ones which is totally fine but you know given that this watch looks to be basically fully original I'm just going to use a look these swabs to just manually clean this bezel insert it doesn't take that long and it just reduces the risk that that part right there gets damaged or falls out from the ultrasonic waves normally I would just put it in in there but this watch is kind of special and so I'm just going to do manual cleaning on it again just you know little detail stuff because the originality on a watch like this is so important to its story and that bezel looks nice taking a look at the inside of the case back though there is some corrosion here this is from where that dirt and debris kind of worked its way underneath not much I'm going to be able to do about that I know there are some shops that will resurface that but I don't have the capability to do that and also I don't know that it's really necessary this here looks like a little bit of the gasket maybe kind of gunked up in here I don't think that's a huge deal but I'm not really sure what I can do about it I think the best I'm going to be able to do is use a little bit of acetone this is you know like fingernail polish remover it can work well on rubber gaskets to kind of soften them up so I'm just going to put the whole case in a bath of acetone and just set it aside for a while we'll revisit that after but for now I can start doing the whole reassembly thing so we'll start off by getting a little bit of breaking grease so the first thing that I always like to do is to make sure that the mainspring is good to go and that way I have what they call the barrel complete which is this part with the mainspring in it and the barrel arbor in it and a key component for automatic watches is this special grease that goes on the inner wall of that barrel and that's because that's where the mainspring will push up against the sides of the barrel and it needs to be able to slide around that edge but at a specific friction level and that's what that that's what that breaking grease does I am going to be replacing the mainspring on this watch these mainsprings are fairly easy to get a hold of and you know it's usually a good idea to do so as always with every project that I do on this channel any of the original parts that I replace I keep and I put them in a bag and then I send them back with the watch so I always make sure that the person who gets the watch back they will have even parts like a mainspring that you really probably would just never do anything with but it's like what am I going to do just throw it away I'd rather give it to the owner and they can decide what they want to do with it if there was some crazy collector who was like I want literally everything original on this that mainspring could be reinstalled in this watch no problem or it could just be handed off to the collector so that's what I do and but I but for performance sake because Aaron does want to wear this watch on a daily basis I'm going to go for the the new mainspring here okay now I can take off the uh oh actually this is a really good uh time to show you some a feature that these watches have it's called a hack and a hack is a mechanism that stops the watch when you pull the crown out to set the time so you can set it perfectly so I'll demonstrate here that little pin that sticks over is the hack so pretend like the watch is running and do you see how it just simply pushes up against the balance wheel that's it that's all it does that's attached to a little lever so that when you pull the crown out that little tiny foot just kind of goes and touches the side of the balance wheel and stops it that's all a hack mechanism is it's that simple I did leave the hack in place while the watch was cleaned and so in order to lubricate underneath where the hack goes I just need to take it off for a second and I'll use just a little bit of medium viscosity oil there to make sure that it moves smoothly and then I'll just replace it yeah hacking function on a watch I don't know the history behind it but I definitely know that the first times that I've seen it are on military watches and you know that was so that soldiers could get their watches all at the exact same time before they were going to do some operations that were very time sensitive you know at 12 54 you run over this hill right it all needs to kind of be coordinated perfectly and you can't have it be a minute off or whatever okay now we can put the setting lever into place and I'll go ahead and put the barrel bridge on we've got the barrel in there setting lever in there and the hack in there those all need to be in before you put the bridge on on a model like this you can see what a beautiful movement this is this is not a overly decorated movement it's not that kind of beautiful movement this is more like you know when you you see a machine like an engine or something like that that really stands out to you as just aesthetically pleasing even though it's not decorated or fancy or anything like that it's just laid out well well made that's what this is okay this is the click I also left that in in place when the watch was being cleaned and so that means that I need to just quickly disassemble it it still gets perfectly clean it's just a matter of making sure that it's lubricated properly the click is a really simple device it allows the ratchet wheel to ratchet that's it it allows it to turn one direction and not the other interestingly that little part right there is the thing that makes the noise when you wind up a watch you know the the sound that you think of when you wind up a watch that really satisfying kind of sound it's actually that little click rubbing against the edges of the ratchet wheel when I put that in I'll point it out to you as well and you'll be able to see what I'm talking about but I think a lot of people think that there's like some you know some gears grinding or you know some wheels like these ones moving up against each other and that's what they feel and hear when they wind a watch but it's not it's just the click okay so I can put the train of wheels in place now and you kind of put them in reverse order the lowest one to the highest I always think of it kind of as a waterfall where the power from the mainspring sort of flows downstream from the middle of the watch down there is some decoration on this watch that you can see those circles that kind of overlap each other those are called perlage okay now I can put the train wheel bridge into place this is the operation where I need to make sure that all the pivots are lined up simultaneously before screwing anything down and as you can see that I can manipulate the wheels a little bit here and there to try to coax them into position and they're just not quite wanting to sit if I push on that center wheel or on the barrel bridge like I'm doing here those should all spin very freely and they're bound up they don't want to spin at all that's a little better no I'd see it just doesn't feel quite right so I'm just going to start over again sometimes you have to do this it usually means that one of the pivots think of like an axle is out of the bottom part like it's off to the side and so therefore it can't be lined up properly so a little bit of adjustments on the wheels a deep breath and we try again let's see if that worked ah there we go so now we see the escape wheel moving I wouldn't call that perfectly free but it is definitely lined up and moving now so now I can go ahead and carefully screw down the train wheel bridge watch repair is definitely something that tests your patience but kind of in a good way okay well that all looks fine I can check the end shake that's called that's you know these wheels they're meant to have a little bit of play up and down you don't want them squeezed down so tight that they can't turn so that's why I was just testing that there's a little bit of medium viscosity oil on the inside of the crown wheel here and these little tiny screws to hold that in place most of the manufacturers have come up with two different solutions for a common problem with the crown wheel which is the crown wheel turns in the same direction that unscrews a screw so if you have a screw that holds it in in the center and it's turning around it and it's turning in the direction that backs off the screw it will often come off so they use two off-center screws to hold it in place in this case that's the ratchet wheel right there by the way that's the one that the click pushes up against and makes the sound when you wind it up this screw goes through the ratchet wheel and into the barrel arbor there we go you can see that moving much more freely now now I can turn the watch over I have to put in the keyless works and the motion works so that we can test the watch the reason for this is simple the keyless works is what lets you wind it up and we need to wind up the watch in order to see if it's running properly and the keyless works is attached to the motion works so it's kind of one of those well you might as well do it while you're there anyway scenarios technically you don't need the motion works in place to to see if the watch is running or to see how well it's running you know like I said you're already there anyway but also you do want as many things that are going to be on the watch as possible when you do the testing and you know often I'll go back and test after the watch is fully put together just to double check that it's still running well okay now we can put the crown and stem as they're known this blue stuff is a grease called Mobius 9501 it's a heavy-duty grease for watch parts it's synthetic and now I can put the setting lever in place it's always a little tricky with the setting lever because the screw that holds it down is actually on the other side of the movement it's that one that we put in almost it almost at the very beginning of this reassembly but as you can see I can screw it down and just double check that it's working well and it is now a little bit of medium viscosity oil will go on the posts where the rest of the motion works and the rest of the keyless works will go and this is just a little intermediate wheel and this is the minute wheel and this part's called the yoke and as you can see it goes around a post at the back and it sits freely now but it is actually held under significant tension by the yoke spring which is this one and you can see you know when you're up this close you can see how beefy that spring is now this is a little bit tricky but basically the way I like to do it is to get half of it seated and then kind of use my tweezers to kind of drag across the top to reseat the other part just like that and make sure that everything's all lined up and then you need to put this grease in between where these springs and the yoke and the yoke and the setting lever all kind of meet up and I always end up putting a little bit too much on and so then I have to use rotico to clean it up but it's very difficult to put like a super small amount between those two things because they are held under tension okay now I can put the setting lever spring in place and again same thing with the the blue grease and then I'll move it over and just make sure that everything's running smoothly I'll give it a quick cleanup again you don't want the grease kind of just sitting on there like where it can flow into other parts of the watch it's you know not exactly best practices let's say okay I can give it a quick wind and it does look like the power's going down through the train of wheels so that means we can do the next step which is to put in the pallet fork and the pellet fork bridge will go over the top of it and hold it in place as you can see it's a jeweled bridge it has a jewel on the top and the pellet fork goes in the jewel on the bottom as well and there's a screw that goes in here it has a very flat top if you look and that's because the balance wheel will sit right above that and it needs to be able to get out of the way I remember one of the first watches I worked on the balance wheel wouldn't spin and I couldn't figure it out and it's because I put the wrong screw in that spot and it was just sitting up too tall and it was actually just touching the balance wheel and slowing it down okay now we can put the balance in and let's see if this thing will kick back up to life oh it looks like it already wants to huh it's kind of barely running though that that is like in fact it actually stopped well I haven't maybe I haven't wound up the watch enough or something you do need to wind it up a bit to make sure that the watch will want to go so I'll try that put a few winds in it hmm it's actually still going really slowly I'm not sure how much it it gets picked up but it's that that is visibly not right that that is really really low so I'm do some inspecting on the microscope and here's what I found watch this I've never seen this you see that thing move this is the bottom of that same fitting look at that it is like basically just loose in there and you can just move it around that's supposed to be super super tight and I think that that's what's slowing it down because if that thing gets crooked then the doesn't get to enter cleanly and it'll cause friction yeah look at that I'm barely touching it with this pegwood and that whole setting just pushes all the way through wow I have never seen that before you know those holes are supposed to be made just within a fraction of a millimeter so that it'll sit properly so what I've done is I bought another one and I just didn't feel comfortable trying to fix that problem in a way that really made sense monetarily basically so I went and I found a used but very good condition replacement bridge from the same movement type and we're going to try that because this thing was not running correctly for whatever reason and this does look a bit better with this new bridge in place again I'll be sending this bridge back to Aaron as well and I don't know why that part is loose I have never seen that before I asked around too and other people were like I don't know and then quickly I can reassemble to get us back to where we were before and uh and then we can give it another test I you know like I said that it needs to be perfectly perpendicular so that when the pivot engages with that hole that it's not off to to one angle or the other because imagine how much friction it would create right and that's I believe what was happening to this watch is that that whole setting was crooked and it was creating way too much friction for it to run freely so we get to find out right now if I was right as you as you can imagine these parts are very expensive okay the watch kicks right back up again which is definitely what we want to see from it and it looks already like it's running a little bit more peppy we'll put the bridge uh fully the balance bridge fully into place here oh yeah see that's already way better I can just tell from experience that that is a much better amplitude uh to see so what that means is we can continue with the rebuild here and we can start oiling the jewels again these are the types of jewels that we were just oiling imagine if one of those is crooked that pivot is going to be dragging up against the side of it and it's going to be really bad this is actually the medium viscosity oil for the center wheel because it's bigger and then this being a Rolex and a very very well thought out and high functional high functioning uh movement this has a nice shock protection system on the top and with a little bit of Rodico I can remove the two pieces here those are supposed to come apart it's funny once you put them in the cleaning solution here they usually just come right apart just like that and you can see them sitting on the bottom this is a solvent so it's like eating away at whatever's on there it's like they want to stay stuck on my uh tweezers this time but there's often uh kind of a built-up residue from the oil that gets placed on these jewels goodness sakes there we go uh and so a little bit of manual cleaning can go a long way you can do this a few different ways you can use an ultrasonic cleaner but it's kind of finicky because you have to put it into a little tiny jar and then or you can use a piece of pegwood like what I'm using another method you can use is to put it face down on a piece of paper like what I'm using here which by the way is like a super top secret watchmaking paper it's called a post-it note and you can kind of drag your finger along it to use the paper as a mild abrasive to remove any of that I think all of those would work the reason I don't do that third option is I'm just worried that it's going to ping away you know like as you drag your finger along and it'll grab something and then all of a sudden it flies so there you can see the oil that I've put now in the middle of that jewel and then I can simply put the uh the other part of the setting back on you see it's sort of stepped so it gives me something to grab onto there we go and with that in place I can put it back into the watch movement now and it goes right back on the top and you'll see the pivot engage with the hole you see that right in the middle the little silver part going back and forth that's the pivot itself and then this is a shock protection spring that I can just simply put back in place with my tweezers make sure everything's right and that part's done now these movements actually have a shock protected escape wheel as well they didn't go quite as all out on these um it has a lesser shock protection system here but it's still above and beyond the call of duty this is the second most likely wheel to break in the event of a drop in the watch basically and so they do put a shock protection system here too this just has a cap jewel on the top so I only need to clean that part and replace it it does make doing so a little bit extra tricky because you have kind of two options you can do it the way that I like to do it which is manually cleaning these jewels like this this to me lets me know for sure that I cleaned it to the level that I want it to be cleaned and that I put the wow these jewels they are just sticking to everything today that it's cleaned to the level that I want it to be cleaned and also so that it has the amount of oil that I want the other option you can do which should do the same is you can clean the jewels and then you can use an automatic oiler which is like a tool that deposits a specific amount of oil into the pivot hole from the bottom but I like doing it this way a little bit better it is trickier but I feel like when I get it right then I can get the oil to sit kind of right in the middle and I know for sure that I put the amount that I want in there and then I can replace this finicky little spring like so so there we go now let's put it on the timegrapher and see how this thing's running whoa that's way better than before it was at what 190 now it's at 282 degrees of amplitude but it is still running too fast you can see it's running at plus 11 seconds a day and that is too much the good news is this is a older Rolex model and it has a pretty simple way to adjust it it's the same way that you do it on basically all of these Swiss watches which is that there's a little arm and you can push it either to the left or the right to make the spring effectively longer or shorter shorter means the watch runs a little bit faster and in this case we need to move it so that the spring is a little bit longer but I think just from intuition I think I bumped it too far and so I'm just going to give it a little bit back a little bit goes a very very very long way and after tweaking with it for a while here's what we came up with beautiful look at that plus one seconds a day with good strong amplitude and zero beat error I knew this thing was going to run amazingly it just needed a few new parts and to be completely cleaned so we've already reassembled reassembled and got the movement in good running order but the automatic winding works which you saw before really needed to be cleaned well it needs also needs to be reassembled and lubricated as well so these are the reversing wheels they're that specific color that's specific to Rolex are the only ones that do that I have read online that Rolex has said that those are coated in some type of Teflon to make them less have less friction with each other I just think they look cool okay there's a little clip that holds the oscillating weight in place and then I can replace these two reversing wheels once you get the hang of these they're really quite straightforward it's a it's a well thought out and very functional design on these and then this is a little gear that sits on the post it actually stays still as everything rotates around it and then this little plate goes on the bottom and it just provides pivots for the three little pivot areas there and then I can put this thing back together last thing to do is I do need to oil these pivots just like I do on the rest of the watch so before we uh you know put the hands back on the dial the case and everything there's a few more mechanical components to put together here on the back of the watch and this is the center seconds setup so if you noticed when I originally showed the watch this watch has a center seconds hand it has the the hand that records seconds is in the middle of the watch not like down at the bottom like some old watches have and that this is how this is accomplished there's a wheel that gets to attached to the top of one of the other wheels and it turns at the correct ratio when in combination with that little pivot at the middle to make it turn around one time per minute which you know measures seconds now this little part here it's a little bit tricky it's a tension spring that goes onto the back of that seconds pinion and you just need to have it sit right on top of it and you also don't want it to sit too firmly or off center so just you know got to get it right all right now we can take the case out of the acetone that it's been sitting in forever and see if it did any work on just those little tiny extra parts yes I do get to use this little fan again I have to kind of use it every time I get a chance to be honest it's just cool see it's a little bit of corrosion still there but it does seem to come up yeah I don't know if that did very much but it's the best that I'm going to be able to do here's the old crystal as you can see it's quite beat up and I'd like to keep it original and once again there's that crack in that lower bezel so I had to again go on eBay to find one which which I was able to do thankfully this is a fairly popular watch and and I have the one ready to go as well but I just that other one would probably go on but my thinking is is that part of the reason why it came off in one big piece with the rest of the bezel is because of that crack not being able to hold enough tension on there now as crystals go finding a genuine authentic Rolex crystals is very very difficult and very very expensive but there's this really cool company called True Dome who's made by a guy I follow on Instagram called True Patina who also does restorations he specializes in Rolex and he made a company that makes these crystals which I think is really cool like how cool is that right like he saw this need for these crystals in the market because they're so hard to get and he made them and they are amazing like seriously these crystals are fantastic I can use my press here to put the bezel around the crystal and seal it onto place but I have been blown away by the quality of these I know it sounds weird to say but I just I like these better than the authentic Rolex ones they just have a quality to them not just the quality of the materials but like a vibe that I absolutely love almost all the watches I have have these type of old acrylic crystals rather than you know like a sapphire glass or something like that and these ones I don't know man they just got it I love them I'm not like sponsored by them or anything like that I just really think that they make a cool product okay so I can put the bezel back into place that part goes in fairly easily but I do need to continue with these gaskets so I need a new gasket to go into the crown here and then I need another one to go around the outside of the crown tube remember this was a serious diving watch this is a Rolex 5513 it was kind of interesting because I noticed yeah see this one will go around the back here I noticed that the inner case back on this says 5512 but the movement's definitely from a 5513 and I was like what is going on here and then again a new gasket for inside as well and I looked it up and apparently since the case backs are completely interchangeable Rolex would just grab one so it says 5513 on this watch between the lugs but look right there where it says 5512 that's just wrong this just isn't a 5512 it never was a 5512 and it's apparently very common to have a case back that doesn't align with the actual model if you really want to know you look between the lugs and that'll tell you there one side of it will have the serial number and apparently I uh screw down the back onto my finger cots here so I'll need to do that again anyway this is a 5513 now out of curiosity I want to see if it passes a pressure test I saw all that wear on the back of the case but I did replace the gaskets and stuff and I'm just curious to see if this watch will pass this is not going to be a full-on dive watch nobody would use this for that purpose anymore that would be kind of crazy but it's more of just a curiosity thing this thing will certainly be water resistant to any reasonable level as far as like washing your hands or if it starts raining or whatever but is it up to snuff at three bar that's what I want to know so what you do is you pressurize the top of this container which pressurizes the watch and then you release the pressure after putting it in and you look for bubbles to come out of the watch case let's see oh yep they are coming out of there interesting yeah so that would be a fail here that would not pass the test you could see the air coming out where the actually it's interesting it's it's where that thing had broken right the the inner bezel where it had that crack I wonder if it took a hit there and maybe deformed the case a little bit or if there's some extra corrosion under there or something like that pretty close you know that wasn't a disaster I've seen worse than that but uh yeah that was that would not pass uh you know the the pressure test overall at any rate uh that is not what this watch is really about this watch is going to be worn every day and it's certainly going to pass that test um no problem so after putting on the dial I can put on the hands one of the other things that people look for collectors do I do is the lume the luminous material on the watch and one thing that they really like is how well it's aged this this has tritium lume which is which is safe by the way it's not radium it's tritium uh it is technically uh radioactive or whatever but it's not like it's pretty much inert at this point but it ages beautifully turns into that kind of like this is the first stage of it well first stage is it's bright white but now you can see it just starting to get that creamy color just a little bit of it and over time it will even age further and another thing that nitpicky collectors look for speaking from experience is that it matches the hands to the hour markers and this one passes that about the best I've ever seen it is stunning how good this lume looks on this dial it's in nearly perfect shape again there's a little bit of that discoloration along the top but overall this thing is fantastic okay now we can case the watch I'll put the movement back in the case and again take a look at that corrosion on the inside of the case back that I think might be part of the reason why this thing is not quite passing waterproofness it's interesting because the crown did fine the case back actually did fine which is where that would be but there was some of that corrosion on the front part as well battle scars of a watch worn well I I say wear them proudly okay now I can put the automatic winding works back into place this thing's coming together really nicely I I'm really excited to get this watch back into Aaron's hands I you know a family heirloom like this it's been passed down now this is third generation is something that's already really special but this is just a really special watch in the overall condition of it plus the fact that he has all the original paperwork and stuff that's just so cool so this is like a tension ring that goes on it's like a spring it's sort of it's meant to be not perfectly flat so that when you put this bezel on here which you just you can just push on with your fingers basically it will be held under some amount of tension and not be able to just move freely this one does not have any type of steps or ratcheting on the on the bezel it just it's smooth okay now I can put the bracelet back on as well it's doing much better now that it's been cleaned all that gunk you can see is gone the ultrasonic cleaner certainly did its job and there we go we have a finished Rolex Submariner with a brand new crystal that looks stunning I'm telling you I'm so impressed by these I'm picky and this thing is awesome the dial you can see all of its glory now with no not having to look through any scratches or blemishes the case is still in excellent shape it's the original bracelet to the watch and check out all the fun goodies here all this neat stuff this is the original receipt that I showed you $1,156 is what this watch cost back in the day and now I get to put everything back in its case so that I can send it back to Aaron thank you so much for joining me for this journey it was really fun to restore this historic little Rolex Submariner and I really appreciate you taking the time if you want to find me on social media I am wristwatch underscore revival over on Instagram and I'd love it if you come say hi over there that's going to do it for this one thank you so much for hanging out and we'll see you next time