How to Open a Stuck Antique Pocket Watch back cover and bezel

Well today I'm going to be talking about how to open the pocket watch where your basal is stuck and the back of your pocket watch is stuck. You've tried all kind of different methods to open the back of that watch or the front of the watch and you just can't get it open. So this is a method that I use and it seems to work good for me every time that I've had to use it. Now you can buy this little rubber suction cup that works pretty good sometimes to help you open the pocket watch back or also open the front but sometimes it doesn't work good especially if that pocket watch hasn't been opened up in the past 60 years. It's really stuck tight and no matter what you try it just doesn't want to unscrew. Yeah no matter how hard you try it just doesn't want to open up and you feel like if you keep putting pressure on it you're going to break something. Well here's what I do when I run into this situation. I take a nut any size nut doesn't have to be any special size this one's 11-16. Then I get some super glue I use the gel type it's a lot easier to work with and I apply a small amount just a few drops to the nut. Then I take the nut that has the super glue on it and place it on the back of the pocket watch case. Then I'll let that glue set up and dry on the back of that watch and that nut will be good and secure. Then I'll take my wrench and hold the watch firmly in my hands and just give a little pressure and see if it'll break loose and there it goes it comes loose. I've had this method work every time I've never had it fail yet. If you like these how-to videos go to my home channel page and the videos are organized into topics and subjects you may be interested in and also hit that subscribe button and like this video. Well now that we got that back cover off the next thing we need to do is get that nut off the watch case back. Well to remove that nut I use this stuff it's fingernail polish remover it has acetone in it and that acetone will dissolve that glue that's holding that nut onto that watch case. So I put a little bit of the acetone in this glass jar. I'm going to use this metal tin to put my watch part in to put that acetone on that nut to try to get it off of the watch part. We'll set that aside now use this plunger to get the acetone out of that glass jar it makes everything a lot neater because that acetone if you get it on anything you especially don't want to get it on any other watch parts like in the movement or anything because it could do some damage inside the internals of the movement. So I just kind of use this to control the situation and not get make a mess so it works pretty good and it doesn't take much of it to put you put on there to help dissolve that glue. So we'll let that set for a few minutes and let that acetone dissolve that glue and that nut comes right off and any of that excess glue that's left on can be cleaned off with some more of that acetone. It comes off pretty easy and that it doesn't seem to hurt the finish at all on the watch case. I've never had any problem with it. It comes off really easy. Well once I get all the glue off I just take a little bit of metal polish and apply it to it and do some buffing and it removes any other stains or anything that's left over. Well that cleaned up real good. You don't see any of the glue left over on it. Well that was a nickel metal watch. Let's try it on a gold filled watch and just in case you're wondering if it damaged the gold fill on this watch. Now I applied just a few drops of the glue to the nut. Stick it to it just like I did the first one. Now I used that gel type super glue. It seems to work better than the other type that's kind of runny and again we just let it set up for a few minutes. It doesn't take long and we remove our case back just like we did before and we place some acetone the fingernail polish remover on it to dissolve that glue and we let that acetone do its job and it loosens that glue up and the nut comes right off. Now I take a rag that I dip in that acetone and that helps wipe that glue off and I put a little bit of that polish again on this buff it out and it cleaned it up nice. I don't see any problems with it. I've never had any problems doing this method. Next thing you want to do is look at your case back and maybe you can figure out why it was stuck. Maybe there's some old grease or dirt and grime in it and so you just take something and try to scrape all that out and clear out the threads so it'll next time it'll screw on better and won't be stuck. Well next thing we're going to do is look at this bezel that's stuck. It's a little bit more involved than the case back so we're going to go through the procedure that I use to take it off. Well the first thing is I have this crystal in the way and it's going to stop me from the method I'm going to use to get this bezel off. One method I found that works really good for me is to get some really good sticky duct tape and I cut off a piece about about four inches long. That's good enough. Then I take the piece of duct tape and stick it to the crystal of the watch and fold it over and it's stuck really good and tight. Now once I got the duct tape stuck on there really good I just take and rock the watch and the duct tape in my hand back and forth and kind of gently pull on it and that crystal will pop right out. Now any of the glue that's left from the duct tape if you have a glass crystal it can easily be cleaned off with acetone but if it's a plastic crystal you don't want to put that acetone on that crystal because it'll damage it. You just have to use soap and water. So we're going to set that aside. The next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to remove the hands off of the cannon pinion so they won't be in the way. I'm going to just use my hand puller. Now once we got those hands out of the way the next thing I'm going to do is take the second hand off. Now that I got the second hand removed now we can start on removing our stuck bezel. Now I use a metal lid and drill a hole in the center of it for my cannon pinion so I don't have that cannon pinion in the way and we don't damage it in any any sort of way. You can see the way I set the watch face down on the lid with the hole in it and you can see the cannon pinion poking through. So it's important to use a metal lid or something metal because the super glue that we're going to be using bonds to the metal a lot better. So we put a few drops of the glue around the bezel. Careful not to get any of the glue on the watch dial. It doesn't take much to hold it just a few drops around and then you take your watch and place it face down against the metal lid with the hole and make sure your cannon pinion is poking through that hole that helps protect the cannon pinion. Now with your watch glued down to the lid let it sit and let that glue set up for a little bit. Now once the glue's dried just take your lid and grasp your watch and start turning it counterclockwise and you should be able to unscrew the bezel. There you go you got your bezel removed. Now the next thing you want to do is use that acetone and remove the ring from the lid just like we did with the nut. You just put some acetone around the where the glue is holding it let it sit for a little while and the ring will pop right off. Now you once you've done all this you have to put your crystal back in. I made a video on how to replace a crystal. If you go to my playlist and do a search you'll see how to replace a watch crystal. It's not that hard it's pretty easy job.