Author Topic: Refurbishing my old watch  (Read 842 times)

Offline simplyloco

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Refurbishing my old watch
« on: February 17, 2022, 06:15:22 PM »
Not quite Model Engineering, more like Miniature Engineering!

My old watch is coming up to its 30th birthday, and as I don't really need a watch anymore I took it to a specialist watch buyer with a view to getting some cash to put into a Wake fund...

"Sorry mate" he said, "The bracelet is knackered. All the link pins need replacing and it will cost you a fortune!", "Unless you can do it yourself..."

I retired, hurt, and resolved to fix matters. The 40 odd pins are M1.2 stainless, micro knurled at each end. They are pressed in, and all I need is a small extractor fixture mounted on my little Myford vice to get them out again. I could buy a specialist tool like this one, but why bother when it's a bit of fun to do the job yourself.




Here's the partly disassembled watch.



Here you can see the huge wear on the links. The diameter is now 0.78mm instead of 1.2mm. With 40 links that adds up to about 15mm of slack in the bracelet!



I'll have a go at the extractor tool tomorrow. It took a bit of courage on my part to take the thing apart as it is still worth quite a bit of money!
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