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On occasion you see a watch and think, this is just too much trouble for such a piece of junk. You cant find a stem, who knows where the crown is, the crystal is horrible, and if it is already missing outside parts, will I ever be able to find the parts I can already guess must be missing from the inside? Add to that the fact that the band looks like it was found burried in someone's back yard. So the watch gets thrown in the back of some drawer for a day when you are bored out of your skull.
Sometimes, just sometimes, the watch is not what it appears to be!
As you can see, it looks pretty cheap. Speidel bracelet, no stem, no crown, and no, the picture is not out of focus, the crystal is really that bad. Wait a sec, there is tape on the back of the band, it has the crown in it! Cool!
But look at all the dirt in the band, someone had to have dug this junk up and sold it as a lot on eBay. It really probably was buried, as my Mission Impossible project was and the movement was rusted beyond belief, and cheap to boot.
Now wait a sec, the stem is there just broken, and it is attached to a 23 jewel automatic! This is starting to look up a bit, I wonder if I can get parts for it?
After looking a little closer, it's a bloody ETA movement! It even looks like the seals held and the crown only broke off the stem when the watch was dug up. The movement looks great! I can make a really nice watch out of this.
Moral of the story? Never judge a watch until you have fully inspected it. You never know what might be lurking behind that case back.
Once I disassembled it I noticed something interesting. It seems that at one time it stopped running and the owner (I hope the owner and not a watchmaker) tried to get it running again by adding a little oil:
I would say this might be a tad bit too much oil. Not to mention, what kind of oil is it, 10W40? Cleaning this thing was a real bear, everything stuck to everything, and to top it off I seem to have lost the click spring. It probably stuck to something else while in transit between the watch and the cleaner, who knows.
Stay tuned and see how this watch comes back to life.
Copyright 2012 Allan Hall, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED