00:00Okay, this is a project watch that I just got.
00:03This is a vintage, obviously, Douglas, a skin diver.
00:07World Timer, they call it.
00:09Pretty beat up.
00:11These are interesting watches because they're kind of collectible in a little way
00:14because I guess they've been reissued and they have a certain Neil Armstrong story attached to them.
00:19But they're a very, very cheap watch.
00:23Originally they were made, I guess, to be thrown away.
00:26This one's pretty beat up, so I'm going to see if I can kind of bring this one back
00:31and make it kind of a cool, fun little watch.
00:35Okay, so I just removed the crystal to see what's underneath
00:41and it reveals the dial to be basically flawless.
00:54I mean, it's absolutely perfect.
00:59That looks like it's factory fresh.
01:03It's shockingly good.
01:04The loom is perfect.
01:07Nothing is wrong at all with this.
01:11So this is going to be a rewarding project, I think.
01:16So this is the Douglas Skin Diver.
01:18And the back is one of these crazy backs that wouldn't come off.
01:21And you can see quite a few little marks from where people in the past tried to get it off
01:27with no success, I guess.
01:28There you can see that's pretty badly bashed up.
01:31So I did the trick of gluing, crazy gluing a nut to the top.
01:39This was actually a really old Gorilla Glue, so I wasn't sure if it was going to work.
01:43And it's still kind of soft, actually.
01:46So, but then I let it harden for a few hours and then I gave it a twist and it
01:51did work.
01:52So this is actually the first moment I'm going to be seeing it.
01:55And this is not set up for the video here, so I have no idea what to expect inside.
02:03But, uh, this is the moment of truth.
02:08Um, well, it looks like stuff did get in to the watch at some point.
02:15That's crap on the back there.
02:18That's okay.
02:20And here is the movement itself.
02:23Uh, as expected, it's a Cadden C66 movement.
02:31These are really cheap movements.
02:33Um, one jewel.
02:37I can already see that, uh, this stuff here, these are like, just steel bearings.
02:48So, just a lot of steel on steel.
02:52And I think the movement slides around.
02:54Yeah, so it's, it, it, it's just, I think it's just put into the, uh, into the case in the
03:01most rudimentary of ways.
03:03Just pressed in there and held by the stem and maybe those.
03:11Oh, that looks like it might be, uh, yes, I'm definitely not right with the balance.
03:18It's, um, it's a lot of, that's probably a broken pivot.
03:22We shall see.
03:24Okay.
03:51The End
03:53We're doing the crown wheel screw now here and it does unscrew clockwise, which is typical
03:59of crown wheels, but generally they give you the warning with the three lines on the screw.
04:05So, do not forget to do this one clockwise to unscrew.
05:15Something interesting about these lesser-priced movements is that rather than using the cannon
05:20pinion as the friction area for setting the time, it's actually done right on the main
05:27barrel itself.
05:29It's kind of a neat method and actually makes it easier to take these watches apart than
05:33having to pull the cannon pinion.
06:02And here we have the first problem, which is a broken pivot.
06:07Continuing to the pallet fork, which on this is actually a pin pallet.
06:13So it is the most rudimentary of forks, but works.
06:20Continuing to the dial side.
06:23Start pulling apart the plates and parts that make up this side.
06:29Again, a very simple movement.
06:34As basic as it gets.
06:45The cannon pinion is not attached there because the clutch is actually on the mainspring barrel,
06:53which is pretty cool.
06:56Something I like about these movements is their absolute simplicity.
07:02I find something beautiful in their kind of brutish simplicity as the Keyless works here demonstrates quite readily.
07:16I love the watch.
07:17This simple can run until the time just like a $10,000 movement.
07:24You can see the jewels, if that's what you want to call them, are just hunks of metal.
07:31So now begins the portion of this fix, which is the new uncharted territory.
07:41So removing the entire balance wheel with its pressed in roller, again, because it's such an inexpensive movement.
07:51And doing what you generally don't want to do, which is replace the balance with the original hairspring without vibrating
08:01the hairspring.
08:02That can be prone to error.
08:07But with this watch, all bets were off.
08:11I was able to purchase a bag of balance wheels from India.
08:15And after sorting through them, there were a lot of broken pivots among those.
08:21I found balances with good pivots.
08:23And so now I'm reattaching or attaching a new balance wheel to the hairspring.
08:37The hope being that when I put it all back into the watch, everything will run and that will be
08:43a nice fix.
09:03Putting the balance back, I marked the balance wheel to hopefully have the roller in the right position.
09:12And so trying to get it in and here seeing that it's unfortunately so out of beat that it's not
09:21running.
09:21So that means that I do have to adjust the roller.
09:42Turning the collet.
09:45This can go wrong very easily if that screwdriver slips.
09:47So you really want to be very careful.
09:51Because you can destroy a hairspring very easily doing this.
09:55So once it's...oh, don't stick.
09:57Once it's back, see if we can get the watch going.
10:24And that's always a pleasing thing when the balance starts ticking away like that.
10:37Unfortunately, putting the watch on the time grapher gave me no reading whatsoever.
10:42So I then took the watch and timed it with another timer by the minute.
10:49And found that the watch was running three seconds slow per minute.
10:54Which is a tremendously slow rate.
10:56The regulator has absolutely no effect on this.
11:00So something bigger is going on.
11:02And after a lot of determination, it seems like there really can only be one reason as crazy as it
11:08seems.
11:08The hairspring is too long.
11:13I'm going to actually try to shorten the hairspring.
11:16Which I think is probably not going to end well.
11:20The hairspring is pressed into the pin.
11:25So very carefully pushing and pulling.
11:30And doing it in such a way that I wouldn't be bending the hairspring.
11:35I was able to push it through.
11:40And little bits, little bits of push, ever so more.
11:46And it starts to read better in terms of the timing per minute.
11:53Still no reading on the time grapher.
11:58So continuing to shorten the hairspring by pushing it through the stud.
12:05And eventually getting to where the watch does read on the time grapher.
12:17I did this about six times.
12:21Absolutely shocked by how much shorter that hairspring had to be.
12:33I never thought that it would have to be shortened to that extent.
12:49Okay, so that may not be what you typically think of as fantastic lines.
13:01But in the case of this, I will absolutely take it.
13:08It was only after the watch started telling time properly that I dared to actually trim that hairspring.
13:15Because there's no going back once you've done that.
13:22I pulled close to an inch of hairspring off.
13:27So this watch never ran right out of the factory.
13:31Which is probably why it's in such good condition.
13:34It was a useless watch.
13:36So it's remarkable that it would not, that it would be, this isn't even close.
13:44I mean, we're talking about a huge amount of hairspring had to be removed in order to get it to
13:49get close to beat.
13:51I don't have any way of vibrating a hairspring here.
13:52But I did get it close enough that it's reading on the time grapher, which it never did before.
13:57And I believe it's going to tell pretty accurate times.
14:00So I'm going to let it run on the wrist for a couple days and see what happens.
14:04If it works properly, I'll disassemble it and really clean it up.
14:07Because in all the work, it got quite dirty again.
14:10So I'm very pleased.
14:12Even though it's a very inexpensive watch.
14:14It is a vintage watch.
14:15It is a classic.
14:16It is a collectible now.
14:18And you can actually use it to tell time.
14:20So that's a win.
14:21I don't even know anything else.
14:31All the fighting ideas.
14:31You
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