An interesting repair - the "dog bite" Speedmaster

Archer

Recently saw a post on another forum about someone who was wearing their Speedmaster when they were attacked by a German Shepherd. The watch helped save his arm from significant damage, but was damaged pretty badly in the process. The owner contacted me, and since I really like these projects, I agreed to take a look to see what could be done. Here is one of the photos he sent me - the bracelet had snapped as he pulled his hand from the dog's mouth:



The dial side of the watch didn't fare quite as well as the back did:



You can see that the dog's teeth had pierced the crystal, and badly dented the dial. Now the owner didn't come out of this completely unscathed, because the underside of his wrist had a couple very deep gashes in it - he sent me a photo but I'll refrain from posting it since people may be squeamish, but I can confirm it was nasty.

When the watch arrived, the chronograph seconds hand had gone AWOL:




Two problems - the watch head damage, and the bracelet damage - the link just before the end link had bee ripped apart:



Movement is out of the case:



I had reassured the OP before he sent me the watch that there would be no movement damage from the dial being distorted, because there's really not much there to damage. The winding and setting parts are under that part of the dial - side view of how much the dial is distorted:



Underside of the dial:



The movement would run, but full wind dial down was not great:



Started on the movement service, which was mostly straightforward, so I'll only include a few photos along the way:











We had talked about trying to save the dial, and if it was possible the OP said he would like that, so he sort of had a memento of how the watch saved his wrist from more serious damage. So I set about seeing what could be done to fix this:





Fixing this damage isn't something I do all the time certainly, so I had to sort of improvise - first thought was using a pin vise on the dial foot, but I realized that wasn't going to press on the right spot to remove the severe distortion:



So I got out my staking set, and set about gently (as possible) moving the dial's material back into shape:



It was a lot of light tapping and checking...more light tapping and checking, taking it slowly and methodically. Then with some of the more acute damage flattened out as much as it could be, I started general shaping of the dial using my fingers (with finger cots) with the dial in a block did the rest:



This is the result, and I was pretty happy with it:






Carried on with the assembly:



New pushers, crown, crystal, and case back seal were installed:



The damage is still there as a reminder:



More to come on the remainder of the job...

Cheers, Al

gbesq

Amazing work, Al. I suspect that if the dog needs reconstructive dentistry that you could pull that off just as well. 😀

Dan S

The damage to the crystal and dial really blew me away. I was not expecting that. That was not a half-hearted bite. 😲