Testing a new photo setup. It may not be an expensive professional tool watch but I love this case, very nicely done.
I thought I had posted a report on this one when I fixed it but turns out I didn’t so here it goes. This Caravelle was one of the cheap thrills I bought on eBay to practice servicing. It was offered as working but when I received it was very much not: the minute and seconds hands were working but the hour hand and the date were not moving at all. Since I got it to use for practice and it looked cool I decided to keep it anyway and give it a try (the seller also preferred a partial refund to a return). The auction had a movement picture and it looked fine, but when I removed it from the case and removed hands and dial it was pretty clear why it didn’t work: At this point I was a little discouraged, thinking I could never get this to work again but I proceeded with the disassembly, maybe I’d learn something anyway. After removing the date indicator and the plates I found this: Not a pretty sight. The small date intermediate wheel in the middle of the picture was rusted and seized on its post. The date jumper also had some rust and the whole thing was soaked in oil, I assume to try to get it to run again after the damage, with all the success that you expect. The hour wheel and its pinion also got separated, but these are press fit so easy to put back together. The movement is an A.S. 1950 which fortunately was pretty common so I found a parts donor fairly easily in a small pocket watch with a broken crystal. The dial side parts were obviously in bad shape but luckily the gear train and the steel parts were not damaged. The plate didn’t seem to have been attacked by rust, only stained on the surface, so I cleaned it with rust remover, carefully pegged all the jewels to make sure no debris was left and reassembled it all. I even managed to clean the date indicator so that rust stain from 13 to 17 is almost invisible now. Bulova added their custom decoration to the bridges, the movement from the pocket watch was just plain and unfinished. And finally here is a before picture, before I cleaned the case and polished the crystal. There are still a couple of deep scratches that polywatch can’t remove but they are invisible in normal use and as I said above I really like the case and how little wear it shows. The dial and hands unfortunately show damage from the water that caused the rust, the lume markers at 9 and 12 were separating from the dial so I just glued them back, a little unorthodox but it’s better than losing them. It feels very nice to have brought this back to life and looking so good. It’s been running well for a couple of months now. Initially I had planned to fix it and pass it on but it looks so cool, and the case condition is so nice –it even has a signed crown– that I just can’t give it up. Hope this backstory makes you enjoy the pictures above more.
Nice! What's the photo setup, if you don't mind me asking? Here's my caravelle diver (and some fish tacos)
I have an Olympus OM-D E-M10 with the LUMIX 1.7/20mm. The new part of the setup is that I bought a closeup attachment. I considered a real macro lens but I wouldn’t use it very much so I tested this one which is a lot cheaper and I am satisfied with the results. The light is provided by a window and an led desk lamp with adjustable white balance. Support is a piece of aluminum pipe that I had machined for another experiment. Love your caravelle too, very nice dial and hands.