LeCoultre Memovox - Before and After

The Memovox that I used to hijack ULF's previous thread has arrived. This one is a real estate find. Came in with a really ugly Spiedel bracelet which took me about half an hour (and one small puncture wound) to remove. Underneath that was a load of accumulated organic crud.

The watch arrived winding smoothly and the alarm buzzed away when set. Both mainsprings seem to be in good shape. It's running fairly accurately, but I'll wait a few days to see what the overall rate is. It will go in for service soon.

This crystal was scratched up pretty badly. I stopped on the way home from work at the beauty supply store and picked one of those 4-way nail buffing bars for a couple of bucks.

Here's my as found photo before any cleaning:



I could see that it was going to need some elbow grease. Needed quite a few tools to work on this one. Brasso for the case, Polywatch for the crystal, several toothpicks to get at the grunge and Q-tips clean-ups. Ended up having to buff the crystal by sanding it down using each grade of sandpaper, followed by a Brasso rubdown of the entire watch. This was followed by two Polywatch applications.

Here's the after:



You can see the elapsed time by looking at the photos, as the watch was running during the cleaning process. Wasn't able to get the really deep scratches out. I wish I could take better pictures as the watch looks much better than shown here.

Not sure I want to change this crystal, as it is very thick and highly domed. Difficult to find modern crystals like this.

I've waited a very long time to find a Memovox that was all original and reasonably priced. Thanks for indulging me just a little.

Take care,
gatorcpa

Yes. The outer dial is mint, especially the gold dots which are next to impossible to restore. The inner dial has a couple of very small spots.

Crowns are unsigned, but seem to identical to the signed ones. Since the back is pretty much fused to the mid-case, further ID will have wait until service time.

Thanks D,
gatorcpa