Hi guys,
since I just finished my latest restoration project, I thought the result might be worth sharing.

It was during a great GTG that the watch I am writing about, a Seamaster 300 ref. 165014-64 found its way to my collection through a trade with a nice fellow watch collector.
As I started taking the watch apart right away to restore it, I unfortunately didn't spend time on taking a proper before-picture. Here is all I got:

First step was taking the watch apart. It is worth pointing out that since I am not a watchmaker I do not touch movements. However, I like playing around with the rest of the parts of my watches and do some restoration. After a good cleaning of all parts, I started with repainting the running second hand white with a touch of patina to make it not look as bright white as a new hand would look.

After that, I started mixing up some old tritium paint to relume the dial and hands. I know that a relume is not to everyones taste, but since I use old material I see myself doing restoration work rather than destroying the originality of the watch. Also, there was no lume left anyways.

Next up was the bezel. As with most of these watches, the plastic of the bezel ring broke off and fell apart. I speed quite a some time thinking how I could restore it. I am still playing around with it and learning a lot but I think the first result is quite okay.

now finally some after-shots. let me know what you think!

 

Congrats!

The bezel looks not bad, but have you considered Aldo's bezel restoration?

 

Thank you!
Not really since I heard mostly negative feedback regarding his communication and lead time.
Also as I was able to do it pretty good myself it was not really an option to send it to someone else. i think I am pretty close so far. I will do some more tests with it. Unfortunately I ran out of bezels to experiment with.

 

Great work !

 

Thanks a lot, glad you like what I did

 

Very good with the resources, you had ! The relume is a bit too even for that age of the watch. If you used waterbased tritium, try the following the next time the movement is out: buy the finest artist brush, you can find. Natural hair. Brew a strong black Tea. Let it dry on a saucer. Use a little water to colour it with the brownish, dried Tea. Dab very carefully the lume in slightly different shades, control these shades with more or less water added. same for the hands. They age differently due to a different material. Make them one or two shades darker than the dial lume. Will make a difference. Patience needed. Kind regards. Achim

 

That’s a very nice result, good job. How did you restore the bezel?

 

Thats a great advice, thanks a lot!
The tritium stuff I used was all dried up. I had to use a mortar grinder and a new binder in order to use it. The binder I used is solvent based. Do you think the tea trick will work on non water based lacquer as well?

 

Thanks a lot! I tried different approaches to get there, I am still experimenting around to achieve the best result. I any member is in need of a bezel restoration please reach out!

 

Would be great if you can share the process how you build the bezel. Super interested in it!

 

Depends on your lume surface. If glossy= No. If porous= try it. Next time source some old stock water based tritium on the Bay. Some French sellers had stock left..... Kind regards. Achim

 

I will use water based binder next time. Should be no problem since the stuff I have is very britle and ends up as powder after using the mortar grinder. However, the binder I used is of course not glossy. I will give it a try and will let you know if it works

 

You have Mail!

 

Looks great!!!!!!!

 

Thanks a lot. I think I actually improved the bezel restoration in the meanwhile. Might be able to post some new examples soon in case you guys are interested

 

Bezel looks good for a first try!

Thanks for sharing too. This topic can be divisive.

 

Looks really good. Nice job!

 

It's really nice

 

Well done

 

sharp. nicely done.