One of my least favorite traits about me is my penchant for winning. I hate losing. Doesn’t matter if it’s a point in tennis (which I usually lose), a gig, or in this case… an eBay auction. After all, why should I not be able to get the broken thing I want… instead of you?
Late last year I was confronted with the uncomfortable reality that there are very old Submariner watches out there and they’re kind of way cooler than the modern submariner. Subjective, sure, but while grazing a watch dealers pelican cases, I found myself drawn to the small indices of a vintage no-date Rolex submariner. The proportions just made sense, and the matte black of the dial screamed “I’m useful, not pretentious!”. This exact experience led me to 2 resolves: 1. I do not want or need a GMT in my collection.. and 2. I really want an old sub.
At this point I have essentially ruined 2 watches I was trying to fix. Okay, I didn’t ruin them, but my inexperience led many tiny parts coming from eBay over the next days. Naturally, the next step is to gripe to my wife about how I may only be good with synths and maybe shouldn’t dawn a loupe, my wife calling me an idiot for saying that, and then me going on eBay only to find my next broken watch that I could break a little more.
In my hunting, I see an ad for a tudor submariner. I know Tudor to be the toyota to Lexus, Lexus being Rolex in this analogy. I was impressed with the Rolex oyster case on the watch, and was also happy to see it had only a few days on the auction.. and the auction was only at $550! I was the leading winner at $630 now. Naively, I internally resolved to spend no more than $1,000 on it. I told myself that if it didn’t fit me, I would sell it after having someone else service, seeing as I am no good at fixing these apparently.
To my first point, I found myself in my workshop some days later being notified that the auction ends in 15 minutes, and the price has at this point shot up quite a bit. At this point I’m tipped off from my experience in collectables that this isn’t some poor mans Rolex I’m bidding on… this is something that probably more than a few dealers are actively looking to purchase for their showcase, and I have to ruin that for them… for that is the Rob Rosen way. The last 2 minutes of the auction were a stressor. A quick peek (which I should’ve done before) on Chrono 24 etc showed that hey, this model is definitely worth more than the auction, so at this point, it’s a go no matter what. If I come out of this at a small loss or even breaking even, it’s a win.
Of course, I won. The classic snipe in the last 8 seconds.
Arrival
Truthfully I do not remember the last time I waited by the door patiently for a package like I did for this watch. I looked at the mail lady as if she should know what’s in the box and WHY wasn’t she as excited as me??
I have decided at this point I will fix it myself and do it right. My exact words to myself was “if you just don’t do any stupid shit, you can probably fix it. But you can’t do anything fucking stupid”. This reminds me of a line I tell my techs who get to work on the higher end instruments at RS: “yes, mistakes happen, but some mistakes can never happen”. Words to live by when you’re dealing with expensive gear, folks.
When I took it out of the box, the first thing I noticed was that it was super light. My 2014 sub is a hefty piece, and this was light as a feather in comparison. I kind of liked that. Second, I noticed it was in really bad shape, and it didn’t work at all. I think I got the seconds have to sweep for about 7 seconds, and that was that.
Unfortunately, it fits.
Proper “before” photo, on a watch pillow given to me by my good friend Bob. Thanks, Bob!
Vintage Tudor / Modern Rolex. Hard to believe in this photo they are basically the exact same size.
First look at the dirty as sin Tudor 390 movement, a Tudor/Rolex finished version of the Fleurier 390 automatic movement. This was the first time I ever saw the words “Auto-Prince” and think that that is a hysterically odd thing to call something. I still do.
First look at the dial without the scratched up crystal. This was the moment I really fell in love with it. The way the lume on the indices has aged, to me, is perfect. From some research, this seems to be a transition dial. My geiger counter does not pick up radiation, so it is not radium. However, the origin marking just says “swiss” and not “T Swiss T”, neither is it a gilt dial, and neither is it like any of the later dials. So, it seems reasonable to assume this is a tritium dial without gilt and before they added the “T”‘s. There is a thought it could be an “!” dial, as there seems to be a lume smudge at 6 o’clock, but it’s anyones guess at this point. If any aficionados out there know anything about this 7928 dial, I’d LOVE to know more.
Another shot of the crusty 390 movement
I often tell my techs that if they’re stuck on an issue, to find a small win for the day to rest easier at night. Before I really dove too far into the movement, I removed the bezel and the crystal and spent about 20 minutes polishing the crystal with polywatch. I was soooo happy to see how well it turned out. Honestly, this was a big moment for me. It made me understand that not all crystals need to be sapphire, and acrylic crystals definitely give off their own undeniable vibe!
Mainspring barrel opened up before cleaning. The lid and arbor had detached from the barrel and thats probably why it wasn’t running at all. I decided to go forward with the cleaning rather than retest.
Bracelet was quite gross. Years of lived life in there… yuck.
Mainspring back in the barrel after the whole movement was disassembled and cleaned in an ultrasonic cleaner using L&R chemicals. Unfortunately, I had to hand wind this sucker in as none of my shitty chinese winders would fit this mainspring.
I mentioned before, this Tudor 7928 was to be my 3rd victim… I learned a big lesson fixing up an Omega 1020 movement, which is that screws are not to be taken for granted, and you need to know where every screw goes. Turns out that was way more applicable to the Omega than most other movements so far, actually, but it lead me to hyper analyze my screws and parts and separate them into little compartments, including probability. I really didn’t want to fuck this up.
This was the big moment for me. I took this video at 11:48pm, so clearly I was in it to win it at this point. I was proud to have aligned all the wheels and their tiny pivots and had a fully running power train.
I don’t have a ton of photos of the reassembly and cleaning. Photos and videos were at the time taken so I could reference them as needed to reassemble of course. But here is the watch after it’s first round of service. It looks great, and I love the “ghost” bezel thats turned gray from black after 61 years. I, however, am not fond of the hands. They’re aged of course, but a little too aged for me, and I noticed after wearing it a few days that the lume is indeed flaking off onto the dial.
Like I do with my own historic synths, I keep a baggy or box for posterity of original parts. In this case, I did that for the hands. I found a set of replica “aged” hands on eBay and installed them onto the posts. The seconds hand had to be lightly broached, which was nice to learn how to do.
Lessons learned
I’m going to preface this by speaking to watch enthusiast who may be reading this. I am not a professional watch maker, and this was my first successful restore. I am lucky enough to be able to take on new hobbies and projects that may have value and not feel the consequences of fucking it up tremendously if I indeed do that. In the back of my head I knew there was someone out there who could repair this for me if I really f’d it up, and I had to be ready to take that responsibility. Luckily, I didn’t have to do that.
- Cap jewels. I did not know cap jewels had a up and down side. Once I got the watch running, I decided to go back into it some days later to oil the cap jewels. Once I did that, or so I thought… the watch would either stop or run 5 minutes fast an hour. Some youtube and zippo fluid later and a nice dot of 9010, it sprang back to great function
- This is indeed an awful automatic winding design. I lost the little pawls in the reversing wheels but had this suspicion they’d be in the chemical jars. When I went to dispose of the fluid, I used some cheese cloth and voila… there they were! Of course I had already spent some dough on new ones on eBay, so if you need the reversing wheel pawls.. I just may got ya covered.
- Did I mention the automatic winding design is awful? This thing would die every 2 days if I didn’t manually wind it. Big thanks to internet forums for good photos of how the little pawls need to sit in the reversing wheels. Once I got that down, it winds itself now :).
- Beat error is not worth it. This thing runs with a 6.4ms beat error. I don’t plan to fix it as I doubt I can replace the balance complete if I F it up. Otherwise, it keeps about +/- 5 seconds a day.
- Gaskets. This thing really made me learn more about case back, case tube, and crown gasket varieties. I now have tons and tons of gaskets.
Balance running. Local crickets offering triplets.
My Tudor Submariner 7928, 6:48am
Not for sale, ever.
