Restoration Part 1: Oil Spill!

While I’ve long had an interest in the theoretical side of horology, my practical experience in the craft has been admittedly much more limited, as the collection of long forgotten disassembled pocket watches on my tool bench will attest to. It has always been a pipedream of mine to get more experience with the actual watchmaking craft once I had the time, which I have shared with many of my similarly inclined friends. In this series of articles, I’ll try to describe my journey (with a great deal of help from my friend Art) through my first (hopefully) full service of a vintage Swiss watch.

Drunken Promises

This story starts where many such stories do: in a bar in Texas. This particular bar was playing host to the welcome reception for a wedding between a couple of our close friends, and had the side effect of also bringing together many members of what our partners refer to as our “watch group.” After a few gin and tonics, the conversation turned to watches, and my friend, Art, excitedly brought out his phone to show us a vintage Perseo Railmaster listing he had found on eBay. Despite being described as “runs, but does not seem to be keeping time,” Art felt that it couldn’t be that hard of a fix, and challenged one of us to pony up the $200 buy-it-now price to take ownership of the project. After a few more libations, I decided to make a low-but-fair offer to the seller of $135. The next morning, I awoke to a slight hangover and an accepted deal.

A Watch for the Rails

While I won’t get too far into the history of Perseo in this article, the iteration of the company from which this watch hails is deeply entwined with the Italian railway system. In 1923, Alfredo Degli Espositi purchased the Perseo brand name and began making watches in Tuscany (1), outsourcing the production of movements to Cortébert in La Chaux de Fonds, Switzerland. In 1929, the fascist Italian government under Benito Mussolini named Perseo the exclusive supplier of watches to the Italian railway as part of an effort to purge foreign influences from the country.

The Italian railway had some general requirements for approved wrist watches, both during the period of Perseo’s exclusivity and after the end of the fascist regime and subsequent loosening of restrictions on suppliers in the 1950s. Wrist watches had to be 34-36mm, have a white dial with Arabic numerals, and have sub-seconds at 6 o’clock (2). Approved watches were engraved with the Ferrovie dello Stato (“FS”) marking on the caseback along with a unique serial number. These regulations led to strikingly similar designs across multiple brands, perhaps most famously the Universal Geneve FS, which can easily fetch 3-4x the price of the arguably more rare Perseo models.

Demolition Begins

Following a few more months of procrastination, Art reminded me that I still had this piece of non-functional Italian history in my possession, and invited me over to his far better equipped workshop to see if we could get it beating again. We cleared a Friday afternoon and got to work on what we hoped would be a straight forward servicing. The session started on a positive note when a full wind and quick jolt caused the second hand to spring to life and we briefly toyed with the idea that the watch was actually just fine and had never been wound by its previous owner. This idea was unfortunately short lived, after several failed attempts to get an accurate reading from the timegrapher validated that the watch did indeed “not keep time.”

One of the nice things about vintage watches is that many can be opened using a simple rubber ball, which resulted in two additional nice surprises:

1. The brass movement appeared to be in impeccable condition, with no indication of water intrusion or damage from other well meaning but naive aspiring watch makers.
2. The movement was a Unitas 6325 which, while somewhat uncommon, had a plethora of (mostly Italian) documentation and YouTube tutorials (also mostly in Italian).

After a quick video tutorial (with the aid of AI generated English subtitles) we removed the crown mechanism and freed the movement from the case. Removing the noticeably scuffed and scratched crystal revealed a near mint condition dial and hand set. Having found the hands too delicate for our available Alibabba grade hand removers, Art was able to gently remove the hands with the aid of two screwdrivers, leaving the hands straight and the dial unblemished. Needless to say, we were on top of the world.

Reality Sets In

Our infallibility was short lived; for the next hour we struggled with the first movement screw, which despite a well seated screwdriver and an undamaged screw wouldn’t budge. Having consulted several forums and Italian language videos, we decided that we had two options: 1) Use a soldering iron to try to warm the screw without damaging anything else or 2) try to use a penetrating oil and hope for no collateral damage. We decided that the oil was the better option, which Art went about procuring and determining the best delivery method. While he was busy with this, I decided to take one last hail mary attempt with a screwdriver 2 sizes larger than what we had been using, the next size up having been previously dismissed due to not fitting into the groove. Surprisingly, this larger screwdriver found a footing, and after a quick jolt, released its grip.

The rest of the breakdown proceeded relatively smoothly. After removing the top two bridges, the likely cause of the timekeeping issues became clear: the movement was swimming in oil! With no obvious source, our theory that this might be due to an over ambitious amateur horologier was once again in play.

Day-1 In the Books

While we had hoped to get further along on the project, once we had the final screws removed and each piece securely in a dust proof tray, we decided to quit while we were ahead (and open a celebratory bottle of vermouth). We also found that the watch was missing the hour wheel friction spring, and since we didn’t have an appropriate mainspring winder, it would also make sense to just replace that as well; so for now, we’re conveniently stuck waiting for parts. Stay tuned for future updates, which will hopefully come sooner than later.