In the early 1990s, As the Soviet Union was experiencing its terminal collapse following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Poljot and other Soviet watch factories were still churning out watches for re-sale in the West under secondary Eurpoean brands like Sekonda. This alarm watch is from that interesting point in history. It’s still a good looking watch, if you don’t stare at it too hard (some of the dial and hand elements haven’t aged all that well). Re-plating in 14K gold certainly helped in that department. The movement is, in typical Soviet fashion, very workmanlike and pretty much devoid of anything resembling finishing. It still runs well, however, which as any good Soviet will tell you, is the important part.

I really love the look of the reverse panda dial on this Landeron-driven chronograph. Podium 2000 is a great example of a pre-quartz-crisis Swiss watch “micro-brand,” where small distributors, jewelers, and export agents could contract various Swiss ebauche manuafacturers to assemble all the parts needed to build a watch.

Occasionally I get a watch to restore that I know is going to be a bit of an odyssey. This Oxford chronograph certainly qualifies. It came to me with a beat up & corroded case & bezel. Both the pushers and hands, other than the minute counter, had been thoroughly trashed. Fortunately the, other than replacing the mainspring, the movement didn’t require anything beyond a standard service. I was able to track down hands with a blue tint that match the aesthetic of the originals fairly well, and I (eventually, after a lot of hunting) found a pair of modern replacement pushers that, while a bit oversized, fit and function well. The case and bezel - originally chrome - were restored and re-plated in rhodium, and the crystal was replaced. After all of that, I ended up with a good looking and strong running Venus-based chronograph, so I think it was all worth it.

Back in the 1950s when Sears Roebuck sold pretty much everything, “everything” included luxury Swiss watches, and Orvin was their exclusive brand. I was particularly excited to open this one up, as I had never serviced a movement with a power reserve indicator and I was very curious how it worked. What I found was some very clever mechanical engineering able to track & differentiate the independent rotation of both the mainspring barrel and the winding arbor. Really cool stuff. The watch doesn’t look half bad either. I ended up overplating the case, and it turned out very nicely.

This handsome Omega must have led a pretty tough life, as the back side of the case had suffered a considerable amount of erosion, the plating was in poor shape, and the original crown was missing. I couldn’t do anything about the erosion of the case material, but with a service, new crown, case polish, crystal polish, and overplate in 18K gold, you still have a good running Omega that looks great on the wrist.

This lovely Genève really captures the understated elegance Omega perfected in the early 1970s, with a champagne silver sunburst dial framed by sharply faceted gold-plated markers that catch the light with every turn of the wrist. Beneath that beautiful dial beats Omega’s revered caliber 565, a 24-jewel automatic workhorse celebrated for its smooth winding action and quick-set date mechanism — one of the finest movements the company ever produced.

Back in the days when the big watch brands hadn’t really established a dedicated retail presence, it wasn’t uncommon for major watch boutiques like Turler to sell pieces with their name co-signed on the dial. The 562 automatic movement powering this example is a bit aesthetically compromised due to oxidation - probably from being worn while swimming - but it works very well and keeps great time. It’s an important watch for me, both because it was my first Omega restoration, and because it was the first watch where I was able to successfully straighten a damaged, bent hairspring - an important milestone in my watchmaking journey.

The prototypical mid-60s Omega dress watch. Simple and elegant. The small, manual-only 620 movement makes for a very thin watch. Not much more to say, other than the fact I feel lucky to have found this one in really excellent condition.

This Omega caught my attention when it showed up in a “parts & repair” auction listing due to its dramatic case shape and the bold indices on its dial. I was excited when I opened it up and found that the Omega 500 movement looked completely pristine, with none of the telltale signs of previous servicing. Following a thorough service, it now runs beautifully. Other than replacing the crystal, I left the exterior intact, scratches and all, as I didn’t think a re-plate or overplate on this watch would look right.

An Omega bumper automatic with a cool textured black dial. This watch definitely stands out on the wrist - so much so that you definitely need to think about what else you’re wearing when you strap it on. Like all bumper automatics, the winding action isn’t very efficient, but it makes for a lively companion on your wrist.

This Omega is one of my favorites. The polished stainless steel case contrasts really nicely with the subtle golden shade of the dial as well as the gold hands and indices. The case and dial on this one are also in particularly good condition. Inside is a classic bumper automatic movement which, while showing a signficant amount of cosmetic wear, still runs great. I love the way these bumper automatics occasionally squirm a bit on your wrist as if they’re alive.

Based on Omega’s 1920s workhorse 26.5 movement, this example is in nickel silver (a.k.a. German silver) and styled to resemble military trench watches from a decade earlier. I love the cathedral-style hands, although re-luming them was a bit tricky. The nickel silver is a bit soft, so the case back wore through on the edges and it was patched by a jeweler at some point.

This handsome silver Longines from the late 1960s still wears exceptionally well, with its large (for the era) case size and clean, modernist look. The cal. 302 movement inside is part of the brand’s celebrated 30L lineage—thin, beautifully finished, and mechanically robust—making it one of the better manual-wind calibers of its era. When I received this watch it was in pretty good shape (compared to many of the watches I work on, anyway), but was not running due to a broken balance pivot - a fairly unusual occurence in shock protected watches. The only sources for a new balance stem were in Europe, and, without the de minimus exemption, getting it through US customs, tiny as it was, was quite an adventure in itself.

This is a great example of Longines’ mid-century design mastery - really a great looking watch which manages to look much more modern than it is. The Longines 27M movement inside is beautifully crafted, and also demonstrates Longines’ long devotion to non-shock-protected balances, at least for their dress watches, which extended into the early 1960s.

This elegant Longines tank really captures the refined Art-Deco style of the early 1940s with its dramatic triple-bar “wedding band” lugs. Inside beats Longines’ in-house caliber 9L, a finely finished 17-jewel rectangular movement produced for the brand’s U.S. market dress watches of the era.

One day I was casually scanning EBay listings and I ran across a gentleman selling brand new modern cases designed for vintage Landeron movements. As it happened, I also had a perfectly good Landeron 149 movement - originally purchased as a parts movement but never used - that came with a decent Loengrin-branded dial and hands. And just like that this marriage watch was born. The new case is extremely chunky and heavily built, and definitely gives the watch a look that is more modern than vintage, but mostly I was glad to be able to put this nice Landeron movement back to work!

Pocket watches with a chronograph complication are pretty rare, so I was thrilled when I was able to pick up this single-pusher Le Phare example, which was in non-running condition and very dirty but which cleaned up beautifully and still works well. I didn’t do much with the case, because the real beauty here is on the inside. Chronograph lovers with a keen eye may notice the lack of an intermediate minute recording wheel, as well as the odd shark tooth design of the minute recording wheel itself. That’s because this watch has an instantaneous minute recording mechanism that builds spring tension until it snaps the minute recorder over at the appropriate moment. It’s pretty cool and amazingly still works very well. I can only speculate that this mechanism design didn’t show up in later wristwatch chronographs because it was difficult to miniaturize.

Servicing mechanical alarm watches is a pretty routine task for me at this point in my watchmaking journey, but this was the first alarm watch I took on as a restoration project, and I have to admit that I was quite intimidated by the multiple spring barrels (mainspring and alarm spring), complex setting and alarm trigger mechanisms. I had nothing to guide me, and even figuring out how to coordinate the alarm setting with the hour hand when reassembling the watch was something I had to puzzle through. Eventually I figured it all out, and the result is a great watch with a functional alarm and a really unique and elegant look.

If you forced me to pick the best-looking watch in my collection, I’m pretty sure it would be this one. Something about the dial design on this JLC is just perfect - pictures don’t really do it justice. It’s powered by a rather handsome bumper automatic movement, so, like most bumper autos, it occasionally gives a little twitch on your wrist to remind you it’s there. It also has a really unusual shock setting for the balance, where the upper balance jewels are retained by a pivoting brass spring arm.

I had my eyes out for a vintage IWC to add to my collection for quite some time before stumbling upon this example. Even in non-running condition, it didn’t exactly come cheap, but I love the end result. While it’s on the small side, it still looks great on the wrist with the cream colored dial and gold numerals offset by a blued center second hand. The IWC 61 movement is also beautiful but has some flaws. Notably, the indirect drive for the center second hand uses a very light tension spring in an attempt to control flutterg. Unfortunately, the original tension spring was worn out, leading to a distracting amount of second hand flutter when the watch was running (this doesn’t affect timekeeping, but it’s certainly distracting). After some experimentation, I found that a piece of hairspring from a large vintage pocket watch was just the right size and tension to substitute for the original, and the flutter tendencies and now much reduced.