This early 1970s Elgin is highlighted by an unusual and striking “basket weave” dial. It is powered by a Swiss-made FHF manual wind movement with surprisingly nice finishing, cosplaying as an “Elgin 394.”

This watch is particularly meaningful to me. Not because it is valuable (it isn’t), but rather because of its significance as part of my journey as a watchmaker. This is one of the first watches I successfuly restored following my “graduation” from stripping down and reassembling cheap Chinese movements. Even so, there was a lot I still didn’t know at the time, and my skills were still pretty rough. As it happens, I mishandled the balance while disassembling the watch and ended up kinking the hairspring. At the time, I had no idea how to deal with a damaged hairspring, but the watch still ran (poorly, with an amplitude well under 200 degrees) when I reassembled it, so I regulated it as best I could, and although it tended to run quite slow I called it a win.

Since that time I have actually gotten pretty good at addressing balance issues, including kinked or twisted hairsprings, and recently I decided to open up this watch again and see if I could actually get it to run properly. I was able to correct the hairspring damage, and the watch now runs with excellent amplitude (~ 280 degrees) and keeps great time. It was a reminder of how far I’ve come as a watchmaker.

By the way, this was also one of the first watch cases that I fully restored. The original chrome plating was in very rough shape, and after stripping it (the hard way - by sanding, since I didn’t have the electrochemical chrome stripper that I use today) I re-plated the case in bright nickel. It’s not perfect, but it looks pretty good for an early attempt.