Customized Wristwatch

Chances are pretty good that you have at least one wristwatch.

Nowadays, watches tend to be „smart“ and contain lots of electronics. Until not even a lifetime ago, they were completely mechanical, before they were starting to be powered by a tiny battery and a resonating quartz to keep the time.

When they were all mechanical, they had a wound spring to provide power, which had to be wound by the user, or later with the advent of automatic watches, by a small pendulum driven by the user‘s movements during the day.

My grandfather was a watchmaker and my godmother a jeweler and I grew up playing in their shops, often with broken timepieces, that customers no longer wanted. For me, clocks, watches and all the other means to keep time have thus always held a great fascination. Especially the development of the mechanical clocks over the past few hundred years , I find amazing. This especially, because you can often repair them yourself.

Some of the watchmakers, even today, like to show the inner workings of their mechanical designs by giving the cases windows and reducing the supporting structures to bare skeletons.

Watches can be rather costly, if you want something nice, but the type I wanted always had some frills that I didn’t like.

So, I decided to simply get the cheapest watch that fit my expectations and change the appearance to my own taste.

As you might guess, it‘s not that difficult to change appearances….

I‘m not a watchmaker and have no training.

But, you don‘t really need to be a watchmaker to make some simple changes.

And you don‘t have to be afraid of watches and clocks, because they are quite tame, as long as you don‘t mess with their springs.

But, you need to be careful and have a bit of patience….

I always wanted one of the automatic watches, where you don‘t need to make sure that you rewind the watch all the time, because it is automatically wound by its little pendulum when you wear it.

I like clock mechanisms, so a skeleton watch would be great.

I find it aesthetically pleasing to see all the details when I look at the watch on my wrist, therefore a watch with glass bottom would be good.

The color and shape of the case can be changed, of course, but it‘s simpler to just look for the kind you like and buy accordingly.

What you can most easily change is the wristband and since these are terrible on cheap watches - a must.

Cheap watches always have a cheap and often ugly watch face in order to make them look more expensive and of higher quality. Why do people want to flash a logo of a company on their wrist that produces cheap things, or that doesn‘t even exist? Luckily, they are also relatively easy to remove and change.

Therefore, I got the cheapest watch that roughly fit my expectations and that I could find on AliExpress, because if I would break it, it wouldn’t hurt - as much.

The problem with it:

1. The watch dial is ugly and looks cheap.
2. The wristband is ugly and looks cheap.

My wife‘s question when I opened the package:

„You are not going to wear that thing, are you?“

I promised that I wouldn’t and that it didn’t cost much and was just to play with and take apart to see how it works.

And so I took it apart….

If you want to play around with watches of any kind, it’s advisable to get one of the myriad cheap watchmaker kits. They contain more than you will probably ever need and the quality may not be great, but adequate for the normal tasks - like changing a battery, or adjusting a watch band.

My grandfather was a watchmaker and clock-builder and I still have a few of his tools, so….

The other important thing is to keep everything as clean as humanly possible.

The third important thing is a rule for anything you do, but especially in watchmaking:

Concentrate and take your time!

The things I used:

30 € Automatic skeleton watch, because you can see everything and it winds automatically

4 € Wristband - I chose a black Milanese with magnetic hasp, because it is soft and light and easily adjustable

1. Watch opener, i.e. a small knife
2. Thin tweezers
3. Scalpel
4. A small bench vise
5. Tiny flat-head screwdrivers
6. Jeweler‘s files
7. Small dish for bits and pieces

Now: Make sure you have a spotless workspace, since dust is NOT a watch’s friend!

Anything you break may be fatal! (At least for the timepiece)

Opening a cheap watch is mostly really simple.

Since I wanted to do more than change a battery, I first removed the watchband, because they always tend to get in the way. That is easily done by releasing the small spring bars that hold them to the case of the watch with a small screwdriver. They are usually a simple spring-action, so you just push them together and they will pop out and try to escape….

Sometimes the back of the watchcase is screwed on and the whole lid has to be unscrewed, sometimes the lid is attached by a few tiny screws. With cheap watches - like mine - the lid is usually made to look screwed on, but is simply pressed on and can be levered open. Often with this type, there is a small recess on the rim of the lid, or in the housing to get the edge of a knife blade in. Just make sure not to slip and cut yourself, or worse, scratch the watch.

Be careful not to damage the thin rubber seal ring - if there is one.

Once the lid is removed, you need to be more careful, because the small parts of the watch‘s caliber are a bit hard to repair, or replace - especially the thin spring of the unrest.

In case you didn’t already know, the mechanism keeping the time in a watch is called the caliber. To rewind a mechanical watch, there is a knob on the side of the case, called the crown. When you have opened the case, you can see that it sits on the end of an axle which needs to be removed before the caliber can be removed from the case. Usually, there is a tiny spring-loaded pin somewhere close to the edge of the caliber next to the axle that needs to be pressed down with a pair of pointy tweezers or a tiny screwdriver to release the crown.

The caliber is sometimes fixed in the body by two screws. In my case, there is simply a metal ring around it, that holds it in place. With the battery powered timepieces, the latter is often a white plastic frame that fits inside the body.

If there are screws, they usually have a part of their heads cut back and there are small recesses cut out of the case at corresponding places, to allow for the heads of the screws. The screws don‘t sit tight, so careful, and only need to be turned enough to free them from the case, the ring or frame can easily be pulled out.

Either turn over the case, or carefully lift the caliber from the case with tweezers.

It‘s best to put the caliber in a special holder or stand to prevent damage, but if you are very careful, you can use any flat surface - or on the ring that held it in the body - in my case.

In my case, the dial has a large hole, is basically a large ring, so I could proceed without removing the hands, but:

Before you can remove the dial, you need to remove the hands that tell the time. The hands are really easily damaged, so be careful! The hands are simply pushed on, so can easily be removed using the designated tool, or using needle nose tweezers - or your fingernails, for that matter. A mechanical watch has tiny tubes that are the axles of their central gears to which the hands are attached. The second hand often has a pin that fits in the central tube and the minute and hour hands have holes that fit onto the other tubes. Once they are removed, the caliber can be turned over. To prevent damage to the axles and gears, it‘s again best to put it on a holder, or the ring - in my case.

The face of the watch is most times a round and flat piece of metal or plastic. To keep it attached to the caliber, there are usually two pins attached to its back that fit into matching holes in the caliber. As with the caliber-case connection, there are usually two tiny bolts with asymmetric heads that keep the pins fixed. Once these are loosened, the caliber can be lifted form the dial. If your tiny flat head screwdriver is too dull for the screws, you may need to sharpen it.

If you simply want to remove the ugly dial, you are done and can replace the hands and the caliber in the case….

Well, that is if the case if the watch is shaped so that the caliber is as large as the face was and that the caliber can rest on the rim of the body, that the dial had been resting on. Otherwise, you have to provide something to replace the dial.

In my case, the dial was a bit larger than the caliber. Once the watch face was removed, the caliber simply fell on the glass when placed back inside the case - not so good!

After taking a closer look at the old dial and to facilitate things (save time and work), I decided to just modify the dial by reducing it to a bare minimum ring, by removing the numbers as well as the brand logo and other protrusions, instead of making something completely new.

The Roman numerals were easy to remove, because they had tiny pins holding them on the dial as well as tiny bits of glue, same as the lettering and crown of the logo. All could be carefully removed using tweezers and a scalpel.

The hour markings are fluorescent pigments dots, that I definitely wanted to keep.

The attachment pins must remain also, though they protrude inside from the ideal ring.

To remove all the parts that bothered me, I used the scalpel. For all further work, I clamped the dial into a small bench vise with even smaller clamp insert, with additional sturdy paper added to prevent damage to the face when clamped in. The fluorescent hour markings are flexible, so pressure needs to be kept to a minimum - that‘s why the paper.

All small protrusions were carefully removed using jeweler‘s files. I could have done better - I know….

Clean everything thoroughly!!! Tiny metal particles are deadly for any kind of mechanical system, so make absolutely sure that NONE will get near the caliber of your watch!

Clean all parts again to make sure you leave no fingerprints, especially on inside glass surfaces. Make sure there is no dust anywhere.

Once you have cleaned everything, check everything again. It is quite frustrating when you have closed a watch to find that there is a spec of something or other inside.

Then put things together in the reverse order….

Do it slowly and carefully….

Close the case, and you are finished, once you have attached the watchband of your choice….

Now you are (almost) a watchmaker!

The whole ordeal hopefully ended with the patient alive and keeping time.

My wife asked me why I bought still another watch and if I broke the ugly one.

I hope this may remove some of the fears you might have of breaking something when a battery or wristband on a watch must be changed.

Watches are designed to be quite sturdy, even the caliber in a mechanical watch must survive when you accidentally drop your Rolex, or Omega, so looking inside won‘t automatically kill them.

Then again, If you do open your watch, please take one that‘s cheap and that you won‘t miss.

And if you break it, don‘t come running….

Always stay fascinated!