Watch Hands Restoration & Bluing - rust removal, hand polishing and bluing tutorial
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- Опубликовано: 16 июл 2024
- Restoration of old rusty pocket watch hands.
I will show you all the tools and materials needed for the restoration.
Preparation for bluing including rust removal, removing scratches, polishing to a mirror polish and finally the bluing process.
Final restored hands will be blued to a finish with hints or purple and also dark blue.
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You can buy me a coffee as a way to support my channel:
buymeacoffee.com/leovidalwatches
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Selection of tools I use:
Screwdrivers: amzn.to/3tE5ZPW *
Suction grip: amzn.to/3II5AAh *
Tweezers 1: amzn.to/3D7tCDG *
Tweezers 2: amzn.to/3qVzwTR *
Rodico: amzn.to/3IziXCV *
Spring bar tool: amzn.to/3DaBZ1t *
Dust cover: amzn.to/3JFUpJM *
Automatic oiler: amzn.to/3LgjnjA *
Oilers: amzn.to/357XGm7
Oil cups: amzn.to/3tCQ1py *
Crystal lift: amzn.to/3tB8LFK *
Blower: amzn.to/359BN5X *
Timegrapher: amzn.to/35e7Jq0 *
Selection of my favourite books (hardcover):
The Watch Repairer’s Manual: amzn.to/3NndoLp *
Practical Watch Repairing: amzn.to/3NcXFhY *
Watchmaking: amzn.to/3DiCAxg *
Maintaining and Repairing Mechanical Watches: amzn.to/3LcuFFd *
Complicated Watches and Their Repair: amzn.to/3tCNpbe *
Bench Practices for Watch Repairers: amzn.to/3wy6LQD *
Selection of my favourite books (Kindle):
The Watch Repairer’s Manual: amzn.to/3Lemg4o *
Practical Watch Repairing: amzn.to/36ktTYg *
Maintaining and Repairing Mechanical Watches: amzn.to/3iwVgAv *
Complicated Watches and Their Repair: amzn.to/3qy74Hm *
Other gear I use:
Tripod : amzn.to/37SLoz3 *
Microphone: amzn.to/3L7vFdM *
Audio Interface: amzn.to/3NjXD8g *
Video editing software: amzn.to/3uqjYbB *
Editing keyboard: amzn.to/3iBcRHy *
* Affiliate Links Disclaimer:
This description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the links with an asterix (*) and make a purchase from Amazon, I’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Thank you for your support,
Leo
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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:57 Tools and consumables
7:18 Magnet test
8:29 Close up look
9:45 Rust removal
11:13 After rust remover
11:48 Ultrasonic clean
13:09 Gentian wood preparation
14:04 Polishing underside
16:16 Polished underside
16:50 Preparation for polishing sides
17:19 Polishing sides and top
19:18 Top after grit 800
19:52 Sides, scratches and final 25000 grit
20:25 Top after grit 25000
21:14 Preparation for bluing
22:39 Bluing and quenching
23:35 Results after 1st bluing, hints of purple
24:48 Results after 2nd bluing, dark blue
25:31 Before and after
26:28 Final thoughts 
Хобби
Absolutely gob-smacked by how well that rust remover worked!
It did a good job. I was impressed with it 👍
Great video !
Thank you! 🙂
Thank you for doing this.
My pleasure!
One of the best I ever watched, thank you for the brilliant work.🙏
Wow, thank you!
Thank you for doing this video so well. Your skills as a watchmaker, teacher and video content producer are unquestionable.
Thank you! This is my hobby, I'm not a watchmaker 😉
@@MacroTime28800 maybe not professional, but you are.
Good content - love the video quality. Quickly becoming a favorite channel.
Music to my ears! Very happy to hear you’re enjoying my videos, thank you for watching.
Excellent work! Keep going!
Thank you! Will do!
Great video Leo.
Thank you Martin, I'm glad you enjoyed it 👍
This is great!
Thank you very much! I'm glad you like it
Excellent! Once again we are reminded that patience is the pathway to perfection in watchmaking, I will use this method t refinish some hands on vintage pocket watches that badly need to be refinished!
Glad it was helpful!
If you have a curved end on your minute hand, find a small sheet of metal you can bend and rest the hand on it while polishing so the curve doesn’t alter 👍
Many thanks!
This was awesome ad informative. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Very comprehensive video
Glad you liked it 👍
Perfection!❤
Thank you!! 🙂
great video!
Thank you!
My god. I’ll never complain about the price of a professional refurbishing. I never thought about all the tools and supplies required let alone the skill and patience. After the first 12 hours of rubbing I’d have given up and decided to buy a new one no matter the cost. It must be very satisfying though
It doesn’t have to be polished to a mirror finish. I wanted to see how far I can take it but if I gave the hands a quick polish they would have been fine. You’d never see the difference with your own eyes.
You’ll see it with the macro lens but not with your eyes.
When I did the Waltham pocket watch I didn’t even see the rust on the minute hand until I used a very strong loupe.
Amazing to see the process end to end give me hope for my future hands
It’s easy enough and you don’t need any specialist tools to do this. The hardest thing is to start.
BTW because of your detailed video I was able to reverse engineer the Bergeon mainspring winder for size 16 pocket watches.
It seems Bergeon doesn't want to make them anymore so I made my own. It works great. I'll post all the info on my Flickr gallery.
I’m glad to hear my video was helpful. Personally, for pocket watches, I use K&D mainspring winders No. 126
Amazing educational content, Leo! Thanks for this, I am subscribing and checking your other videos.
Awesome, thank you!
Just find you channel, great video, thanks for sharing your experience
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it 🙂
23:05 лучше закалять в масле, тогда стрелки не будут ржаветь. После воды могут появляться пятна коррозии. При закалке в масле цвет может незначительно измениться
You have a very good point with the rust and using oil instead. Thank you for letting me know! 👍
That is one of the best tutorials I have seen .Your explanation of what and why you are doing in each step is so informative and easy to understand gives confidence a novice like myself could have a go at restoring hands.Thanks for a great video.👍
My pleasure! That’s my goal to make detailed videos so people fully understand it and can also do the same if that’s the way they choose to do it 👍
@@MacroTime28800 Thank you my friend. Very helpful. I am NOT going to blue the hands I have. The dolphine steel hands. I think they are rhodium plated. They are a little rusted. They have lume on the center of the hands. Any tips on how to NOT remove the lume from the hands in the cleaning and polishing process pls? Thanks.
Terrific job mate, noice 🙌🤘👏🇦🇺
Thank you very much!
Very informative Thanks, i myself would try supergluing the hands to the staking block, this would support the whole item during the polishing proces, and afterwards just heat up the glue and the hand would Fall off
I came across that method when I was researching how to do this and I was considering it.
I can’t quite remember why I decided not to do it that way, it’s a while ago I did that video.
Perhaps because it was doable this way without getting glue on the hands. I really can’t remember, I’m just guessing.
Curious if you have ever tried "rust conversion". It is a common technique for restoring rusty firearms. You boil the parts in water which converts the FE2O3 rust into FEO2 rust which can be easily removed often revealing bluing that was hiding underneath the rust. Mark Novak's "Anvil" youtube channel demonstrates it often.
I’ve never tried it. I’ll check his videos out. Many thanks for pointing it out to me 👍
Very interesting, thank you. I, myself are using gun bluing for this. You get gun bluing for brass and aluminium as well. The cleaning and polishing is the same though.
I looked at the options when I was going to do the bluing and I saw the gun bluing.
I went for the traditional method and used brass shavings and heat but it’s good to know the gun bluing works for aluminium and brass 👍
Great video Leo, love what you do and how you explain it! Keep them coming!
Awesome! I’m really glad to hear you enjoy what I do. I enjoy it too, frustrating at times but it’s worth the end result.
Great video, didnt know you can buy brass swarf on ebay. Ive been saving mine off the lathe. Thanks
Plenty of it on eBay and doesn’t cost much, roughly £6. Definitely go for the fine shavings if you get the option, the hands sit nice and straight on them 👍
Excellent video. Thanks 🙏
Question: I have a chronograph seconds hand that has a crack on the Hun. As such, the fit is not extremely tight when mounting the hand to the pinion.
When the chronograph is stopped, the hand has a bit of play because it’s not as tight as it should be.
I was thinking of laser tac welding the crack.
Is this advised or is there another trick to try to save the hand?
Thanks.
They normally are a very tight fit and need to be pushed on very hard. Just removing them makes them somewhat loose and they generally need to be replaced with new ones.
I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t weld it. If it’s not tight enough after welding, you could use your staking set to reduce the size of the hole until it’s nice and tight. It’s how perfect you want it to be. Ideally a new hand would be best, but welding and reducing the size of the hole should do the trick
Very informative! I am wondering, does the hand have to be polished to be heat blued? I have a set of hands which I'd like to try this process on, which have a brushed finish on top, and polished bevels. Would the brushed finish (or the two different finishes) be an issue? Thank you!
I don’t think it will be an issue. I’m not sure whether you watched the video to the very end where I also show hands that were not polished to a high standard and they were fine. I think as long as they are spotlessly clean you should be OK.
Fantastic. I will use this video to refresh hands and screws. I see you linked your video equipment. Could you possibly link the materials you used? I would love to know where to buy the reagent jars.
I don’t know where about in the world you are but if you search for ‘essence jars Bergeon’ you will find something that will suit the job and will be in your country. I purchased mine from Cousins.
Will using metal polish creams work for mirror polishing?
I'm not sure, I've only tested it with the diamond pastes
hi.diamond paste brand ?thanks
I’m not sure, all I remember is that they were not expensive, not more than £15 for all tubes
I have some very light scratches on the case of my newly bought watch. Swirl marks from wiping with a contaminated microfiber maybe... It's a mirror finish and I would like to get that perfect finish back. 2-3mm marks, and the area around it is perfect finishing so I would prefer to limit my intervention to the mark itself. Cape cod buffing or Dremel polishing seems to be what most recommend but I don't think that's for me. Could I use diamant paste for that purpose? On gentian wood? What grit should I try? My idea until I saw this video was to try with Dialux Vert on some tool that's felt or leather glued to a wooden stick. But the smallest I could find is 6mm wide...
Yes you could use the Gentian wood and diamond pastes. I would start with the finest first, working my way down if the finest is not removing the scratches. When the scratches are removed and if it’s not polished to your liking, you can work your way up with the finer pastes until you achieve the finish you want.
Personally, I’d use the Dremel, cotton wheel, not a felt wheel, that would be OK for deeper scratches and Dialux. It would be much quicker than the Gentian wood and diamond pastes. I used that for the hands because they are small and delicate but for cases I use the Foredom flexshaft, felt wheels / cotton wheels and Dialux.
If you have a look at the latest Seiko video on my channel, you’ll see how I polish the case and also how I cover it with a masking tape. It’s a long video but there are timestamps in the description so you can quickly find what you want to see.
These cotton wheels should fit your Dremel, you'll have to check whether they do:
www.cousinsuk.com/product/mini-cotton-wheels
But if you’re not comfortable with the Dremel, the Gentian wood a diamond pastes would do it well.
@@MacroTime28800 thank you so much for taking the time to respond. I'm indeed not comfortable with a Dremel. So I will try "sticks and stones" first.
I love how you can play with words! ‘Sticks and stones’ indeed! 😉
Hi, Sir, I'm from Brazil and I don't have the tools and pratice to do this. Do you have a store to sell hands?
Sorry, no I don't have a store. I bought mine on eBay, you should be able to find plenty there.
how to find watch hand size based on the movement?
One movement is generally used for several watches and they can be of different size. Your best bet is to go by the diameter of the hole for the cannon pinion or the hour wheel and the length of the hand.
Very comprehensive video
Glad you liked it 👍