Rolex – Air King – Cal. 1520

Armand brought in this really pretty Rolex a couple weeks ago, and it apparently has not been serviced since he bought it, which apparently has been more than 20 years.

Let’s get those Rolex die’s out and open the hood 🙂

A few more shots.

I admit, I do enjoy working on Rolex watches. I remember in watch making school, I asked one of my teachers what watches he prefers to work on. Without even the slightest delay, he said Rolex. When I started working on a few myself, I quickly learned why. They’re made for watchmakers. Some watches, when putting a bridge on or placing wheels, most times than not, you have to fiddle with them. With a Rolex, however, the bridges always just seem to fall in it’s place. One day, I would like to own of these fellas.

A quick shot of the case back and time to remove the bezel just for cleaning purposes.

A few shots of the movement out of the case and the dial.

Look at that beautiful workmanship. What is there not to appreciate

A few shots of the automatic weight and gears.

A nice quick shot of the bridge side.

That’s not a good start. Turns out the balance spring was quite out of shape. I’ll show more pictures of this later.

It’s time to flip the movement over and start by taking off the calendar works followed by cannon pinion.

Again, I flip the movement over and I remove the balance cock and pallets.

Followed by the crown and ratchet wheel.

And, train bridge and wheels.

A couple more shots with the barrel still attached to the mainplate.

Time to remove the keyless works.

Lastly, the barrel and the balance hacking lever on the bridge side.

A quick shot before it all goes together into a cleaning basket to get cleaned.

Everything cleaned with a new mainspring and ready for reassembly.

As per usual, I start off with the mainspring.

After the new mainspring is inserted into the barrel, it’s time to add the mainspring barrel to the mainplate.

Next, I treat the escape wheel and pallet jewels with epilame so grease doesn’t spread.

Then, I assemble the gear train followed by it’s bridge. Look at this lovely decorated plate.

Followed by adding the ratchet, crown wheel followed by the pallets.

And, it’s time to start working on the keyless works.

Next, it’s time to put back together the automatic gear train.

And here is that problem that I mentioned above with the hairspring. It’s badly bent upwards. I asked Armand if the watch was worked on previously, which interestingly was not. I must say, it is odd that the hairspring can be bent so badly.