Dad’s Watch…

I bet you wonder what’s going on with the property. That will be another post.  Lol.

Well, Dad brought out a watch my Grandmother gave him and asked if I could put a new stem in it. Seems the stem fell out and was lost a while back, so I said I would give it a look. The watch is a nice Bulova 11ALC in a factory slim case. Unfortunately, when I opened it I immediately saw the remainder of a split stem all caked in rust. The stem remnants look like this…

That isn’t something you want to see in a small mechanical device. The rust didn’t migrate too far, but it did get some places. Here is what the plate the stem is in looks like….

The rust had been building for a while, here is how much the case contained when I opened it…..

I’m on the hunt for parts now. Tom over at Dashto had the mainspring, several female stem halves in factory packages from Bulova, and a complete balance assembly. I don’t need the balance or multiple replacement stem halves, but I figured they wouldn’t hurt sitting in my parts bins instead of Tom’s. I have a replacement male half of the stem in my stockpile of parts so all I need now is a crown. I think Tom has Bulova crowns as soon as I measure the threads on the stem half.

If all goes well, I should have Dad’s watch repaired in a couple weeks or so.