An obvious fake

An obvious fake "Maurice Lacroix" watch.

  

So Casio EF-125D-7AV Bracelet Broke After 7 Years..

My Casio EF-125D-7AV's bracelet broke. Luckily, it was a spring bar that broke and fell into pieces, and doubly luckily, it was not on my wrist when it did. A simple fix. However, the 7 years of hard use has not been kind to the bracelet and spring bars.

Yes, the EF-125D-7AV is by no means a watch meant to last the eons, especially the folded metal bracelet construction, but it does worry me a bit since it has the integrated bracelet which isn't changeable when the time comes, the bracelet has gotten very loose from stretching and rattly over the years.

The watch may have stopped once in the past but that was probably due to accidental bumping of the crown. It's almost been 7 years to this day and the 10-year battery has kept ticking non-stop, with essentially zero maintenance. That is pretty darn amazing. Also, I have dropped it once to a tile floor from arm height, standing up. Dented the case a bit, but no other damages.

If you didn't know, the EF-125D was my first 'proper' watch I got for myself, back in late 2008. It is the watch that got me into watches.

Vintage Sandoz Automatic

Wow, this one is old. I don't know how old, but, it definitely is very old. Behold, my father's vintage Sandoz automatic. I have never heard of the name Sandoz but apparently it has been around since 1870s. Sandoz in the 1970s was split into several companies, according to Wikipedia, all of them named Sandoz but split into 4 areas of production, due to licensing. This became 4 separate brands, Sandoz Singapore, Sandoz Hong Kong, Sandoz Swiss and Sandoz Spain, each with their own line of products. 

Now, that means that, I am just really guessing here that this watch is either one of the post-1970s one, or the pre-1970s product. As the watch has the "Swiss Made" on it, it maybe the Swiss one. But really, I have no idea.

Condition:

When I found it, the second hand has fallen off sadly. And it doesn't tick. I can wind it, but it won't work. I have since cleaned it up a bit, and brought it over to my watch guy to have a look. He says he can see some rust (uh oh) but if that clears up there doesn't seem to be anything else wrong. Hopefully we can fix it.

The lug on the lower left side has also bent, most likely as a result of a fall. My watch guy says that he won't be touching that as he doesn't want to be held liable for breaking it off... fair enough. Well we will see how that will work out. Hopefully I can get it at least ticking again, and reoiled and serviced.

Bad Luck Today

Hit some bad luck with my new Casio Edifice EQS-500DB-1A2. I snagged it against a door catch and bent the spring bars, which came apart from the watch case and it fell onto the floor.

Fortunately, however, there aren't any scratches on the watch itself, surprisingly, since when it fell, it landed on the bracelet side, on a smooth tile floor. Even the bracelet didn't show much of a scratch, I am extremely lucky. The only damage on the case appears to be very tiny scratches on the side of the impact, which looks like wear against the bracelet anyway. Needless to say, Casios are tough.

I will be heading over to my watch guy for some new spring bars. 

Sorry for the bad pics, evening pics with iPad..

Nearly ruining another watch

So something I don't understand. I took apart a cheap quartz watch easily and did some cleaning and took apart the dial and removed the logo. Then I put it back together again. Of course, something came loose, so I took it apart again to fix it.

Except, this time no matter what I try, for a good hour or so, I was not even able to take out the crown stem, which I was able to do easily earlier. I gave up.

UPDATE: Pictures & more info.


So the story goes like this. One of the dial lumes came loose and I wanted to fix it, but then I can no longer take it apart, to a point where I am almost ruining the inside of the watch. I simply can't understand why I took the crown stem apart on the first try easily to take out the movement, and then on the second try I can't. Eventually all that shaking knocking and pulling made more of the dial lumes come loose, and I ended up with a watch that looks like the above, which I STILL can't take apart.

Wow, that was frustrating. What a mystery. Thinking that I may have remembered the wrong things to depress to get the crown stem out, I began pressing all sorts of combinations on the movement and I may have destroyed some of the plastic parts within. But of course it still won't come out, so I think I might have broken something on the first try.

Time to visit my watch guy again. sigh.

So I decided some watch customizing...

I found a fake automatic Rolux™ at my parent's storeroom, which was just sitting there probably waiting to be thrown out. It once belonged to my grandfather. So I took it, shook it, and wow, it still ticks. So I took it and thought about customizing the watch.

What made me interested to customize it is because it doesn't look like the usual Rolux™ fakes, in fact it doesn't look like any Rolux™ that I know of. And also, aside from that, it is a see-through transparent skeleton watch. It isn't all see-thru though, it's mostly just fake stuff on the dial like it is see-through, but good enough.

So I thought, why not customize it? Just paint or stick something over the logo and the words "co-axial escapemint", and I would have a decent looking watch. Decent, maybe from 25 feet away. 

Taking it apart was fairly easy, but when I figured out how to take out the stem, I was hooked. I began taking apart more and more, polishing the case and crystal, and put it back together. By then it look clean. But when I put it back together I dropped the whole thing (clumsy me) and bent the minute hand. OK, fine - just bend it back to shape, since it's crashing with the seconds hand. 

By this time I dropped it again and bent the second hand AND the crown stem. GRRRR.

So bending the hands back to shape, and putting it together, with a wonky crown stem that doesn't turn well, I pressed too hard on the crystal and cracked it.

This was all after midnight of course, when I start doing things like this.

The next day I took it to a watch repair shop, and asked if it could be repaired. The watch guy said, yes, in fact he could do it immediately, I was surprised. Well I didn't leave it with him and thought about asking other places, but I didn't have time and brought it home.

Back home, sitting at my desk, holding it in my hand, it managed to slip while I was pulling out the crown and then I dropped it. AGAIN. And this time I broke the stem.

....and here is the result:

Broken crown and crack at 3 o'clock position

So I guess that the lesson is if you're going to do something, use the proper tools, use the proper space, do it in the morning when your mind is fresh and hands are steady, and don't rush it.

But the loss isn't that bad, after all it is a bad fake, and at least I learnt how to take apart a watch. It still ticks, but can't set it obviously with a broken crown.