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.

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.