Amateur Hour Watch Restoration

Where it’s from

I bought this movement at the Alameda Antiques Fair for $10 (probably overpaid, IMO).

What it looked like

It was in quite a state when I bought it:

No crown, cracked crystal, no band. The dial caught my eye though, it looks kind of cool. Amazingly, it also ticks for a little bit when you rotate it, so it must still have a tiny bit of wind in there. The dial says “jeweled” without a count, so I’m betting it’s just a couple of jewels, maybe. It says Swiss made, so I’m betting it’s a Swiss-lever escapement.

The whole movement is very light, probably because I think the case is made of aluminum.

After opening it up, I see a “Brac 50” stamp, so this is a Brac 50 movement, which was produced around 1950.

How I restored it

Dec 16, 2025

So it’s a pin-lever escapement, but it’s kind of fascinating. The only pin-lever escapements I’ve seen so far are single-plate movements that are not designed to be serviced. But clearly this one is, since the balance and pallet each have their own bridge. Another interesting thing is that the yoke and yoke spring are actually one integrated part.

I actually kind of like this movement. It’s clearly the result of mass production, but it was still designed to not be just trash that can never be worked on. It’s helped me realize something: things that serve a function, but that are not designed to be easily repaired or serviced, have very little value. This is probably the worst form of the “single-use” philosophy, because the object is presented as serving a similar or identical function to those objects that will outlive their first lifetime. Almost as if the “single-use” object is a doppelganger or a fraud among the class of objects that serve the same function.

Dec 16, 2025

I’ve mostly disassembled it. This is a really nifty movement! Many of the parts serve dual purposes, especially the screws. The screws for the balance and pallet bridges, and the screw for the click spring, also serve to secure the main plate to the dial plate. The setting lever screw also serves as one of the posts between the two plates. One weird thing though: it looks like the center seconds pinion is actually riveted on to the wheel, which means I can’t actually remove it. I have a feeling that it might just be a super tight friction fit, but I don’t want to risk forcing it.

I think this movement may have been worked on once before too, because I see some very small scratches and dents around the pivot holes. Although some of them are so tiny, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are just the result of the first assembly going slightly awry.

Anyways, it’s as disassembled as I’ll be able to get it, so on to cleaning.

Dec 22, 2025

I decided to just manually clean, instead of using the ultrasonic.

I had a bit of a panic when I pinged the hairspring pin out of my tweezers. Looked all over the room, couldn’t find it, and then investigated replacing it with one of the pins from a Timex movement. It deffo wasn’t going to fit, but when I went to put in my tray, lo and behold the original pin was there! Small miracles.

I was able to get it running, but it ain’t pretty:

The beat error is way way too high and the amplitude is way too low, but at least the trace lines are relatively straight. I’ll see what I can do. For now, I need to get packed for our trip to see my family.

Dec 31, 2025

Back from my trip, with a complementary serving of Covid, hooray. Today was the first day I felt confident enough to do some work on a movement. I didn’t have a crown that would fit the stem, so I ended up filing down the stem to kind of sort of fit one of the crowns I have. It worked well enough to at least wind it, which let me get the movement in a decent position:

The trace is a bit wavy, but I’m happy with the amplitude, and OK with the beat error (I adjusted the roller table to get it to this). All that remains is to source a new stem and maybe new crowns, and a new crystal. I’ve been contemplating getting the big 250 pack of crystals I’ve seen on Amazon.

Jan 21, 2026 7:10 AM

I ended up buying the giant pack of crystals. They definitely aren’t as nice as the G&S crystals, but they are nice enough for my purposes. I had a series of comical events in obtaining a stem:

1. I found a seller on eBay who was selling them in pairs for a good price, <$10. After I bought it, the seller contacted me saying that they were quite rusty, and could not in good conscience take my money for them.
2. I found another seller on eBay that was selling one for like $15.
3. A few days later I got two packages: the first seller sent the stems to me anyway, for free! So now I have 3 Brac 50 stems.
4. Turns out Brac 50 stems are tap 5 (about 1.4mm diameter) instead of the almost ubiquitous tap 10 (about 0.9mm). I was actually not able to find any tap 5 crowns.
5. So, I decided to get a tap and die set, file down the stems, and re-thread them at tap 10. I wish I had taken some pictures, because the stem is now pretty comically grungy.

All that being said, I was able to recase the movement, so here’s where we landed:

Jan 30, 2026 4:54 PM

The band finally came in for this one. Here’s the final results:

Not bad, not bad.