I’m back from my holiday in Cornwall, and we had a lot of luck with the weather and lots of sunshine.
This Zenith came all the way from Singapore, and Gerard sent it in.
He wants the dial restored, and the case polished.
The case back has terrible scratch marks, and some run over the case number.
The movement is in good condition.
The winding stem is bent, the pendant tube damaged, and the crown needs replacing as well, as it’s not original.
The dial goes off to David Bill & Sons for restoration.
I scrape off the paint and luminous compound from the hands.
Then it’s time to take apart the movement.
All looking good, with not too much dirt.
Ready for the cleaning machine.
One of the case screws is broken off, and I have to get that out of the plate.
The hands repainted and re-lumed.
The new mainspring has arrived, and I can put the movement back together.
The barrel and barrel bridge back on the plate.
The base movement is ticking again.
Not fully wound, this is looking good.
David Bill didn’t have the original template, but used the one from the sub-second version of the Sporto.
A new pendant tube. A bit too long, and I take a bit off on the lathe.
Charles did a great job polishing the case.
That does look rather nice!Charles excelled himself on the case back. As the scratches were so deep, he had to re-engrave the case reference.
Hi,
I have a Zenith Sporto Caliber 2542 which requires a new mainspring. Could I please ask if you know of a possible supplier. I now live in Bulgaria and my watch is with a great watch repairer in Sofia but he can’t find a replacement mainspring to complete the repair.
Thanks in advance for your time,
Kind regards
Andrew
Surely your watchmaker should know where he can get a mainspring? cousinsuk.com sells mainsprings by size.
I really like that caseback engraving. Do you know if a computerized engraver was used? It looks deeper than a manual engraving machine. Thanks!
I am afraid engraving is not my forte, so I don’t know the answer to that question.
Hi there,
I was just wondering what mainspring you used for this watch?
I can’t find one the correct size at Cousins.
Thanks, Steve.
Just noticed someone already asked! lol
You don’t happen to have any old reference as to what spring you used do you? Found some supposedly correct dimensions but can’t find anything close!
Cheers!
I’m afraid I don’t have that information. Have you checked on cousinsuk.com?
Sorry,
Christian
Hi
I wanna to service my zenith Manuel and dial a little faded .
How can I go about ? sending address? please advice..
Rgards
peter
Read our FAQ and booking page?
I’m not sure I understand why it would be OK to change the dial from the original to the sub-second version if that isn’t what the watch was originally. I have my father’s Zenith and would like to restore it but would want it to be restored to original specifications. Would I be able to request that?
If you can find a dial restorer who can do it, you can request it 😉
Beautiful job. The watch looks like new. I’m curious about how big the watch is, sans crown. It looks to be in the 32 mm to 34 mm range.
David Bill and sons seem to do excellent dials, but they do like their Lume. I see lots of their work with lume at each hour marker – which often wouldn’t have been there on the original dial.
The case back looks stunning.
Amazing work! Is it a secret what the price for such a job is?
Happy Easter!
The total came to over £300, of which £110 was for my work. The rest was parts and third party work.
Amazing work Chistian 🙂
I would just like to take this opportunity to thoroughly recommend David Bill & Sons.
I sent watch dial to them a few days prior to Mother’s Day. I explained that the restoration of the watch I was doing was a Mothers Day gift and that I had left it a bit late but was there anything they could do? To my surprise that Saturday morning the watch dial arrived fully restored and good as new.
I would never have found out about David Bill & Sons if it had not been for Chistian creating this blog. A massive thank you to Christian too.
Best regards
Nick Perkins
Did you do any testing before starting to use alum to see if it ate anything else? It’s just there doesn’t seem to be a lot of information around to suggest anyone else has…
I very much like the polishing and new engraving on the case-back – very crisp. It’s a shame about the dial template, though the alternate one does work I think.
I did test the method first by putting an old plate with a screw in alum for a week. The screw was gone, and the plate pristine.