This watch is not actually mine but a work colleagues. He inherited it from his father who was awarded it for long service at British Layland which was a car manufacturer that went under in around 1975. Coventry where I am from was the automotive epicentre of the UK for decades and the ancestral home to Jaguar Cars.
This watch came to me broken and looking very much worst for wear, well that said it looked like it had been worn every day for decades. Clearly my colleagues father was proud of this piece and as well he should be.
Garrard are not that well known out of the UK but made watches that seemingly were often given out for long service. Clearly they had some good salesmen back then that must have gone from company to company selling their wears.
Garrard are actually jewellers in London and were the jeweller to the late Queen Elizabeth II.
I have no photos of the watch before the work as I was just going to fix this one for him off the record but something I found in the movement made me get the camera’s out and get filming this repair. Link to the video further down the page.
Essentially this watch has had some serious water ingress in the crown and stem which seized the crown completely and I could not remove it or turn it to change the time or wind.
The movement did look nice though and was a gold coloured Peseaux 7040.
In order just to remove the movement from the case I had to snap off the crown and on strip down I found the stem to be solid rust into the winding pinion and clutch.
I soaked this for a month in PlusGas which is a bit like WD40 only better. It had no effect though and I ended up doing 4 cycles in the ultrasonic before getting brutal and just pulling it to the point of failure.
In the video I show how I then dealt with the rusted stem in the crown. I could have easily replaced the crown for a newer and better one but to me a crown is the part of the watch we all touch and as this is an inheritance watch I felt it should be saved for my colleague to be touching the part his father would have touched every day.
Here is the video.
I would recommend watching the video to see the struggles I had with this one, if not here is the finished watch. This Garrard is a true dress watch. A proper dress watch does not have any complications and no second hand.
