Most services just include cleaning and relubrication. Parts don’t wear out that quickly.
Most watches from before the quartz crisis (pre ‘70s) used standard off-the-shelf Swiss movements for which spare parts are still readily available. It can get tricky with expensive or rare in-house stuff like Omega and Rolex though.
The minute hand is set to 43-ish minutes past the hour while the hour hand is showing 15-ish minutes past noon/midnight. If you’re used to reading analog watches it’s jarring.
Watch a few hours of watch repair on YouTube. If you're still intrigued, I highly recommend Mark Lovick's course over at https://www.watchfix.com/. You'll learn all you need to know about tools, lubricants and techniques to service most watch movements.
It is remarkable indeed! When not ruining watches with resin I enjoy servicing them, and I'm planning to learn how chronographs work next. The ST19 movement is on its way now, another very reasonably priced, reliable and fully mechanical chronograph with a column wheel. Hats off to the Chinese.
You can use index matching fluid to determine what the nylon line is currently at and then use the fluid to experiment with epoxy droplets containing various amounts of low index additives like MgF2 nanoparticles or something :)
Well, if Bartosz doesn't reach out (I offered to send it to him), I'll consider sending it to Adam. My favorite builds of his are boxes that reflect their contents, and I'd love to see what he'd consider for something like this.
I suspect you're right, but knowing myself I'd quickly get sick of sanding (6 faces with 5-6 different kinds of sandpaper), and I'd want an orbital sander. Then I'm pretty sure you want to polish the surfaces: lots of elbow grease or a polishing/buffing tool. If I had a workshop with space for tools and dust I'd probably go for it, but I'm doing this in the living room of a small apartment.
This would be a similar process to finishing any painted surface. Progressive through the grits, each time removing the scratches from the previous grit, wet sanding with the higher grits. You can then hand polish with polishing compounds you can get at any hardware/car accessory store. You can start with an orbital sander or a belt sander of some sorts. I've done this on guitars I've built.
If you're fairly close it shouldn't be a ton of work.
