Now it’s back to bigger watches. What I’ve got here is a Baylor Watch Co. watch that is powered by a Standard 1686 movement. I really like the applied numeral indicators. They have an art deco-ish vibe to them. This watch was running pretty fast when I got it (except for Crown Left). The watch didn’t have much by way of kickback, but other than that there weren’t any major issues.

Unless you count the caseback.

This is a great example of what happens if you have improper tools for the job. I was pretty shocked when I got this watch. There isn’t any polishing that I could do with rouge and a buff that would take that out. I just cleaned it and handed it off to Mr. Poye to work with later.

This watch was pretty easy to work on. There was a lack of kickback (seems to be a running theme here with these watches), but that was about it for the mechanical issues. After doing the cleaning and oiling, I put the watch on the timing machine to regulate it and got a pretty nice result

As with the other tapes, original is on the left, the new one is on the right. Now that the movement has gone through the C/O/R procedure, it was time to address the caseback. Like I said, the standard polishing procedure wasn’t going to help. Go back and take a look at the picture again. There are gouges everywhere. Some even have small holes in them. To help make the back a bit more presentable, Mr. Poye put the caseback in a chuck in his lathe and used a graver to smooth out the back. After he worked on it, he gave it back to me to work on getting the vertical line finish back to a better state. That was simple enough to do-I put the caseback in my movement holder and rubbed it on some medium-fine grit sandpaper. After a few passes and a run through the ultrasonic and it looked pretty good. Not great, and you could definitely tell that someone had messed up with trying to open the case, but it looks a heck of a lot better than when I first saw it.

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Prior Entries in the 16-Point Check Project

• Hamilton 780
• Lord Elgin
• Benrus DR-25 (ETA-2370)
• Seiko 11 A
• 16-Point Check 2
• Introduction to the 16-Point Check