Restoring a 1970s Memosail Regatta chronograph! 

Thanks a lot, Tom! I started the channel with a desire to show all kinds of watches and movements and I still enjoy that. I think focusing more on the big brands would probably attract more viewers, but my channel was always intended as a fun side project. It is however growing to be a bit more 😊

😂 Thanks for sharing that story, Chris! I don't think a regatta timer would have helped in that situation :)

Thanks David! Very cool watch for you then :)

Thanks Rich, that's very cool to hear :)

Wow, that's very cool to hear, thanks! I suppose I'll have to do an alarm watch then, so you'll wake up in time 😂⏰

@@VintageWatchServices hahaha no need for that, my wife, son and the dog make sure I get out of bed in time every morning 😁

😁

Wow, thanks a lot for that :) 😊

It's a very cool one! Very unusual and certainly a very 70s design :)

Thanks for watching! You're spot on, very few complications see much use. But just knowing they are there and the incredible feat of engineering they are makes one a bit prouder of one's watch, so it's not entirely in vain :)

Thanks for watching, Sean!

That's very nice to hear, Shane! The Venus 188 is relatlively straight forward as far as chronographs go, but it's still a complication :) So it's a good idea to make sure you feel comfortable with standard watches first 👍

Thank you very much! 😊

Thanks so much, and I fully agree. Do you actually drive a Saleen btw?

Thank you very much!

Thanks a lot, Bullnose! 😂

Thanks!

Thanks so much, Lynn! 🤗

Thanks so much, Clive 😊

Thanks Joey! I wish think of looks very, very cool, but it's certainly a distinct design :)

Thanks for that, Angelino! Keeping things simple is best most of the time (plus I don't really know how to do better animation) 😊

Thank you very much!

Thanks Martin! It's certainly a very 70s design, with all that entails 😁 But it is cool to have an outlandish watch in your collection :)

Works for me! Every time!

Thanks! 😊

Thanks so much, Aaron :)

Thanks so much!

Thanks a lot, Howard! It's a very cool watch but certainly not a mainstream design :)

I think if you want to protect your wrist from bullets, this one would indeed be a good choice 😂

Thanks for watching!

Thanks, Nizam!

Thanks Tiberiu! 😁

Thanks Christopher :)

Thanks Francis ! Definitely a 70s watch 😎

😂 Thanks, Clive!

Thanks a lot, Angel!

Thank you very much, and more to come :)

Thanks for sharing, Peter! Sounds like you have a very nice collection? I'll try to get my hands on a Seagull 1963 at one point also, they look great.

@@VintageWatchServices Hi, thank´s once more for sharing these nice vids. I recently had a Jubilee bracelet repaired in Oslo. Morten of Klokkeland did a great job and saved the shaky and worn out bracelet of my old Fat Lady @ a reasonable price . Give credit where credit is due 👍👍👍.

Good to hear!

I think it's very cool! Certainly not a vanilla design, but I prefer strawberry anyway :)

Thanks a lot, Dave!

Thanks for that, Randy! Those circles are about as advanced as I know how to get with my video editing tool, but simple is good 😁 The Poljot will come in a few weeks 👍

Thanks a lot, Luke :)

Thank you very much!

Thank you! Cheers!

Thanks a lot, Alain! Yep, the kit is awesome 👍

Gracias! :)

😆👍

Very cool! They're not that common and really fun to wear :)

😁👍

Thanks Andy!

Thanks a lot, Greg, that's very cool to hear :)

Thanks Godfrey! There are quite a few courses available nowadays and it's a great hobby!

Thanks so much!

Thanks Eric! Not the kind of watch that goes with any kind of attire for sure 😁

Thanks so much, Peter, that's very nice to hear 😊

Thanks so much!

Thanks for watching, Eugene ! Many vintage chronographs have very clean dials actually, but there are indeed a lot with very busy ones. I shudder at seeing the Bentley Breitling for instance, that's about the last watch I would ever wear...

😂

Wow, that's very cool to hear, Dmitry! It's a great hobby :) Yes, I don't like having tiny parts anywhere near a moving hairspring, that's something I learnt the hard way 😎

Thanks so much! This is for sure not a mainstream design, which makes it fun to wear :) Vanilla turns bland after a while 😉

Thanks Jon! I'm also curious about the Poljot, I have not worked on those before. We'll see in a couple of weeks :)

Hello David, that's a very cool story, but it does indeed sound like your watch has seen a bit more water than it likes. You can send me a mail to stian@vintagewatchservices.eu with as many photos as you can take, then I can have a look. I'm extremely busy, so I cannot guarantee anything, but let's see.

Thanks and welcome! That is very nice to hear 👍

Thanks a lot, Hubert!

@@VintageWatchServices it's the least I can say! ;)

Thanks a lot Allan, that's great to hear and welcome as a subscriber!

Thanks! It's a very cool watch, very 70s :)

@@VintageWatchServices 1970's , man this watch has aged like a art Deco inspiration 😀❤️ really lovely watch unique , i don't think there will be another watch from 70's have like a donut shaped case and that elaborate movement

@@hellslayer9638 Well, the Ikepod was at least inspired by this design 😉 I think we're in a very cool time nowadays actually, with a lot of microbrands putting out cool stuff. 👍

@@VintageWatchServices of course , right now mirco brands are really getting attention from people , if someone doesn't get what they like from mainstream brands they have option now to look at micro brands and smaller brands i think this is the best time get a really nice mechanical watch not necessarily expensive but what a person like like i love rectangular watches i love Longines take on this genre because let's be honest i don't have that much money to buy Reverso or tank musk xl those are my dream watches i like tank must xl alot . But Longines looks cool 😀

@@hellslayer9638 Absolutely, I think Longines is really onto something again and it's great to see. I'm a big fan of vintage Longines and it's been sad to see them pushed down the ladder in Swatch. Hopefully they can rise again.

You can start off relativly cheaply, for instance with one of those CHF30 ultrasonic cleaners and a few tools while you learn. Oils are expensive but they last for years, and the same with tools. There are a few videos on RU-vid with recommendations of what you need for a start and a couple of hundred francs should get you well covered.

You are right. You can start humbly and work your way up. I would never want to discourage any younger than me (60+) person from picking up this wonderful craft. Strangely enough, I even have a lot of the stuff needed to restore watches because I build and race very highly detailed slot cars in 1/24 scale. There is one problem that I have, though: magnification. I love to work in the field of what you can see with the naked eye. Looking through microscopes is not my thing. Every brushstroke seems to be out of line, though it looks totally cool when seen with your own eyes. Here is a very bad joke from Raymond Chandler's novel The High Window to illustrate the point: "From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away." Sadly, in the 1/24 Slot Car "business" restoration often means wishing you had a new set and could start from scratch, because the more you look at the "simple" problems, the more you discover the grievous ones. Please let me not sound in any way negative here: I love watching and listing to videos by a Norwegian guy called Stian, who speaks English and lives in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. And your encouragement to future watchmakers is greatly appreciated. @@VintageWatchServices

@@ygrbooks Thanks for your kind message :) And yes, under magnification a lot of things look less attractive! There will always be flaws and imperfections in any kind of item, it's just a matter of how big they are to see them. And working on watches without magnification when you're a mature adult (...) is pretty much impossible, I would think. You might be able to work on some large pocket watches, but wristwatch parts are simply too small for our eyes. You don't need to use a microscope, I use an eyeglass/loupe for 99% of the work, and that's the traditional way. A loupe is inexpensive but certainly a necessity for watchmaking!

@@VintageWatchServices Just one last thought: Restoration - what to do and what not? I greatly appreciated your approach to this watch and have done so to many of your other ones. Why have you started questioning yourself? It is generally neither here nor there with restoration, but it more often than not comes to this point: the less you restore, the more valuable the object remains. In my trade (foremost rare books) anything unrestored sells much, much better than anything tinkered with. And very often the cost of restoring something will be higher than the price you can actually get after restoration. I love the video by the Horological Society of New York on "Collecting Vintage Watches, by Eric Wind" on RU-vid, where he describes how an owner of a rare Rolex 8171 ("Padellone") spent $15'000 with Rolex to restore it, only to be told afterwards that it was now worth at most $15'000 - if he was lucky - because Rolex have never ever been bothered about "vintage" at all and always destroy any traces of it in servicing their watches in a most brutal way. With the majority of watchmakers that I watch on RU-vid (though I might be wrong?) there seems to be a silent agreement: let me make the watch work again as well as I can, but it may also show its age, so let it be natural. It may have some flaws, but that is why it is called "vintage". On RU-vid there are some Tonka or other toy restorers who simply sandblast away all the traces of the past and then present a final product that looks "as new". They are very popular. Their final efforts - they have a lot of knowhow and use expensive tools and stuff - just look totally dead to me. More often than not, I find myself wishing that they had left all the patina on their objects and just done nothing, apart from oiling and/or replacing some parts.

@@ygrbooks Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I don't think I question myself, it's more about soliciting discussion. Only through discussion can you change people's opinions or have your own changed, so solid discussions on the topic of restoration are always interesting. I know where I stand and ideally I'd like others to adopt the same stance, but maybe there are really good reasons for going in a different direction. Rolex watches are designed to be polished... The cases have few sharp angles and are always made of solid material. The way they treat vintage watches is completely opposite of what most vintage collectors like, but Rolex customers seem to want their watches shiny rather than original. And I'm not sure there's a very clear parallel between books and watches? Paper degrades much faster and to a much greater degree than metal, of course, and without knowing much about the restoration of them I would assume books that are restored would look completely unoriginal, given that old paper will always show its age?

That's very cool to hear, Martin! 😁

That's great to hear! Practice makes master :)

Thanks Ricky! 😊

Indeed, but you do see that on other watches also. I'm not sure why, and it's not due to wear. Probably one of life's unsolved mysteries 🤔

Thanks Peter! It's not at all an inexpensive watch, you'd need to shell out around $1000 for one :) I'm not sure these ever came with bracelets given the shape and special rounded springbars.

Very cool to hear, thanks for sharing!

You, sir, just won the internet! D'une spend it all in one place! 😁

That's very cool to hear, Woody! May I ask where you got them from? Directly from them? And it's very true that on one actually uses a chronograph or any other complication for that sake 😂

@@VintageWatchServices I got them last May on EBay from a seller in France. The seller's EBay name is kd89fr. It seems they don't currently have any in stock. I should have ordered a few!

You can also buy directly from Regine, I think.

@@VintageWatchServices I tried ordering some directly via their UK contact but they wanted a company Purchase Order and we're charging a ridiculous postage fee so gave up.

You sir, have a very good friend! 😂 Very nice to hear and welcome to the channel :) I use a few different screwdrivers; Horotec and Bergeon ergonomic. I like the T-shaped ends a lot, but they are more difficult to sharpen. The tweezers I use are from Regine Horology, the 7a model.

Thanks Vito!

Hello Mark, I twist the balance to make the impulse pin on the underside of it fit between the horns of the pallet fork.

Haha, we're indeed the butt! Greetings from Lausanne :)

Hello Charles, yes, I always make sure the movement runs well before rebuilding the chrono. I generally don't show that in the videos, simply because it would be repetitive for most viewers...

Sorry to hear that, Nick. But step by step and with gentle care, you should be able to get it back together, I hope?

Thanks for watching, Laszlo! There are no coincidences, some say, perhaps only inspiration :) It might be that both this watch and the Ikepods had the same source of inspiration as well, but they certainly look somewhat similar. And yes, shock settings aren't always playing by our rules😁

😂 I somehow have that Sound of Silence song in my head sometimes when I'm working on watches and I thought I'd try out the old pipes!

It's a coin flip :) The timegrapher only tells you that there is a beat error, not in which direction it is. You can let the power of the mainspring completely down and view the pallet fork under magnification to see which direction it is off center, but it isn't really necessary. A tiny push in one direction lets you know if that's the right one or not.

Thanks so much, Ric! Mineral glass can either be glued in or pressed in with a silicone gasket and they are generally tight. The larger issue for old watches is generally the crown.

Hello Jacob, I don't really know but will find out in a couple of weeks :)

😂 Very cool!

That's true, you do find some manly wome.. sorry, butch ladie... I mean capable female sailors!

@@VintageWatchServices "Capable," that's the word I was looking for. ⛵️👍

@@sitandfish 😁👍

😁

Hello Danil, thanks for watching! Yes, I reuse the cleaning machine and ultrasonic footage. Indeed no real point in shooting that every time given that it would look pretty much identical anyway :)