Rolex

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From 6694 to Paul Newman

As far as liking watches goes, I’ve long admired the design and “presence” of Rolex watches, particularly the 1965-75 era stainless steels with plain or off-white dials. A few years ago (blimey, its actually 20 years!) I gave my wife a beautiful plain and simple stainless steel Lady Datejust on a Jubilee bracelet. We both love the way it looks: simple elegance without ostentation and I’ve always wished for a male version on my wrist. Somehow, I’ve never been in a position to spend that much money on myself.

However, a couple of months ago a generous inheritance from a god-mother enabled me to take the decision to “go for it”. But rather than buy at retail, I decided on a slightly unconventional route which I thought might be more interesting, in which I might learn more (possibly including a few new manual skills) and which takes advantage of my main work skills. Early in my career I spent 10 years as a property developer in which there are 3 key areas:

1. buy at the right price;
2. know the restored value;
3. develop to the budget, which is 2-1, less profit.

Maybe that applies to Rolexes too? I believe it applies to all restoration projects. I hope it’ll be fun finding out. Rather than just get other professionals to do all the work, I’d like to do some of the simpler things myself. There are interesting beginners’ watch-making courses available on the internet, which seem to teach to the level of removing the movement and changing the dial and hands. It also shouldn’t be beyond the wit of man to learn how to refurbish bracelets. Maybe it would be possible to do other things? We’ll see…..

I expect the early stages to include a *lot* of learning. For example, which pros to use and how to get really useful and interesting photos. I’ve already made the mistake of giving my first watch (the 6694) to a friend to renew the crown and tube. So far its taken 5 weeks. Thankfully its at minimal cost. I don’t have a decent camera for macro photographs, so I’m going to try and involve a camera club.

Someone once told me there are only 3 criteria for a project manager to bear in mind: quality, cost and time. Apparently you can only achieve 2 out of 3 in each project. If you try and achieve all 3 you’ll be in trouble, so I’m going to allow things to take as long as they take in order to focus on achieving quality and minimising cost.