How to clean a vintage watch

Rediscovering old beauty under layers of dirt

Aug. 23, 2020 - Willem L. Middelkoop

This week I was cleaning my closet when I found an old watch. It came from my grandfather’s house. It looked like it had an adventurous live, full of wear and tear. I recognised that it had an automatic mechanical movement. Upon picking it up it almost instantly started running again. I wondered how cool it would be if I would gently clean it.

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Opening the watch can be done using a special tool

Citizen Automatic, 21 jewels, 6000, 4-601084-Y

This watch has an automatic Citizen 6000 movement with 21 jewels

The cleaned watch head, from the top

Set the tool to match the mounting points on the case back, to enable it to rotate it open

Dirt inside the clasp

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