Fitzgerald Watch Company Ltd – Watch Repair

The client requested the repair of his late dad’s old Omega Constellation watch. By all accounts this had been in a stopped state in a drawer for many years. It had been sent to Omega for repair but they were not able to do anything with it for whatever reason. So my challenge was to achieve what Omega could not – make it work.

Before dismantling, the condition was as to be expected of a watch rattling around in a drawer for some years. There were scuffs and scratches to the case, crystal and bracelet, the dial was in a deteriorated condition. The watch came complete with a fibre or hair clearly present at 1 o’clock! It was also extremely dirty with a build up of DNA everywhere (or “wrist cheese” to quote Kalle Slaap!).

It was decided that this would be a minimal restoration, the scratches and scuffs were part of the history of dad’s watch so would remain. Cleaning of the watch and polishing of the crystal would make the watch wearable again and making the watch work would make it useful.

The watch was dismantled and the majority of the dirt from the bracelet and case was removed manually with some pegwood. The bracelet and case went into the ultrasonic cleaning machine to remove the rest of the smaller particles. I used Elma 1:9 cleaning solution using deionised water to dissolve. As well as a further 2 rinses of deionised water to finish. With the case cleaned, all was needed was a polishing cloth to bring it up to an acceptable shine without removing any history. The crystal was scratched and scuffed. These did detract from usability of the piece, so these were polished out with some Polywatch.

Then on to the main exercise, making it tell the time. This is an Omega 1310 quartz movement and an early one for Omega. It was their first in-house quartz movement so has some interest for the watch collector. This particular one has a serial number that dates it to a 1975 year of manufacture.

On first inspection, the movement looked like it might work, no obvious mechanical defects to note. The magnetic coil endpoints were in place which, due to their fragility and tiny size, is a common issue with any early quartz movement. I noted that the protective cover for the coil was not present, so this could have been an issue – but all was good. A battery was present but I swapped this out for a new Renata 390 battery in a vain hope (spurred on by the fact that the battery contact was not originally in great condition) that it would begin ticking – no such luck.

With the new battery providing current it was time to get the multimeter out to find where the current stopped and thus where the problem was. I found that the current was moving from the battery and traveling through the circuit to the microchip (and the resistor). However, on the other side of the microchip no current was present. Seemed like a fault with the microchip itself. Just to double check, I used the multimeter to add current directly to the magnetic coil connectors and the watch ticked. I concluded that a new microchip block would be required.

The microchip block for the Omega 1310 movement is part number 9100 and of course no longer held in stock by Omega (not that they sell parts to watchmakers anymore) nor indeed seemingly anyone on the internet. I decided that we’d either be looking for a donor movement or even an entire donor watch to get this heirloom back to life. An Omega Constellation Megaquartz would could cost 350 to 500 GBP to buy on the preowned market with a good 1310 movement intact. This was acceptable to the client as the goal was to make his dad’s watch work rather than any profit motive.

While waiting for a suitable donor movement or watch to come to market, I was (quite surprisingly) able to source a “new old stock” (NOS) microchip block from a watchmaker in Switzerland. This meant a significant cost saving for the client. It duly arrived and it was a very simple process to swap out the old block for the new. With the addition of the new battery the watch came back to life. The movement was serviced and re-cased, the dial cleaned as best as possible and a final polish left the Omega Constellation Megaquartz ready to go back to its owner.