by Zaf Basha

I’ve had this Jaeger-LeCoultre W.W.W. watch now for sale now for a while and it's condition didn’t personally bother me that much since, as we all know, the original plating on these watches was very very thin and any watch that retains most of its original plating is actually not very worn at all. I thought that someone would come to this realization and buy the watch. I guess I was wrong.

I therefore embarked on restoring the case as it is obviously a selling issue for the piece and I already have 3 or 4 of these in my collection. Now I’m not a big fan for restored watches, but when it comes to that, I like to perform a "sympathetic restoration". By that I mean a restoration that follows the spirit of the original watch. Lets take a look at the watch in its original state:

Not bad, not great, no takers.

I took a careful look at the original finish. In the bezel area we have a satin circular finish. The sides of the watch have a coarsely brushed vertical finish and the case back shows a fine circular machine turned finish. It is important to at least attempt to follow these patterns in order to try to preserve as much original feel to the watch as possible. In this particular case, it is easy to kill the watch by either giving it a mirror chrome finish or a quick and dirty coarse bead blast just to get the existing chrome off and to give a uniform blasted finish.

I first removed as much of the existing chrome as I could using the reverse voltage de-plating method using 12V at 3 Amps. I did this in 10-15 minute intervals and checked the condition of the case after each interval. Leaving the case in the reverse voltage bath will de-chrome it, but eventually it digs into the base metal and deforms and pits it (ask me how I know this.) So after about 30 minutes of de-chroming, I ended up with this:

This got most of the plating off, but as can be seen, some remains. The remaining chrome was taken off using a dremel tool with a fine grit wire brush. This technique leaves a fair amount of the original metal texture in place.

With the chrome off, the underlying base metal is pretty soft. Using 320 grit automotive sand paper, I applied by hand a circular finish to the bezel. This is done by placing a piece of sandpaper on the bezel between your thumb and index finger and rotating the case with your free hand. I had to spin it about 30-40 times before the desired result was achieved. Generally it is a good idea to leave some scarring or scratches, otherwise you risk deforming the case. Next, I tried to refinish the case sides and opted for a horizontal satin finish as I could not get a consistent vertical finish by hand. This isn't too bad as this finish pattern is the same as Jaeger-LeCoultre caliber 488 Sbr (a.k.a Mark 11) pilot's watch.  In this process I had to remove and reinstall the crown tube which is easy to break, but I lucked out and that part of the job went smoothly. So the case now looks like this:

Next I cleaned it in an ultrasonic bath for about 30 minutes and rinsed it in tap water to ready it for the replate. Once the case surface finish has been applied and the case is clean, the actual replating is the easy part. The only thing that needs to be selected is what to plate it with. I have not found a "white flat chrome finish" like the original and I don't want to use anything that requires breathing equipment to apply. So my options are:

1. Chrome - Not a good idea because it is too shiny and  way too dangerous for home and hobby use.
2. Rhodium - Too shiny and very very expensive.
3. Nickel -  Too milky and dull.
4. Nickel/Cobalt Alloy give it a softer chrome look that isn't yellow as nickel, slightly blue that is in the spirit of the original plating material, or at least as close as I can get it.

So after about 4 minutes at 2.5V and 2 Amps in the plating solution, I end up with this:

Slight plating unevenness  was also taken care of by rubbing it gently with toothpaste. The next thing I did was to machine spin the case back and applied a light circular pattern to it using 320 grit sand paper. The back was scratch free originally, so this was a painless thing, basically I did it to match the condition of the case top.
At this point, I can't wait to get the movement and dial in there to see what the watch really looks like. After a bit of reassembly, I relume the hands in as close a color as I could to match the luminous on the dial and also replaced the crown with an oversized one and spun it on my dremel tool over a piece of sand paper to give it a satin finish and  presto! We now have a pretty nice looking watch, no longer 100% original but nicer looking than what we had before. Some scratches and scarring were intentionally left so not to dull the edges or deform the case, also preserving a little bit of the vintage feel to it.
 

So my point with all this, is that a "restoration" in which dial is poorly redone or in which the shape and texture of watch case has been radically altered by over polishing, plating with a totally incorrect mirror or bead blasted finish will adversely impact the value and collectibility of the watch. I this effort, I tried to demonstrate that.

All the best,
Zaf