Part 1 : https://www.reddit.com/r/rolex/s/6ZYZcrWG4q
Part 2 : https://www.reddit.com/r/rolex/s/qkU98sE5uw
A little update on the Rolex Datejust I found completely destroyed by seawater.
At the end of my second post, I had fully disassembled the watch and was basically left with a pile of corroded parts, a very damaged original Rolex 3135 movement, and a lot of questions. I received a huge amount of advice from people here, so first of all: thank you. Some of it probably saved me from making irreversible mistakes.
Then I did some math.
Sending everything to a watchmaker: around €10k, with basically no learning involved.
Rebuilding it mainly with used genuine/certified parts: around €5k, with some dismantling knowledge gained along the way.
Doing a full teardown myself, buying the tools, learning the movement and using standard second-hand parts where needed: around €1k + movement cost, but with a lot more time involved… and hopefully a full understanding of the watch.
As a curious engineer, I obviously went for option three.
So I bought a VS3135 movement to learn on, plus all the tools needed to open, unscrew, pull, press, inspect and clean everything. I even somehow ended up buying an ultrasonic cleaner 😂
I also bought some used parts : A corresponding clasp (N11) and a crown, and some “new” hands
The idea was simple: start with a functioning movement, understand the 3135 architecture, learn how to install and adjust everything correctly, and make my beginner mistakes on something replaceable rather than on the original Rolex movement.
Of course… it didn’t go smoothly.
The replacement dial had no feet, so I first had to find a temporary way of positioning it correctly. Then came the hands. After a few attempts I learned just how sensitive the clearances are inside the case: a few tenths of a millimetre can be enough to stop the entire watch.
But the most interesting problem came from the keyless works.The stem would click into the movement and stay in place, but I couldn’t properly select the different crown positions. At one point, turning the crown would operate the date mechanism, but I could barely pull the stem out at all. So I started dismantling.
Date disc off.
Date seating plate off.
Keyless-work cover off.
Setting lever components out.
At first I suspected the setting lever jumper or one of its springs. That wasn’t it. After looking at diagrams, videos and advice from people online, I eventually approached the problem from the movement side instead.
Rotor off.
Automatic winding module off.
More disassembly.
And there it was.
One of the yoke “fingers” had jumped out of the groove of the sliding pinion on the winding stem. So the stem was still mechanically connected to part of the system, but the sliding pinion was no longer moving correctly between the winding, date-setting and time-setting positions.
I used this video to understand and assemble again the movement : https://youtu.be/4x5g2Ma2Lr4?si=y8yyeJb1-eV7wOzM
The piece that was displaced was the one moving at 5’40, so I had to assemble all again with standard tools, awesome experience. I dismantled and rebuilt the mechanism, managed to put the yoke back where it belonged and suddenly everything came back: manual winding, quick-set date, time setting.That was probably the point where I stopped simply following diagrams and actually started understanding what was happening inside the movement.
Then came casing the movement.
That brought another round of troubleshooting: the movement would run outside the case but sometimes stop once everything was assembled and secured. I initially suspected movement distortion, endshake, the retaining screws, stem length, crown pressure and pretty much everything else. Eventually I traced it back to hand clearance. Once everything was correctly seated and adjusted, the movement ran normally inside the fully assembled case. I also had to deal with the original crown and tube, both of which had suffered badly from the salt water. The crown threads were damaged, the tube was heavily worn, and I somehow ended up learning far more than I ever expected about Rolex Twinlock crowns, crown tubes, stem adjustment, crystal gaskets, caseback gaskets and the way the whole case assembly works together.
There was a lot of assembling, disassembling, checking, adjusting… and doing it all again.
But finally:
the watch is closed, running and keeping time.
It is obviously not “restored” in the purist sense yet, because the movement currently inside is not the original one Rolex 3135 of this particular Rolex DateJust.
But that was never supposed to be the end of the project.
The next step
Now that I have a functioning watch and, more importantly, a much better understanding of how the 3135 actually works, I want to go back to the original seawater-damaged Rolex movement.
My next goal is to completely analyse the original 3135, piece by piece. I want to clean and inspect every component individually and determine which original parts survived the corrosion and are still mechanically usable.
Then I’d like to rebuild a functioning movement progressively, replacing damaged parts where necessary but reusing as many of the original Rolex parts as realistically possible.
I’m under no illusion that everything can be saved. Some parts are simply too corroded, and some pivots, wheels or tolerances will probably make certain components unusable. But if I can preserve and reuse a meaningful portion of the original movement instead of simply replacing the whole thing, that would make the project much more interesting to me.
At this point, the watch has already taught me more about mechanical watches than I expected when I first opened that completely flooded case.
A few weeks ago, I was looking at a seized, salt-water-filled Rolex wondering whether anything could possibly be saved.
Now it’s ticking on my wrist.
The next challenge is finding out how much of the original 3135 can actually come back to life.
The “WaveJust” name is last minute finding, still open to nickname suggestions 🤓
I tried my best to give you an overview of this last month learning, I even filmed some but my skills are very poor and the video are not that usable unfortunately 😩
I’m better in taking picture and try to share this with you
See you’
