Restoring an Heirloom Vintage Sagara Watch

Over the course of a few months, we spent a lot of time trying to learn more, and we even took the watch to Geneva having arranged to speak with a senior person at one of the top auction houses to try and learn more, as well as asking watchmakers in and around the Geneva and people who dealt more broadly with vintage watches, but to no avail.

Beyond the link between Sagara, Ralco and Movado, we just couldn’t seem to ascertain anything further no matter where we went or who we spoke to.

We decided that anything more detailed about Sagara was going to have to remain as a little bit of a mystery.

Restoring an Heirloom Watch means finding the right Watch Restorer

We spent quite a lot of time looking through various watchmakers. Fortunately, there are plenty of them in and around London, however on the reverse side of that, it meant we found it very difficult to choose. After all, how do you pick from such a huge number of people, and be able to trust them with something so precious as restoring an heirloom watch? We found it a real challenge, and never really managed to find somebody who felt right.

That is until mid-2023.

I had interviewed a watchmaker and restorer named Rebecca Struthers for this website not long before her book “Hands of Time – A Watchmaker’s History of Time” was published, and after speaking with her was excited to read her book. And as I did, there was a certain chapter where the stars seemed to align.

Chapter 10 of the book, Man and Machine, starts to tell the story of Pilot Officer Francis Edward Frayn, one of those rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk in World War II. The watch belonging to Francis, via his son, had found its way to the workbench of Rebecca Struthers. This watch was a Movado watch…

…in my head, I immediately recalled the link between Movado, Ralco and Sagara…

… Struthers described how, unusually, the name Movado appeared to have been diligently scratched out except for the V, and that given the story of the watch, she felt compelled to leave the name on the dial as it were, describing her main objective as “to get the watch itself back up and running so that Francis’s descendants can continue to wear it and remember its story”.

This was all too perfect, exactly what we had been looking for, and I excitedly passed the book to my fiancée to read it for herself. She looked at me a few minutes later and smiled.

We knew immediately.

A few email exchanges later, and the watch was sent to Rebecca and Craig Struthers’ workshop to be checked over. In addition to the cleaning, it needed a new-old-stock winding crown as the original had worn through, a case restoration to re-gild the case, a new mainspring and the non-original minute hand was suggested to be replaced with one more in keeping with the original hour hand. This also included cleaning and refitting the original crystal, and a careful cleaning of the dial itself, too.

My fiancée also opted to swap out the gold bracelet it was on for a new leather strap to complete the look, and make the watch something she would be able to wear herself as her Grandfather’s wrists were significantly larger than her own!

Everything was set, and then all we had to do, was wait.

The day we had been waiting for

About 8 months later, and 18 months after the watch had been first gifted to my fiancée, I received an email from Rebecca, and it was the one we had been waiting for. The watch was ready! She had even been kind enough to attach some photos to the email, including the little movement.

The watch looked utterly magnificent, and the photos themselves were enough to bring a tear or several to my fiancée’s eyes.