And now begins the real adventure: sourcing
original vintage Rolex parts. Some will arrive as pristine new-old-stock
treasures, others salvaged from donor watches -each piece a tiny
victory. With 50 to 60 parts required, patience is key. Delays are
inevitable, and the occasional wrong part is almost a rite of passage.
But that’s all part of the journey. Restoration is never a sprint, it’s a conversation with time itself.
Yet all this epic restoration could be a piece of cake if Rolex would simply release spare parts to independent watchmakers. There
are millions of those spares sitting neatly stacked in Swiss bunkers.
And if not, all those parts could easily be re-made, distributed, and
supplied. But Rolex won’t budge.
The hypocrisy and corporate greed of Swiss mega-brands is just pathetic.
Not just in the corporate sense, but in their indecency, blaming
watchmakers for a “lack of skills.” Ask Rolex, “Why won’t you supply
spares to watchmakers?” and the answer is always the same: Only Rolex Service Centre can service a Rolex watch to Rolex standards.
But that’s a lie. As I type this, our team of machinists is making
superbly complex, ultra-tight-tolerance parts for the space and medical
industries – fields with standards far stricter than anything in
horology. Day after day, batch after batch, we produce those parts and
supply them with full metrological reports as proof they meet every
engineering and performance specification. Replacing a worn-out part in a watch isn’t rocket science; it’s just a job for a technician.
I asked AI to generate a picture of an old watchmaker screaming “Release the parts!”
And the image it produced – an old man working in a dim, primitive workshop, fixing outdated watches — is exactly
the picture Rolex wants you to have in your mind. “Don’t take your
watch to those old, small, untrained, unsightly, non-corporate
watchmakers,” they say. “They’ll cause more damage, they’ll fit fake
parts, they don’t know what they’re doing.”
How about this, Rolex: just release the parts. We’ll take care of our
customers to the standards they expect and demand, at a price they’re
happy to pay, with turnaround times in weeks, not months.
Release the parts – and shut up.
(To be continued.)
