This page is informative only and the author does not condone or support trading in counterfeit merchandise.

Many of you may have seen various "Replica" watches for sale on the E-Bay and Yahoo auction sites.

I obtained 2 Rolex Submariner "Replicas" for $25.00 from a vendor who was going out of business, and after seeing the quality of these watches I can understand why he no longer wanted to sell replicas. These watches were purchased so that I can hone my watch repair skills without having to ruin a "Real" watch.

When originally received, both watches worked, but the auto-wind mechanism did not work on one, and the other gained about a 1.5 minutes per day. I thought that I would have nothing to lose in taking them apart to see if I could make one good watch out of two.

To get a Rolex style watch apart you have to first obtain a special case wrench to remove the back of the "Oyster" case. I opted for the bench model which cost about $89.00 with all of the wrenches for Rolex watches. I also bought some cheap watchmakers screwdrivers, tweezers, and various special tools for removing and replacing the hands. This stuff cost about $179.00.

Please excuse the poor resolution photos. My camera's "Macro" function only focuses down to 3 1/2" and this is not enough to get good detail in a watch movement.


Front of the Watch with a leather strap mounted.		Back of the Watch. Note: The bogus markings are stamped instead of engraved. The serrations in the cover require a real Rolex wrench. The back material is very thin and soft feeling almost like pewter.

Case with movement removed. Note the misalignment of the date magnifier, it should be at the 3:00 position. The case is made of base metal (pot metal), not stainless steel as in the real thing. A "Made in China" sticker can be seen on the inside of the case.		Front of movement. the hands and markers have almost no glow at night and the silk screening of the phony logos is "Fried" and full of voids. The face has a very high quality shiny plastic appearing black background mounted on a heavy cast base.

Front of movement with face removed the calendar wheel and drive gears can be seen here.		Back off the 21 jewel movement with the auto-wind rotor removed. The movement appears to be made of the same pot metal as the case and is unfinished and chrome or cadmium plated.

Back of the movement with the auto-wind rotor beside it. The rotor is made of a heavy cast pot metal outer segment spot welded to a stainless steel sheet metal inner piece.		Back of the movement with the auto-wind and back gear train plate next to it. The internal gears and balance wheel appear to be made from brass. All the gears appear to be well finished under magnification.

Back of movement with the auto-wind and escapement gear trains removed. The balance wheel is shock mounted and the pallet has 2 jewels.		Finished disassembly. I counted approx. 83 separate parts all well finished and of various materials (brass, stainless etc.) the pot metal movement mounting plates are roughly finished but cleanly machined in the areas which require a thrust surface.

Reassembly
It appears that reassembly will have to wait until I have more talent and experience.
I can get everything together EXCEPT the back gear train plate which requires you to align 5 gearshafts with 5 jewel bearings while slipping the plate over 2 dowel pins. This must be done with a special jig at the factory.
For now these parts will reside in my rapidly growing junk box.

The impressive part is that even in a watch which is basically a piece of junk someone had to go to the trouble to manufacture a somewhat complicated movement which is marred by lack of quality control during assembly.

The disappointment is that a company that has 99% of what it takes to manufacture a watch would resort to making copies of another manufacturers product.

I cannot conceive why Rolex and other quality manufacturers allow their name and trademarks to be continuously violated by these replica makers. The Swiss certainly have enough money to bring pressure to bear on the Chinese and other nations to bring them in line with international patent and trademark law.