If you visit any decent department-store or online retailer, watch-shop or jewelry shop, there’s no end of variety when it comes to boxes, cabinets and cases in which to store your jewels, cufflinks, earrings, necklaces…and watches!
For the avid watch-collector, a watch-winder or watch cabinet to store your wristwatches in, becomes an absolute necessity when your collection grows to beyond three pieces. If nothing else, the empty spaces in the cabinet serve as incentives to buy more watches!!
Back when it was common for men to carry pocketwatches, jewelers and retailers, watchmakers and tobacconists used to sell all kinds of pocketwatch accessories. Fobs, chains, cabinets, and cases. They also used to sell individual pocketwatch stands where you could put your watch when you weren’t wearing it. These might sit on your desk, so that your watch could double as a desk-clock, or else, on your bedside table, where you would place your watch before going to sleep each night.
Pocketwatch stands are still manufactured today, and you can buy them easily online, but for an antique pocketwatch, the best thing to store it in when you’re not wearing it is an antique pocketwatch stand!…and that’s precisely what this posting will be about.
The Watch-Stand: A Closer Look
The stand was made by the Birmingham firm of Syner & Beddowes in the early 1900s, making it well over 110 years old. It’s made of wood, clad in a paper-thin leather veneer. The interior was originally bright green silk and felt, padded out with panels of wood and cardboard. The front of the stand is faced with a panel of sterling silver.
Stands such as this were common in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They came from huge ones for massive, eight-day “goliath” pocketwatches, all the way down to tiny dinky little ones, for ladies’ pocketwatches. They would’ve been purchased from any watch-shop or jeweler’s shop which catered to a discerning clientele.
Why Restore the Case?
I wanted to try and restore the stand for a number of reasons. First, they’re getting pretty rare these days, so throwing it out wasn’t an option. Two, it wasn’t too badly damaged, and it looked repairable. Three, I wanted somewhere to put my watch when I wasn’t wearing it!
Nobody makes watch stands like this anymore, and sure as hell, nobody is making a living out of restoring them, so the only option if I wanted to use the stand, was to fix it myself.
Restoring the Watch Stand…
After deciding to take the plunge, I went to get all the tools I needed: Files, sandpaper, a chisel, pocketknife, glue, etc, etc. And then, the first stage began.
Step ONE: The Teardown
A ‘teardown’ is restorers’ jargon for the disassembly process. It’s usually called a ‘teardown’ because that’s literally what you’re doing – ripping the item apart, and getting rid of any old pieces that can’t be used anymore. While it is fun to rip things apart, you do have to exercise caution. On an object this small and this old and fragile, any overexertion or undue eagerness could destroy the stand forever, and render it irretrievably damaged.
The first step was to remove the ring inside the base of the stand, which holds the pocketwatch in place. This had at least two big rips in it, which meant that it no longer held its shape (and therefore, was unable to hold a watch). The ring was simply glued in place, so it was pretty easy to just grab it and carefully peel it out. When I removed it, I was surprised to find that it was comprised of exactly one piece of green felt which had simply been folded over a stiff, cardboard ring…and simply glued in place! No wonder it didn’t last!
The next step was to remove the circular pad of green felt underneath the ring. This also, was pretty easy. Underneath this, I found several cardboard discs, which had been used to pad out the watch-stand, and to stop any watch housed inside, from rattling around. for something so small and narrow, there were a surprisingly large number of these cardboard discs inside! Up to half a dozen or more!
The next thing to remove was the felt-covered wooden base which the ring, the cardboard discs and the felt liner, all rested on, or in. This was somewhat more difficult, as it was glued very firmly into the back of the watch stand! If I exerted too much force, then the whole thing would break apart. Using my pocketknife, I slowly jemmied away the base from the back of the stand, cutting and levering up, slicing away the glued-down cardboard and crusted glue and wood, until the whole piece finally popped out as one.
Step TWO: Building a New Base.
Using the old base as a guide, I cut out a panel of plywood, chiseled and sanded it to the right size, and then covered it in blue cotton fabric which I glued down over the wood. I folded everything over, trimmed off the excess, covered the raw edges with another piece of the same fabric, and then glued it on.
Putting the new base into the stand was surprisingly easy – just shove it in. The friction alone will hold everything in place! Before doing this, however, I took advantage of the stand’s now relative lack of structural integrity to replace the ribbon strap that originally ran from the inside of the back of the stand, out the back of the case, and which attached to the backside of the prop-stand that juts out from behind the stand. This strap allows the watch stand to…stand up…and lean back at a slight angle. Without it, the prop just slides open and the whole thing topples over. This was a very easy fix, using some ribbon and glue.
Once that was done, I started rebuilding the ring that fits on top of the new, blue base!
Step THREE: Replacing the Ring.
Replacing the ring was of paramount importance. It had to hold the watch in place, and it had to stop it rattling around (something that the old ring couldn’t do because of its poor condition and flimsy construction). So for this ring to last, it had to be made of the most solid materials possible.
I used a piece of PVC drainpipe.
Our house had been renovated fairly recently, and the builders had left behind several sections of unused drainpipe. One of these was precisely the diameter that I needed for the watch-stand. Now, it was simply a matter of measuring the right dimensions, cutting off a section, sanding it to the right size, and fitting it in.
To hide the fact that I used a plumbing fixture to fix a 115-year-old antique, (“We found a witch! May we burn him!?“) I wrapped it in the same blue fabric I’d used for the base. I glued it all in place, trimmed off the excess, and then simply folded in the raw edges. To secure all this to the base, I dropped in one of the cardboard liner-discs from earlier (see step one, above), which I had also covered with the blue fabric.
Because the pipe was precisely the right diameter, the cardboard disc dropped in exactly as I wanted it to. I deliberately used the thickest, most structurally intact disc I could find. Then it was simply a matter of covering it all in glue, putting it together, positioning it very carefully over the center of the base, and sticking it all down!
Step FOUR: Replacing the Strap
The stand originally had a silk ribbon strap that ran from inside the back of the stand, and which attached to the back of the prop that holds the stand upright when it’s in use. You could still see the little slots and grooves where the ribbon used to fit in. Finding some thin, black ribbon to replace this was pretty easy. It was just a matter of measuring out the right length, and sticking it down.
Step FIVE: Tidying Up
The final step was gluing down all the loose bits and pieces, polishing the silver and the leather exterior, and then putting in the watch! The results speak for themselves:
Not a bad result for trying to fix something that’s over a hundred years old, and especially for being as fragile as it is!
