WS 20: Replacing the battery on a
Patek Philippe Ladies' Quartz Nautilus
with a "split stem" or "two piece crown stem"
Foreword and Disclaimer
My mother-in-law handed me this watch and I
thought, well, another 5 minute job. I knew that the Nautilus had this really
ingenious case construction where the top part of the watch holding the sapphire
crystal has two angled extensions which are then screwed onto the lower "one
piece case".
Disclaimer
Since I have replaced so many Quatz batteries, my family trusts me and
entrusts me watches with whatever value. Also note, I am not a watchmaker, just
a watch enthusiasts. I have maybe replaced now close to 150 quartz batteries.
Nothing in comparison to a watchmaker doing this daily. So please take my
instructions with a healthy dose of distrust and be very careful. I am not going
to answering emails "Thanks for your great tutorial, my Patek is ruined now". I
will however try to describe the battery change I conducted last night starting
at 8 PM and finishing the next day - today on July 14th 2005 - at 02 AM. Why so
long? Because I encountered a problem not being able to remove the crown stem.
And since I was handling a 18 Karat Ladies' Nautilus, I did not feel I should
simply go ahead like with a "Hello Kitty" watch of my daughter and doing a
"trial and error". Against my nature, I interrupted my work several times. To
make a post on the "Patek Philippe" brand forum on TimeZone.com. Unfortunately
the forum was very quiet on that July 13th 2005. Without much hope, I posted the
question on how to remove the crown stem of a Nautilus Quartz on the
www.PMWF.com because I did not think anybody
would be able to help swiftly.
I was wrong! Bill Yao from
www.mkiiwatches.com had just posted his preview of the most exciting MMT
Blackwater project (due in fall 2005) and was on the forum answering questions
from excited PMWFers. Bill saw my post and gave me the hint "split stem". At
about the same time - I kept googling all combinations of keywords like "Patek"
"repair" "Quartz" "movement" "battery change" - I found an archived Patek post
at TimeZone.com that talked about split stems in mechanical Nautilus. And
split stem was indeed the keyword for this project.
After reading more, I found an article from Paul Delury about a micro-rotor
Hamilon (I have one in my collection and opened it, yet never took the movement
out, so I am very happy now to know what to do then) which contained some
explanations about split stems. If you want to know whether I succeeded or
"destroyed" that Nautilus Quartz movement, then please click on the first
thumbnail and then to proceed through the report, simply click on the full size
pictures. This will take you to the next page.
I learned from a Swiss press kit (2005) on
the web, that Patek has abandoned the "split stem" for the newer Nautilus models
and provides now a small opening near the dial which allows to release a
conventional "one piece" crown stem. Still I decided to document the battery
change on my site, because I searched at least 3 hours and did not find a good
service tutorial. Also we are living in Thailand and sending the watch to
Switzerland for a battery change would not only have been very costly, but on
the way back probably entailed a visit at the customs department in order to
receive the watch. And all that to change a battery for a little quartz
movement. No, I said to myself, it really makes more sense to do this myself.
And of course with the help of my online watch friends! That has helped to
accelerate the works considerably!
Reto Castellazzi, Bangkok, July, French
National Day 2005
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