My watch-collecting journey began with a vintage watch. I will always own it and keep it well-maintained, and it still gets regular wear: a Seiko worn by a man who was a grandfather to me in all ways save blood. Perhaps that was the catalyst for my interest in vintage watches, wondering what other everyday places and scenes they had been a part of. There’s a sort of mundane nobility to shabby old watches from lesser-known brands, adequate items that served their purpose humbly and without asking much in return.
I suppose the above is a loquacious way to say that I enjoy hunting and collecting vintage watches that look unique in some way, that may have some need of repair or service, and therefore can be had very cheaply; less than $50 is the rule here. With a small outlay of money, a set of basic watchmakers’ tools and just enough knowledge and experience to get myself in trouble, the world is my horological oyster.
It’s also no secret that I’m a fan of gold and precious metal watches. Among my favorites of these are the vermeil-cased Cartier Tank watches of the 1970s and 80s. For those unfamiliar with the term, vermeil (ver-ˈmā) simply means solid sterling silver plated with gold. I usually prefer my gold watches to be solid rather than plated, but a precious metal on top of a semi-precious metal? OK, that’s special enough for me.
This is one reason why my eye was drawn to this tank-shaped vintage watch from a brand I had never heard of before. The listing advertised “10k Gold Sterling” and the caseback stamp bore out the claim. There was an attractive dial that hopefully was in good condition underneath a scratched and dinged crystal, an interesting hinged-lug case design with no readily apparent breaks or through-rubbing of the plating, and very unusually, the original box and paperwork as well.
I certainly couldn’t say no for $36.00, plus $5.15 ($0.15?) shipping. Thus I took possession of my first Harvel watch, and tried to figure out what it was, and what Harvel had been.
Harvel was a mystery to me, and unfortunately it largely remains so. I have done about as thorough research as I can using online resources and some knowledgeable people, and have still come up short on many details. To be honest, I suspect this may be because there aren’t that many.
The Harvel Watch Co. was established in 1933 by one Henry Holland Harteveldt and his wife Lucille. Henry H. Harteveldt seems to have been in the jewelry business in New York City, and created the Harvel company for the purpose of importing and assembling watches for the United States market. This was a fairly common practice, and roughly equivalent to today’s microbrand industry: companies that assembled and sold watches under their brand name, but rarely did any of the manufacturing themselves.
Harvel was not a big player in the US watch market in the way brands such as Bulova, Elgin, Benrus, and others were, but it was not completely unknown. They had a handful of celebrity ambassadors, mostly Hollywood people, and a handful of musicians, enough so that they felt comfortable selling themselves as “The Watch That Times The Stars.” They sponsored a radio news program for a while, “John B. Kennedy and the News for Harvel,” and were a sponsor and the official presentation watch of the Miss America beauty pageant in the early 1940s. A special line of ladies’ watches, called the Miss Victory, was produced during those years, combining the beauty contest allure with a patriotic wartime message.
From what I have seen of Harvel’s advertising material and scant catalog pages, they were undoubtedly focused, though not exclusively, on ladies’ watches. Ladies’ watches today have a generally negative reputation among collectors, for (among other things) frequently offering low value for the money and a lackadaisical attitude toward quality and/or innovation. Not so in times past; movements in tiny cocktail watches could be as small as 15-18mm in diameter, in some cases smaller than a single wheel in a standard wristwatch movement. Design and manufacture of these had to be intensely precise, and would present a much greater challenge to a watchmaker servicing one. In some ways ladies’ watch movements were the height of miniature engineering of their time, and though they may not appeal to many modern collectors, they deserve respect.
Harvel’s ladies’ watches encompassed a broad range of prices, from the practically affordable (makes a great graduation gift!) to the incredibly sumptuous; one advertisement from 1946 lists a solid platinum watch with 220 inlaid round and baguette diamonds, for $5,500 — around $70,000 in 2022!
Harvel’s men’s lineup was nothing to be ashamed of either: a wide range of dress watches, field watches (that according to at least one anonymous USMC soldier could withstand the shock of a .50 caliber machine gun), a few chronographs, and a couple unusual complications, such as the more well-known Harvel Date-O-Graph (see Tomas Rosputinksy’s article on Fratello for more on that one).
Many of their models were the tonneau or rectangular-shaped cases that were popular at the time, and one in particular in their 1941 lineup featured an unusual hinged lug design, unique numerals, and was “Smart, new, and modern as tomorrow”.
My Harvel watch arrived in good time from the eBay seller, complete with box and paperwork as described. Upon receipt I was very excited to find the case in much better condition than I had feared. It seems a fact of life that photos on eBay are inevitably blurry and/or out of focus, and I knew with a plated case I was taking a gamble on those small corners and edges that show up poorly in a photo, but are often where excessive wear develops. The gamble mostly paid off with this watch; near as I could tell the case was mostly just dirty and tarnished, with a little bit of wear on the corners exposing some silver, but not terribly so.
The crystal was obviously broken in the photos, in the lower left corner. This break also proved to be the source of a considerable amount of dirt and dust that speckled the dial. I carefully popped the snap caseback off, and lifted the bezel and crystal out, and lo and behold, another gamble had paid off. The dial was free of scratches or tarnish, and only seemed to suffer from a general dinginess. I broke off a new twist of Rodico, the gummy sticky-tack like substance used for a variety of purposes in watch repair, and gently dabbed at the dial, carefully avoiding, for the time being, any dial printing. I was delighted to see the dirt and debris lift right off, leaving an almost completely clean dial behind. This method is one of the best for cleaning a dial without actually cleaning it. It removes loose debris that may eventually foul up the movement or deteriorate the dial without altering the dial or its patina.
The crystal was a simple affair, popping it out with some gentle finger pressure, and measuring the height and width with calipers. GS Supplies, Inc. continues to manufacture hundreds, if not thousands, of shapes and sizes of acrylic watch crystals. It’s extremely rare to find a crystal without a match in their catalog, and I was able to find and order a replacement for the Harvel in no time. I cleaned the channel the crystal fits into with a bit of sharpened pegwood (basically a very small wooden dowel) and some Ronsonol lighter fluid to dissolve any old glue. A thin application of new GS Hypo Cement to the channel and the new crystal snapped right in place. It’s important to use a proper crystal cement, by the way; most other glues, particularly superglue, off-gas noxious fumes that can be corrosive and will inevitably cloud an acrylic crystal.
The case and caseback responded well to a soapy water bath in the ultrasonic cleaner with years of unmentionable detritus floating away. I then used a Cape Cod polishing cloth to clean the tarnish and give it a bit more shine.
Now this, I have found, is a controversial and perhaps ill-advised method. Had I browsed the Internet much before doing it I would have found a lot of advice saying NEVER use a Cape Cod cloth on anything plated or filled, as it can wear through the plating very easily.
This certainly seems plausible, and I would definitely not polish a plated or filled case heavily with anything at all. My experience with this Harvel case, and with the half-dozen or so other gold-plated watches I’ve polished, was that it worked perfectly well and did not wear through at all that I could see. I’m not going to recommend it, because plating thickness varies somewhat and you may be just a polish away from ugly base metal showing on your watch. But I will say that if the watch does not appear to be worn through anywhere, that may be an indication that it can withstand a light touching-up.
Whatever polishing you do of any vintage watch case should be gentle, and not with an aim to remove any indication of its previous life. The watch has come by its wear honestly; if you don’t like it, look for a more pristine example.
The movement in this watch appears to be somewhat unique. I determined at last that it was an ebauche from FEF (Fabrique d’ebauches de Fleurier), a movement supplier from Switzerland. FEF dissolved in the 1980s, but supplied movements to many manufacturers in its heyday. The FEF130 is a simple manual wind, 17-jewel movement, no hacking. It seems to have been reasonably well-built; early versions had no shock absorption feature for the balance staff, but later a simple Incabloc-style spring was added to both jewels. The version in my Harvel uses a differently shaped wheel train bridge than any other of these movements I have found, except a couple used by another brand called Lyceum. Interestingly, the brand Chronoswiss released a series of watches in 2005 called Digiteur that used NOS FEF130s.
Aside from being a little on the small side at 7.75 x 11.5’’’ (about 17.5 x 25.6mm), this movement should have been dead simple to service. This, however, was where my gambler’s luck ran out.
The first thing I found was that one of the wheel jewels on the main plate was cracked. This was a difficult thing to ascertain and involved a 40x loupe, a 3.5x loupe on top of that one, and some very tricky lighting angles, but it was pretty obvious once it all aligned.
I’m not in possession of a watchmaker’s staking set, nor did I know where I could find a replacement jewel for such an obscure movement. For me it was much easier to find a loose movement on eBay for $20 or so, and use that for parts.
The replacement movement arrived and I quickly stripped it down and took the mainplate. Everything got a thorough cleaning, and I began reassembly, starting with the wheel train.
It turned out that trying to align all three wheel pivots in their corresponding jewels on the bridge was an absolute nightmare. It takes a very delicate yet firm hand to apply pressure to the bridge, while gently poking and prodding wheels around, hoping to feel a gentle give that indicates they’ve slipped safely into their jewels. My hand was not of the required delicacy, and I snapped the escape wheel pivot. Oh, and the parts movement I had bought also had a snapped escape wheel pivot.
So it was back to eBay and another parts movement. I sincerely apologize to anyone else working on a Harvel FEF130 for what became a regrettable depletion of the pool of available parts movements. I am trying hard to do better.
At last I had the movement mostly reassembled and oiled. I gently lowered the balance in, and it leapt immediately to life, one of the most satisfying experiences for a watchmaker. On the timegrapher it ran… ok. Decent accuracy and consistency, and just-acceptable amplitude. A further cleaning and greasing of the mainspring bumped the amplitude up to just over acceptable, and I began the final task of replacing the dial and handset.
The handset of a watch with sub-seconds goes on simply. The hour hand slips over a sleeve with a perpendicular gear on the base. This gear meshes with a reducing gear on the main plate, which drives the hours. This part is not actually in contact with the center wheel axle. The minute hand attaches to a small part known as the cannon pinion, a sleeve that attaches tightly over the axle of the center wheel.
It turned out when I tried to fit the hands that there were more differences between the FEF130-with shock absorption, and the FEF130-no shock absorption, than I had realized. Both the hour hand and minute hand no longer fit quite right- the hour hand was too loose and slid down against the dial, and the minute hand was too tight to push on.
I certainly didn’t want to try buying yet another movement and hoping that my 18 karat run of bad luck broke. So I decided to try to modify the handset slightly to fit.
For the hour hand, I clamped the tube gently with a pin vise, and ever so slightly tightened it, to crimp the tube shut just a tiny bit. I must have learned my lesson on using a gentle hand, because after about three tightenings, then testing the hand on the watch, it fit snugly and responded well to setting with the crown.
The minute hand was a bit trickier. I purchased a broaching device, a tool specifically made to hold watch hands securely while leaving the attachment hole open for modification. I used a watch smoothing broach, about .07mm in diameter, to gently ream out the hole. This was a much more painstaking process and required frequent removal and testing on the watch. Patience finally paid off, though, and the minute hand was secured firmly to the pinion with no slippage or excess tightness. Detailed photos might suggest the minute hand could be pushed further on the post, but until the current arrangement causes a problem I’ll take it.
The end was excitingly in sight with this project. I measured the lugs at 16mm, common enough among vintage watches but not the easiest to find straps for today. For any small vintage watch, especially a dress watch, it’s crucial that the strap be thin and flexible. A strap of common modern thickness, 3mm and up, looks ungainly and discordantly bulky on a vintage watch. Many modern leather straps, especially padded ones, come from the maker much too stiff to be used on something as small and light as a vintage dress watch, so those are out the window as well. Unpadded is the key, as well as knowing for sure the actual thickness of the strap you buy; information that many strap sellers unfortunately don’t provide.
For this watch I was able to find an unpadded genuine crocodile strap from ZicZac leather (not a sponsor). ZicZac, based out of Vietnam, has rapidly become my favorite resource for exotic leather straps as they carry a wide variety in vintage sizes, and you are guaranteed to get the exact strap that is pictured on the site. My brown two stitch crocodile strap arrived in good time and was perfect; thin as described, extremely supple, and comfortable out of the package.
Snapping the caseback onto the fully serviced, clean movement and dial, and attaching the new strap to the bright case was a moment of immense satisfaction. I put it on my wrist and just looked at it, rolling it around, catching light and thinking, “I did this!”
I wore the newly restored Harvel for days and weeks on end, admiring the beautiful salmon dial and blued hands, the bright gold of the case, and the knowledge of the solid silver underneath. To know that this watch had gone from unwanted dirty cracked relic to beautiful functional timepiece through my own work was an incredible feeling. Certainly my work was not that of a professional; I ruined multiple parts, took questionable paths through some of the restoration, and the finished product is certainly far from perfect, but it all paid off in the end.
I still love this watch. It gets regular wear to my office job, and even though it may be small, and old fashioned, and certainly not up to the imaginary demands a modern WIS may place on his wrist accessory, I get a huge smile on my face every time I wind it up and hear it tick, and see it on my wrist.
If you’ve stuck with me through all 2800 words of this article, I hope it inspires you to pursue something a little offbeat and unusual, and to try to do some of this work with your own hands. It may not always pay off the way you hope (I have several other restoration projects that for one reason or another have ended ignobly), but the journey is rewarding in itself, and you might just wind up with a new favorite watch.
Check out more of Evan’s articles here
Bringing light to an aspect of horology that is often overlooked
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I have a Harvel that my mother or grandmother left me. It is silver, but has 14K on the case. It has diamonds all around the face. The curious thing is that it has an Omega stem. I assume it was just used as a replacement part. It is a beautiful watch, though and made me appreciate your post. It is nice to make something old live up to its full potential!