Timeless Revival: Restoring a Zenith El Primero Rainbow to Glory

🔧 Full Restoration of a Vintage Zenith El Primero Rainbow Watch 🌈

Join us as we bring a timeless classic back to life! In this video, we take you step-by-step through the meticulous process of restoring a vintage Zenith El Primero Rainbow, one of the most iconic chronographs in watchmaking history.

📜 What You'll See:

Disassembling the intricate El Primero movement, known for its legendary precision and high-frequency beats.
Cleaning, polishing, and repairing components to restore the watch to its original glory.
Restoring the vibrant bezel and dial that make the Rainbow model so distinctive.
Reassembling the watch and testing its performance to ensure it’s ready for the next generation.
💡 Fun Fact: The Zenith El Primero movement was one of the first automatic chronographs ever created and remains a benchmark in horology to this day.

📽️ Whether you're a watch enthusiast, a Zenith fan, or simply love seeing vintage items restored, this video is for you. Hit play to see a piece of horological history come back to life!

👉 Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more watch restoration and craftsmanship videos.

#WatchRestoration #ZenithElPrimero #VintageWatch #Horology #Craftsmanship

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These are Amazon affiliate links to some of the equipment used for these videos and purchasing anything through them helps support the channel.

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[Nudel-nccp]

Holly cow. I didn't realized this movement is so complicated. Amazing piece of engineering. No wonder Rolex used it some time ago. Great job.

[jasongennero]

Love the fact you’re wearing a moonswatch while working on a el primero. Idk what anyone says, I love the moonswatch and obviously it has a place in the market or ppl wouldn’t stand in line for hours just to be able to buy one. And your English is getting a lot better also. I can only imagine how hard it is to learn another language like English.i don’t know French and I can only imagine how hard it would be to learn French and how funny I would sound trying to speak it. So yeah I have a lot of respect for someone that goes out of their way to learn my native language. Great videos. I can only think of a handful of other channels that are as good as yours showing how to do everything step by step so Thanks brother and keep that great content coming!

[jpwillm]

Quel beau mécanisme !
Les prises de vues sont parfaites, et en plus, vous êtes vraiment un très bon horloger. 👍

[jhuventdavid]

Que hermoso mecanismo
20 ańos de mi vida dedique a esta hermosa profesion saludos desde Ecuador

[pipodorologio]

merci for sharing this and the time to put this video together, it is a joy to watch every time

[fjones]

These watches are amazing pieces of art & engineering!

Thank goodness there were/are some really intelligent people on the planet!!

We'd still be making fire with rocks if it were left up to some of us...LoL!

[RabbitWatchShop]

Looks better and has more character than a Daytona. I prefer this over Zenith’s modern chronograph, which looks a tad too similar to the Daytona. Kudos on another skillful, adept restoration 👍

[brucebarlow]

Yes Perfect. A lovely watch with many parts great work. Regards for the festive season.

[tiberiuvincze]

Nice, nice and nice! the watch, video and service thank you!

[antonioferreira]

1 hour plus of full therapy 😊. This caliber is my favorite, but seems to be very tricky to work on... I mean all chronographs are, but this one is more pretty and seems to be more hard work.😅

[overhyped]

Amazing video, I'm curenty going to go to school soon to become a watchmaker and watching your videos get me excited to start school as soon as possible, keep up the great videos.

[ForestWoodworks]

Beautiful watch, masterpiece for sure

[samnova]

Fantastic job done on that watch. Plan to practice on a China ST19 Chronograph as a Hobby watchmaker. Happy New Year to you.

[etienneguyot]

Awesome job!
Joyeuses fêtes de fin d'année !

[mercuriall]

The El Primero is a wonderful movement.

It’s amazing to think that Zenith ordered the destruction of plans and tooling to make it during the quartz crisis.

If not for a disobedient employee who hid everything behind a false wall, the movement would be lost to us now and wouldn’t have gone into production again once demand for it resumed.

The idea of replacing screws onto the movement as you disassemble it is sound, I do it too with chronographs and other high complications, but when a watch has signs of attention from a less experienced watchmaker, you cannot trust that the correct screws are in the correct locations. Never assume that the previous watchmaker assembled the watch correctly.

[neilbotha]

Love your videos, utterly brilliant. How about a piece on your own personal collection. Was ironic to see you wearing a moon swatch whilst working on Zenith automatic chronograph 😂

[ygrbooks]

Great work on a very nice caliber: 👍👌👏! My son also has an El Primero from around 2008 and the cushion inside the box also totally disintegrated 😩, which is really weird.

[BokiPetrovic]

Great video! Are you happy with Vevor polishing machine and what is the slowest rpm? It looks like the motor is moving when you apply little pressure.
Thanks

[jjver]

Thanks for the video!

If I may ask, if you got the Bergeon glass press, why do you use the Horotec one also?

[canadianwatchmonkey]

How is it even possible that the El Primero Rainbow cal 400 is not more coveted then a Rolex Daytona?