Rivets are a wonderful fastener. Threadless and incredibly resilient. They act as both a fastener and a hinge pin, granting incredible strength and flexibility to the structures they hold together.
Rolex has used rivets in their watchbands for decades, and they hold up well to the test of time! My 5513 ran into a slight issue as time seems to have caught up with the watch.
The heads of the rivets have worn off over the decades and no longer function to fasten the watchband securely. The links simply slip off the headless rivet and risk slipping off!
In an effort to prevent the use of authentic Rolex watchbands on counterfeit watches, a watchband is a rather hard item to procure these days. I inquired about such a purchase and was told that I would have to surrender my original watchband before Rolex would sell me a replacement, that way Rolex would be assured that their new watchband made its way onto an original Rolex and not some cheap knockoff!
Listening to the advice of my watch collecting friends, I refused this offer as the original watchband is a great part of the value of the watch itself. It would be the equivalent of a classic car without the original motor block, the serial numbers of the body and motor would be different and the car is worth significantly less; this is where the term “matching numbers” comes from.
I was faced with a dilemma! If I exchanged the watchbands, I would have a sturdy replacement for my watch that I wear daily, but it would kill its value. If I keep the watch “original”, it will also be unusable, and therefore worthless for my purposes of being my watch that tells me what time it is.
The watch smith was not able to repair the watch either, as Rolex would not authorize them to do such a repair. It seemed I was left with one clear option: repair the watchband myself.
Rivets are not a novel concept to me. I worked with them extensively when I was building a wooden dinghy. I was very familiar and well practiced at the art of making a rivet, and I had all the tools at hand! In the video, I show how a rivet works and some techniques that are useful to successfully create a new rivet head on this original 5513 Rolex Submariner.
