Wristwatch built for water gets a trial by the Palisades Fire

A Rolex Deepsea diver's watch can withstand water pressure at depths of more than 12,000 feet.

"Basically, the most bulletproof, toughest watch that Rolex makes," says Marshall Sutcliffe, who runs a popular YouTube channel on watch restoration.

But what about fire?

About seven months ago, Sutcliffe received an intriguing request from a viewer and his father to restore a Rolex that was recovered in the rubble of the Palisades Fire.

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The watch's owner had lost everything, the two said, save for a husk of that 2015 Deepsea wristwatch.

" The idea of these fires, even though it was very much in my mind, was distant," said Sutcliffe, who lives in Seattle. "Getting something that came out of one of those fires and having it sitting in front of me was an emotional experience."

'It was annihilated'

A viewer of Marshall Sutcliffe's YouTube channel asked if he could fix a Rolex recovered in the rubble of the Palisades Fire.

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Courtesy Marshall Sutcliffe

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Even for Sutcliffe, the state of the timepiece was a shock.

 "It was annihilated  to a level that even I couldn't have imagined until I opened up the watch," he said.

The outside structure, despite having been cooked for weeks, was surprisingly intact. The case and the metal bracelet, discolored and ashen, were still there. The dial, too, had survived but was unreadable. Gone were the crystal, as well as the bezel with numbers that go around the exterior.

" My assumption is that [they] popped off because of the extreme heat," Sutcliffe said.

Then he went in.

The movement of the Rolex was all but unrecognizable.

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Courtesy Marshall Sutcliffe

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" I had a little bit of my brain thinking that maybe part of the movement inside would've survived," he said. "I don't know why I thought that."

Some of the metal had melted into other parts, morphing into one big rusty gunk.

"There's basically no moving parts anymore left," he said.

One of Sutcliffe’s biggest challenges in the restoration was to get the movement itself out of the case.

"I  tried to undo a screw on it," Sutcliffe said. "It turned into a pile of dust."

Finally, he had to just dig into it, using the biggest screwdriver in his toolbox of tiny watch repair instruments.

"Piece by piece," Sutcliffe said. " They just flaked off."

After that, the rest of the work was relatively straightforward, but no less painstaking. Sutcliffe took a movement from a similar Rolex and replaced it wholesale. The other parts, he tried to retain as much as possible.

The movement of the Rolex was completely destroyed by the Palisades Fire

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Courtesy Marshall Sutcliffe

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Sutcliffe wanted to retain as many original parts from the destroyed Rolex as possible.

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Courtesy Marshall Sutcliffe

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What is original?

But that led to a philosophical question.

"You know, what makes a thing a thing, right?” he asked. “If you replace a bunch of parts on it, what does that end up being? What I decided to do was I kept every part that I could."

And there's one part he kept that carries special meaning.

In the middle of the restoration, an idea hit Sutcliffe to keep an inner ring of the Deepsea — a detail you can see but something that most people probably wouldn’t notice.

During restoration, Sutcliffe had the idea to retain a burnt, darkened inner ring from the original watch.

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Courtesy Marshall Sutcliffe

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Normally, that part is bright silver with black letters on it. The one on the damaged Rolex was charred to a dark brown, verging on black.

Sutcliffe contacted the owner.

"I asked him if I could leave that in there so that it could kind of be a subtle symbol to him," he said. "That he made it and it made it, and he's going to continue on.”

The owner agreed.

After the video of the restoration was posted, Sutcliffe got an email.

The owner thanked the watch repairer, telling him that seeing the Deepsea, a gift that was given to him, being slowly put back together was emotional.

Sutcliffe feels it, too. He still remembers first holding the watch with the marks of incredible destruction in his hand. After the monthslong process, he is struck by what it has now become — "functional again, beautiful again... ready to live a long life."