With the 8/0 747 movement ticking away nicely, it’s time to turn to the case. Like many Hamilton watches from that era, the “Clinton” model had a two-piece case with the movement sandwiched between them. The top piece is a thin, snap-on bezel that holds the crystal.

Unusually, though, this case is all stainless steel. At that time, the Hamilton wristwatches were overwhelmingly gold-filled or solid gold.

This case base poses some interesting polishing challenges. The distinctive lugs are welded to the case back. The case should have a mix of finishes. The lugs and bezel are mirror polished, giving a shiny, reflective appearance to the top of the watch. The case back has a linear grain, giving a silky feel and preventing a sticky feeling on the wrist during hot days. You can see some of the graining here.

At some point, someone did a quick-and-dirty brushed finish on this case. There are brush marks on the case lip and the sides of the lugs that show that someone gave it a few passes under an abrasive brushing wheel. This isn’t good.

The erratic, half-hearted brushing on the lugs is too deep to polish away, so I’ll leave it as it is and instead get the case looking more like it should.

First, Shiny Parts

This quirky case involves two big steps. First, we’ll polish the parts intended to be shiny back to a glossy finish. The aim is not to remove all the nicks and scratches, but instead to make the watch look like a vintage watch in nice shape that has been cared for. Aiming for a “like new” state would require too much reshaping and removal.

A bright, mirror finish involves “stepping down” from rougher to finer grits. For a stainless steel case in basically good shape, I go from Menzerna’s blue to pink to yellow to white. After each round, the case is cleaned in the heated ultrasonic cleaner for a few minutes to remove the old polishing compound residue.

This process is a bit more time consuming than a one-shot finish with red rouge, but it gets better results and avoids contaminating the cotton wheels.

Next, Brushed Parts

After the case is brought back to a shine, the second step involves restoring the brushed finish on the case back. I have a few abrasive wheels that would work well on this case.

For clean results, the case’s shiny parts need to be masked.

Here you see the basic idea behind the masking.

Admittedly, it looks less elegant on the other side. Just in case, the rim for the snap-on bezel is masked to keep the lines clean and sharp.

When using abrasive wheels, it’s important to protect your fingers. Jeweler’s safety tape is great: it protects from scrapes and scratches, and it allows you to work the piece in with confidence instead of wariness.

Time to suit up for an abrasive battle.

After many light passes from both directions, the case back ended up with a great finish. It feels silky, tracks consistently linear in direction, and avoids the polished sections. It could be better—the contour is hard to work with a brushing wheel—but I’m pretty happy with the result.

Wrapping Up

And so we come to the end. I’m happy with how the watch turned out. With the stainless case and rhodium-plated dial markers, this is a sharp little watch. As an aside, the dial is not quite right (the Clinton is not actually a CLD model), but then again I didn’t pay extra for an exact, perfect match.

As usual, I show my finished watches to the wife and kids to see what they think, and my wife exercised the spousal option on this one, so this little watch will stay in the family.