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Still wearing 1 of my Newmans

+1 The old MBW bracelets were pretty good (if you can still find one) and Yuki's is probably the best option now IMO. I considered myself quite lucky to find an MBW for my 5514.

the whale Boeing 747-400

Carrera

Who is BK? LOL

Posting this because its funny as hell Saw it on a watch blog today The Greatest Rolex Story You'll Ever Hear Dr. Jim Norman, driver in the Napleton Racing #16 Porsche Cayman team that just won class GX of the 2013 Rolex 24, has the funniest Rolex story you'll ever hear! In his own words -- FUNNY STORY! ... Today I take my new Rolex to the jeweler right down the street from my house in Tampa to get a link taken out so it fits me better (for those of you who don't know, the winning drivers of the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona are presented with a new Rolex timepiece in Victory Lane). The jeweler re-sizes it for me and charges me $8. I say "Wow, 8 bucks, that's not very much". The manager lady says, "well, if it were a REAL Rolex we would charge you more!". I chuckle and say "it IS a real Rolex". She says, "Nope it is not...We know Rolex watches and this is definitely a fake." My retort, "well, I guess you don't know these as well as you think!". Hearing this, the Jeweler comes out from behind his little glass window from where he is working on a frail, blue-haired lady's broach while wearing some very dorky-looking magnifying glasses and says, "I'll bet you bought that watch in New York". He puts both hands in his back pockets and sticks out his skinny "bird" chest in an attempt to be strong and assertive. "Nope" I say, "I haven't been to NYC in some time". He quickly replies, "I'll bet you $1000 you didn't buy that from a real Rolex dealer". I say, I won't take that bet, because you are right, I didn't buy this from a Rolex dealer". "AH HA!" he exclaims, "it IS a fake!! Where did you get it??" "I got it in Daytona this past Sunday". "HA! I am right!" he shouts, almost loud enough to break some of the crystal elephants assembled as a group on one of the overhead glass shelves. "I know all the Rolex dealers in Daytona, and none of them is open on Sundays!" He is quite pleased with himself and turns to strut back to his window-enclosed, nick-knack cluttered cubby. "Maybe I didn't get it from a dealer" I state smugly. He turns and says, "well then tell me, who DID you get this FAKE Rolex from?" "Well, I stated calmly and coolly, I was presented this beautiful timepiece from the President and CEO of Rolex Watches while standing on the podium at the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona". "OH, Sure!" he says, "and I'm Santa Claus!!". And back into his cubby he went, oblivious to the REAL world around him. He doesn't get it... The world is passing him by and he isn't even aware that it is happening. You gotta love life and embrace life... even if it means you have to wear a fake Rolex.

ME TOO, DAMN IT

Good morning gents. Recovering from shoulder surgery yesterday. Hard to take a decent pick with right arm in sling...

Luminor Marina Militare PAM 036 A review in two parts PART 2 - the rolli/FGD 036B build Here's the follow up to my review of the OOB new Davidsen's 036B, found HERE. This is for sure the most elaborate and challenging project I completed so far. The amount of work I put on it has been, well, a lot. But it has paid imho. Some details could still be perfected, a few problems arose and I had to work my way around them the best I could. Most of them I solved, for others I had to accept a few compromises. Watch has been assembled and disassembled completely a number of times before I was satisfied with the results. I beg your pardon in advance if this thread will turn into a long read, those of you who are not that interested in the details of the build's process may skip the text and go directly to the pics Ok then, but what did I do to this watch? CASE Davidsen's case set was my choice for this build, mainly because it's the only available case featuring the engravings on the back as per the gen. The case was completely disassembled and washed with chemicals in order to remove the dullish patina it had when I received it. Afterwards it went through a full spa treatment with a few different grades sandpaper, the area near the lugs was reworked to achieve a cleaner finish where they join the case although some of the machining marks could not be removed completely. The crystal was re-seated in order to have a little less height above the bezel, crown was cleaned and repolished, I even polished the sides of the lugbars. Not a single part remained untouched In the works: Finished: Old case: New: Old: CROWNGUARD I ordered an A-F series crownguard from Sead for this build as it is known to be the closest to the gen CG, and it really is. The lever shape is scary close to gen, it has a perfect curve and the tip points nicely towards the watch body. Unfortunately though when I mounted it on the case I realized the fitment was not good at all, there was a 0.2 mm space in the upper and bottom part, where the CG should touch the case, due to the slightly different shape of DSN and noob cases. So the choice was between a better overall CG with a perfect lever or a slightly worse CG and lever but with a perfect fitment. I chose the latter. I then disassembled the CG completely, cleaned and refinished a bit the inner shape, retouched the lever tip, shortened a tiny bit the steel CG pin and brushed it to match the titanium of the CG. Old CG New CG Crown detail DIAL I managed to find one of the few dials produced by rolli at the end of last year. I was very lucky indeed as these have been sold out for a long time and no one knows if they will ever be made again. As I stated in my review DSN's new dial is great, but of course it can't compare to this dial. Here's a GEN vs DSN vs ROLLI comparison DSN GEN ROLLI As you can see rolli's dial is scary close to the gen one, perfect sausage lume application with a glossy, raised and rounded surface. Perfect numbers shape and inscriptions font. Most of all a perfect match for the tobacco color which rolli claims to be painted using the same Pantone color used for the genuine Panerai dials. The gen dial looks to have a polished slope around numbers and indices that is not visible in rolli's, and that's the only difference I could observe. I talked with rolli about this feature and was told it's due to the coin stamping production process used by Panerai. From what I understood the press that stamps theindices and markers on the brass dial plate leaves a polished rim around the indices that remains visible even after painting the dial surface. Using the same equipment to produce these rep dials would have raised dramatically the production costs, making them too much expensive, so the contours have been machine polished achieving a similar result, close but not the same. GEN Rolli I have to say this dial has a tiny blemish near the 3 marker on the seconds subdial, so tiny though that it can be seen clearly only under specific lights at 10x magnification. Nothing I worry about The real issue I had to face here was with installing the hands: the FGD hands that came with the dial were not finished very well, there was a lot of lume spilling over the hands' sides and the seconds hand had a tiny blob of lume underneath that prevented the movement from working. It took me quite a bit of time and a mighty migraine to fix these issues, the lume material in excess has been very gently removed with a tootpick from the side and the back of the hands but for the life of me I'm still not completely satisfied with the result, there's a microscopic spot that seems to appear and disappear like it's playing with me Anyway I digress, maybe I will just ask rolli to sell a spare hands set to me with his new dial once it's released ;) Here you can see clearly the lume glowing on the sides of the hands: Way better now: CASEBACK AND MOVEMENT GEN One of the details that were haunting me about this 036 build was the golden outline of the jewels holes in the gen movement. It's one of those things that you just HAVE to do something about it or you will never be satisfied, so here's where I got completely crazy I found online a special paint with real metal scales in it and bought a micro-brush used in modellism, then I painted the holes by hand. I cannot even begin to describe how much time and patience I had to put in painting those three little holes without spreading the paint all over the bridges, two movements where sacrificed in order to achieve an acceptable result. Sacrificed movement I didn't have the guts to do this on a swiss hi-beat movement worth 250-300 usd so in the end I opted for a hi-beat asian 6497-2 I sourced from Helena Rou. I have to say it is a little more expensive than the usual a6497 you find on the bay but it was by far the cleanest and nicest looking I have seen so far. This means though that there is no Y incabloc installed on this movement and since swapping it is far beyond my skills I will have to live with this flaw. As I said there are always compromises you need to accept Here's the final result: NEW OLD Now I'm sure I wrote too much as usual, but I tried to describe what goes behid the scenes and unnoticed each time we look at the nice builds that some members are posting. I'd like to thank each ad every one of them for the inspiration and for what I learnt reading and looking at their builds. On to the rest of the pictorial: Final wristie! :rockon:

I heard Joshua has them but there's a problem with the reactor core. Keeps your wrist nice and warm, but you grow testicles on your forehead. Wait for v2.0, it's guaranteed to be 1:1.

It was this photo that inspired me to buy the gen. Unfortunately I sold it (to red). I miss that watch

This is the smoking lounge with scotch, cigars and fine wingback chairs ... not the bowling alley. Benson! More Laphroaig neat, if you please.