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Yay! My Franken Rolex 1680 white is finished! Since mid-January, I work on this project and today is ready. I am so happy to imagine you! I hope you like it as me! I have used the following parts: Cartel Case (completely revised). Athaya 702 Crown and Tube. miyota 8215 movement. Silver Date disc with 6 & 9 open and flat 3. GEN Beyeler dial (easily repaired and relumet). GEN Insert. GEN Plexi. Raffles watch hands. And now the pictures:

Minutes before midnight & wearing my Bond Sub

"Built by me" welded lug Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Gilt Sub Hands... Most people put effort into their case, then the dial, the movement and the hands become an after thought. I have always thought that the dial and Mercedes hands are KEY elements and key "tells" on any vintage build budget or high end. There are so many myths surrounding what is correct, good, accepted in this world and I find learning this stuff as frustrating as everyone else, I have had to learn this stuff through trial and error (and error, and error). I get asked the question all the time when I post builds about what hands were used and read all the time "what hands are best" etc. etc. and finding a definitive answer is near on impossible because everyone says something different. I thought it was time to dispel some myths and help a whole mass of people out by showing these hands side by side. So here we go... Every hand set that I have, laid out next to each other, and all photographed to the same scale, next to a gen reference set (not my photo)... It should be noted that some of these have been aged and/or damaged, some are as delivered. Gen Hands I tried to make some general points about the gen hands, some rules that we want to get close to Points *1 - The second hand should have a tapered end The lollipop should have the same size of the base of the hour hand and be roughly twice the width of the minute hand *2 The walls of the hour hand shaft should be almost half the thickness of the lume plot The height of the shaft should be slightly SHORTER than the diameter of the Mercedes sign *3 - The diam of the Mercedes sign should be roughly a third bigger than the base *4 - The size of the Mercedes lume plot should be as big as the diameter of the hole (however the hole sizes differ, gen is 0.8 and ETA is 0.95mm) *5 - The length of the "point" should be more than half the diameter of the Mercedes sign and a third of the width at the base *6 - The distance from the hole to the start of the lume plot on the minute hand should be short *7 - As with the hour hand the walls of the minute hand shaft should be almost half the thickness of the lume plot *8 - The distance from the end of the lume plot to the start of the point should be small, approx 2x the width of the side wall There are more observations that can be made but these are the main ones. All Together The comparison candidates - Left to Right 1. Gen reference. It is important to say that this is a reference image and is not my photo. I have scaled this to an approximate same size as the other based on knowing the size of the hour hand hole (. compared to the other ETA (.95) 2. HR New - 2015 these are the replacement hands that HR currently have, the minute hand is not long for their oversized dial. However the hour hand is better than the older ones. 3. HR OLD - circa 2014. The minute hand is long for the HR oversized dial and the dimensions to a gen minute hand are almost perfect. A MUST for an oversized dial. (HR is apparently getting these back in stock but this is unconfirmed at time of writing) 3. Clarks Tudor Sub hands for ETA 2015 - These new hands are excellent and in fact probably the best of all for a very reasonable price $20 USD inc shipping 4. Tiger Concept (OnlineStoreHK). These are the clear looser, terrible in fact. Only buy these for the lollipop second hand if MY is out of stock. 5. Michael Young (Classic Watch Repair CWR) - An excellent set of hands that comes with 2 lollipop second hands, a gilt one and a white one. These hands have an excellent finish but the edges are not sharp and the lume job is terrible and hanging over the edge of the hands. At $65 + $28 Shipping these are the most expensive hands here and I would say, from a shape perspective, only slightly better than the $20 Clarks hands. It should also be noted that the hands shown are for a gen movement, not ETA. But MY used to stock these for ETA but he was out of stock when I asked. 6. Clarks Vintage Sub hands for 157x - I am including these because i have them, I struggled to broach these and ended up bending them. A good shape but now superseded by his Tudor Sub hands for ETA builds. Hour Hands Minute Hands Conclusion I hope it is clear to see that many of these hands are "wrong" not close to vintage sub hands AT ALL. The Tiger concept hands are in last place, however, these come with a lollipop second hand. The winners are Clarks and Michael Young if you don't want a lillipop second hand Clarks is the hands down winner. But it must be noted that by the time you buy a set of Clarks Tudor Sub hands and a set of Tiger's to get a lollipop second hand, you are basically at the same price as the MY hands (if he has them in ETA) An additional note must be made for HR "oversized" dials, for this dial there really is only 1 minute hand, the old HR hand as it will correctly reach the chapter ring on the dial as it should. PLEASE NOTE, I am talking solely about vintage early sub GILT hands here. By the time we get into 5513s particularly the silver hands and most definitely the later ones, the design of the hands has changed very slightly. Many of the gilt hands from the 5512 and early 5513 appear to be the same as the "6538" or "50-60s" era hands I am comparing, maybe these were old stock at the time?. But as the years move forward it is easy to see changes in particular the side walls of the hands get thicker, so if you are doing those builds this reference will not hold up. I hope this helps and means you don't have to buy all of the damned hands that I have bought Kime

I haven't posted on here for a while so wanted to share a few images of my latest build. I'm currently the proud owner of a gen smp ceramic. I decided I wanted another watch to wear as an alternative and when I spotted a gen PO dial and hands at a giveaway price I couldn't resist. So I went to build yet another Franken PO (I've done a few now!) this one would be a keeper but I wanted to see if I could make a watch I'm happy with for a price I'm happy with as gen omega parts seem so much more expensive than they did 5-6 years ago. Here's the dial and hands; Then I needed a donor watch. I decided to go with the lmpo, it comes with a 2824 movement, decent crystal, crown and correct placed he valve so out of the box seemed a very accurate base to start. So out with the old and in with the new, I sold off the bezel, dial and bracelet to offset the costs, this is a budget Franken after all. I did the dial and hand swap myself. Even though I got a gen eta dw, I didn't want to risk messing up the movement or having to send it off for 4 months so decided (for now) to keep the lmpo dw even though it has silver font, hopefully only I will likely ever know the difference. I then won a gen bezel for a great price on eBay but it appears the greedy [censored] bag of a seller had been given a better offer offline so pretended he had lost the bezel as soon as the auction finished and he saw he hadn't got as much as his private offer. Anyway I did some research and found a v5 bezel with orange insert and modified pearl over on rwi. I scoured the web for the best aftermarket black insert and went with clarkes, super fast delivery I filed the hole a little larger, used the nodded pearl and bezel from the v5, ditched the orange insert and am pretty happy with the result for a fraction of the price of a gen. I have always been fussy about omega pearls and bezels and will keep my eye out for another gen, but for now very passable! Here it is on nato: finally, the nato didn't quite do the watch justice, I wanted a solid gen feeling beater of a watch. so this last week I have managed to source a barely used gen rubber strap and kept the price very reasonable for the complex project. Here she is; total price £260 all in. Considering the price of a gen dial and rubber strap and a lmpo I'm pretty happy with myself. 90% gen looking for 10% of a gen price - can't say fairer than that! i would love to finish it off with a gen bezel, proper dw, v5 or gen caseback and a new unfaded second hand but these aren't essential just yet. Let me know what you think.

That's beautiful mate! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That's not a service dial, it's a MKI dial, position of the L under the coronet gives it away. Newer Service dials will just have the word SWISS Older service dials will have T<25 but the position of the L is far left of the coronet. Regardless the lume job on the dial and hands are no good.

Updated the faded second hand to a new one...

Every time I see that tagline it reminds me of a joke: A blonde is out in the bayou with a flashlight, hip boots and a rope. Spying movement, she throws her rope around a huge alligator and wrestles him to shore. Dripping wet, she drags him up onto a pile of deceased reptiles, then bursts into tears wailing... "Oh no! This one isn't wearing boots either!"

111 on Croc. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This look just like my previous gen 5513 with the crown being the only exception (and no patina on dial and hands). Beautiful. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Sorry, gen. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

A few daytime shots;

Just finish assembly Gen 1520 movement Gen T19 Gen SL hands Gen insert Gen 93150 bracelet HR modified case HR dial Unknown bezel assembly Unknown long coronet crown Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Another 5513 today

5513 today

Did someone say ghost insert?