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Showing content with the highest reputation on 12/23/2016 in all areas

  1. You can be an alcoholic who only drinks once a week and you can be a non-alcoholic who drinks 3+ times a week. (IMO) It's ALL about the WHY. Do you drink because you're bored? Sad? Stressed? Gotta ask yourself those kinds of questions because merely basing your stability level on how often you drink doesn't cut it. Impairment goes much further than the night of and morning after. When using substances of any kind on a regular basis your perception of reality will be altered most of that time in between too, until you give yourself a long period of sobriety, then you get your moment of clarity, which is more like a life of clarity if you seize it. Either way drinking is not an intelligent thing for a human being to do. I feel society has come to a point where drinking is simply regarded as "normal". It's not... and it's definitely NOT okay for a lot of people out there. My advice? You write down your pros and cons of drinking, if you have ONE con... ditch the [censored]. Sobriety isn't all that boring. Never have to worry about getting DUI, rides, sick, hungover, late to work, beat up, that awful taste in your mouth when you wake up. It can be an enlightening experience, you get to ask yourself "When I was a kid, what did I do with all my time? What kept me so busy and intrigued?" Then you get to go find those things and apply them, fill your life up with meaningful activities and things you can see clearly and hold on to. 5+ years sober for me. Watches/reps Hobby was one of my life fillers! Never going back. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    4 points
  2. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    2 points
  3. 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
    1 point
  4. Here is a recent release from Breitling: the Navitimer Heritage, which as a Navi fan, I find absolutely beautiful. With this model, Breitling offers an affordable Navitimer (less than 4000 USD online) and obviously it comes with the Caliber 13 movement, based on the Valjoux 7750. The dial takes us back to the old navi figher layout with 6-9-12 subdials, printed logo, date at 3' and the perfect 42mm size that fits all kinds of wrists. Subdials and dial have the same color, I like that I hope they rep this very soon Enjoy some pics : I might have to pull the trigger on the gen
    1 point
  5. Like Obama, Rolex shortsightedly pivoted to Asia when it should stayed the course and the results were disastrous in both cases.
    1 point
  6. Man if you put a Cokemariner dial in that thing you'd have the perfect Christmas watch!
    1 point
  7. I do think the photo is taken a just a slight angle looking at the left and right sides, but I agree that even with that something seems off with the 6 and 12 markers Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    1 point
  8. Sorry Trump-voting Americans. You just elected Ronald Reagan again. This time with a toupé older than his wife, reality-TV instead of Hollywood, and narcissistic/megalomanic personality disorder. IQ. But who are we kidding. Modern democracy is only about believing you actually make a difference, when it's still Status-quo no matter which puppet gets elected. ... Consider this more a proof of concept than a straight up guide. I was one of the guys truly [censored] when I received my Noob v7 no-date Sub. The SELs were once again just as horrible as the Noob v3 I bought >2 years ago. Having a NOS LF Sub-C bracelet incoming, and 2 more bracelets in stock... Why not experiment a bit. With the aid of abrasive pads, papers, diamond files, and a dremel armed with dentist-grade polish tips... I went to work. 20 hours later... (and still not 100% done) i present to you: Basically what you want to do is: The blue part = avoid removing, otherwise you will lose the upper "limit" that is adhered to the lower part of the bezel and your bracelet will jiggle vertically The green part = remove little, creating a pleasant curve with the rest... The yellow part = remove a lot The red part = remove almost everything... until you fear the metal tolerance to the springbar "tube" will crack on ya The thick one is an umodded Noob v3 SEL (basically identical to v7) This is how you create jobs.... Now get to work! :)
    1 point
  9. All gen in other words! Lol Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
    1 point
  10. It was just a joke and all good. Humor and good intentions are always welcome here and you showed both.
    1 point
  11. Hey thanks man.. specs are listed in the genstein Hulk thread in the same section.
    1 point
  12. Mine says hi Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk
    1 point
  13. Well the green is off, the insert sucks, horrible sel, wrong date font, terrible date alignment, cheap clasp, poor overal finish
    1 point
  14. Vintage today - gen 1665
    1 point
  15. Interesting... do you think HR are reading this thread :-) These new hands have taken on board many of the points made here and seem to have tried to address the proportions issues that exist in almost all lower budget had sets. If they were flat they would be winners, they have a what appears to be a similar "rounded" surface to the MY hands, but even so, I still think they possibly now represent the best single hand set buy for a vintage sub (pre 5513) out there particularly for "oversized" dials. It certainly is better than buying 3 sets just to make one.
    1 point
  16. Hours from left to right : Silix, HR 2015, new HR 2016. Minutes : Silix, HR 2015, new HR 2016. Seconds : Tiger Concept, HR 2015, new HR 2016. HR 2015, new HR 2016. HR 2015, new HR 2016 [emoji632] HR 2015, new HR 2016. [emoji632]
    1 point
  17. ...and just for your information...when it comes to dials scotchwatch is asking for your gen used dial. If you don't have one they don't even get back to you...very ignorant I'd say!
    1 point
  18. I had a couple of days off of work and decided to play with my AP diver a bit. As most of you know, the gen AP diver has a 21,600bph movement. Our reps come with an ETA 2824 (or clone) movement which beats at 28,800bph. If it had a 2836 movement, it would be simple to swap in a 2846, which is the exact same movement except with a 21.6 beat rate. However, swapping a 2846 for a 2824 is more difficult. It's typically doable (although the stem height is sometimes an issue), but the date wheel will not swap and with these AP divers have a custom date font, so using the stock ETA wheel is no good. Vac posted a thread in his section that seems to indicate that he's modified some 2846s to work with the 2824 datewheel, so I tried that for a bit. I swapped every single part on the front of the 2824 to a 2846, and it still would not work correctly with the 2824 datewheel. The teeth are not in the right plane. Some people report success so there apparently is a way to do it, but I couldn't figure it out and no one will share with me how it's done. So I decided to do it from the other side of the movement. In a lot of ways this is actually more desirable, since it gives you a movement with the correct stem height, you don't have to modify the date mechanism, etc. It is more delicate, fussier work though, and some of the parts are very easy to break. What I ended up with was a movement with all of the 2824 parts except the balance wheel, pallet fork, and escape wheel. The gear train is the same on all of the 28xx movements so nothing else had to be swapped. Now the movement beats at 21,600bph and nothing on the front side of the movement had to be changed. I didn't even remove the stem or uncase the movement. These are the parts that were swapped: I've transplanted these parts to the clone A2824 (you can see that the balance **** arm doesn't have the same perlage finish as the rest of the movement--this pic is through the loupe, that's why it's so weird looking) Better pic: Watch is now running at 21,600 bph. I didn't even have to touch the dial and hands or uncase the movement! The watch itself actually makes a pretty good movement holder for this project. Excited by how this turned out. Watch has been running within about 3 sec/day for the last day and a half, we'll see what it settles in at--the lower beat movements usually aren't quite this accurate over the longer term. Waiting on a new strap, I bought a Donerix leather, we'll see how it looks all together.
    1 point
  19. Thanks guys and thanks for pinning this, doing that should help even more people out. Of course I don't own all hand sets that are out there, if people want to send me hand sets they don't want or send pics I will be happy to try and include them in this post. I know I don't have yuki vintage gilt hands here but I know they will not top the most accurate list so there is probably not much point posting them. I have no idea what ST hands are (yet another esoteric supplier, which just confirms why we need these references) but if anyone can point me to them I can decide if they are worth including.
    1 point
  20. As some of you may know, RWI (the Dark Side) has just taken action against the two largest dealers on any of the forums, Josh and Andrew. Although this issue has gotten little to no attention over here, I believe this is something that has an impact on every forum member. The nutshell version is that Andrew was caught, red-handed, trying to intimidate another dealer into raising prices of certain reps. When the dealer refused, Andrew responded by saying that he would make sure the factory did not supply any more reps to this dealer. Andrew and Josh were given an opportunity to respond, and refused to do so. As a result, we were forced to remove their sections. What follows is the message that was posted on RWI concerning our reasons: Due to evidence brought forth to the staff of RWI, both Josh and Andrew's sections on RWI have been closed. The discussions and polling on these matters may be seen in the following threads. http://replica-watch.info/phpBB3/viewtopic...f=1&t=41999 http://replica-watch.info/phpBB3/viewtopic...p;sk=t&sd=a http://replica-watch.info/phpBB3/viewtopic...f=1&t=42036 http://replica-watch.info/phpBB3/viewtopic...ilit=white+lies Andrew has not seen fit to respond or provide any answers on the subject other than to deflect the issue and claim that dealers are conspiring against him. Josh and Andrew have always been viewed as one and the same due to their close connection and business partnership. Thus, we have made the decision to sanction both of them at this time. We have not made this decision easily as these two dealers have been mainstays of RWI. This decision was made due to a concentrated effort by these two dealers to obstruct other valued dealers and, ultimately, you the member from obtaining replicas at a fair price. They have sought to control the market and intimidate other dealers into raising prices. Others (whether they be members here or on the other forums) will laugh and think that we are silly... They will say that we are shouting at the rain and that we can't change anything... Maybe they are right but our purpose in this world is to bring you, the member, the safest and best replica hobby experience we can... You may not agree with our decision, but please respect that we have made this decision with your best interests at heart. We hope that the closing of their sections is not permanent and that they will respond to us and the topics at hand can be mediated. Until then, their sections will remain closed with this message there.
    1 point
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