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Up on the McHugh peak approach

Here's the complete build story It all started when I saw, on a UK site, a watch showing a beautifull patina. That 5500 Air-King was at £3.000, a fair price IMO though I really had a better use for such an amount at that very moment. But I must admit that I fell in love at first sight and I craved to have one. I already had 2 Air-Kings, 14000 models in my drawers. One was a DHGate I got from @English Gent for the amazing amount of £67 shipped. The other one I bought from Silix, only $100 shipped, just to check if a$30 difference could imply a difference in the making. And yes there was a real difference as the Silix had a better dial, a better movement and a much better case and bracelet. Then, considering the fact that the DHGate one was a little small (not exactly 36mm) and spent almost all its time in the drawer despite the fact that she was really nice on the wrist, I decided that I could take my chance. So I decided I could try to transform a soso 14000 into a nice 5500 ... thus the really long journey. First I had to mod the dial. I removed the bar indexes and the crown and put them aside then I stripped all the letterings, using acetone and Q-Tips and only kept the "soleillé" (sunburst) I had already designed a 5500 Air-King Precision patina dial and had printed it on clear decal paper so I just had to put it on I picked the "right" indexes and a better crown from my spares, put them on the dial - with cyanolit because their positions had to be moved a little more close to the rehaut (about 1/2mm). I used 8 "thin" indexes and 3 "bold" indexes (at 3/6/9) and I reworked the crown a little with a diamond files so that it could look a litte more "genlike". Then of course a set of 5500 Precision hands and some dots of DIY vintage lume. Before putting the dial and movement in the case I had to rework it a BIG lot : - thinned the case and lugs a little to get closer to the 34mm size - drilled the lugs from scratch so that they could get vintage spring bars - filled the existing lug holes with solder so that the spring bars could not be "stucked" inside - erased the engravements on the rehaut and thinned it a little so that it could receive a Tropic crystal - reworked the bezel to the outer size of the Tropic Crystal - thinned the lugs and bezel again while smoothing everything - chamfered the inner side of the crwon so that the final look could be more « genlike » - mod standard springbars to vintage 1,8mm springbars I did not took pics of all the phases along the process but here are some What else ? It’s been a long but really interesting process and that I’m really happy with the final result. Hope you enjoyed the story.

Perfect clones PF828 I’ve had great experiences with them. Lightning quick delivery to the States Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Been a while since I bought a rep but this new VSF was too good not to get