Chicken Manny

I'm in the process of upgrading the movements in one of mine. It isn't going to look like the gen but it will look much better. I wish someone would copy the gen movement but it is so unique that I don't see it happening. Cheers,

It is a 21/18. It will most likely take a custom strap. I think some of the Patek's take the same size.

20 plus and I haven't lost one yet. Now I do have one that I bought off another member that was basically broken when I got it. Oh well, not a bad percentage regardless. Knock on wood

I have a SS steel one already with upgraded movement ready to put in and a HK TAN gator strap on the way. Then last night I went ahead and did it, I ordered a RG version from River. Great watches, now I just need another movement and strap. Cheers, CM

I think it is important to see there is a difference between very slow service and stealing watches. I would be really frustrated with a 4.5 month wait but I wouldn't think that someone was stealing my watches. Hopefully you will get them back soon and then you can choose to take your business to someone else. You have every right to post your experience but if it were me, which it isn't, I wouldn't call someone a thief unless I was really sure. It sounds like you might be there already. I hope it gets settled soon. Best of Luck, CM

Sorry to hear about your delays. It sucks to have watches gone for a long time. Every time I send my gens away for service it takes FOREVER to get them back. I just sit there picturing them on the wrist of the service guys at happy hour. But they always make it back. RBJ isn't going to scam anyone. He is very well known by a ton of members. I'm sure he will take care of you. I know he is very behind due to his health issues and has stated that he won't be spending much time on the boards while he catches up. If I were you I would quickly start buying new watches to fill the gap. Cheers, CM

Hell yes, let's just lynch someone. This is getting stupid. Why don't we send everyone's name to the NSA! I have never seen such aggression in a forum (maybe I'm naive). I doubt anyone here would enjoy a public attack of their business or personal life. We enjoy a less than perfect hobby and throw stones at others?????

I have had roughly a 5% failure rate with reps; roughly 1/2 of the failure rate I have with gens. The major difference is the cost and time of getting a repair done. Gens take FOREVER and are much more expensive to service. My next gen due for service will go to the Great The Zigmeister (if he is up for it). I come from an agressive diving background and I do appreciate a great dive watch. With that said an average dive watch doesn't do [censored] for most dive people. Toss out the Submariner and grab a great dive computer. We are having fun with old technoligy that is a real kick to collect. Don't take it too seriously. As far as gens go, I only have a few gold or TT watches but with those I have only purchased gens. Otherwise it really depends on the watch. I really enjoy having a large selection and reps allow that for a lower cost per watch. At the end of the day it is all fun. If it isn't then get out and find something even better. When you do, let me know, I might be interested too. Cheers, CM

As we all know there is a wide range in rep quality. I think if you buy a second rate rep with a crappy movement then you will get a much higher failure rate and likely lower overall quality. On the other hand if you are willing to spend extra on a rep with a great movement and great overall quality you will be surprised by your experience. I own over a dozen gens in addition to around 20 high-end reps. In my experience I have had more issues with my gens then with my reps (although I have had the gens longer). I say you just look at them as watches. You get what you pay for. Case in point: $5000 gen PAM = Great quality, good movement and excellent quality control. $500 rep PAM = Good quality, good movement and inconsistent quality control. $4500 buys you a lot of watches, upgrades or shares of a equity investment. You decide which makes you happier. If you are bored with reps then you are likely buying crappy reps or are bored with watches in general. Either way, I hope you had a good time while the interest lasted. Enjoy the next chapter. Cheers, CM

I looks like it would need to be a Nickel movment.

Put me down for 2.

You're dead to me. Ha Ha just kidding.

Thanks Rob. You are a great asset to this board! I can't wait to see your review of the asian 7753 (don't we hope).

Problem solved. Thank you all for the help. Cheers, CM

Just a quick follow up, Edge doesn't have it so I'm still looking for some ideas. Thanks for the help! Cheers, CM

Forgive me if this has been covered before (can't locate it via search) but the Chicken is in need of your help. My sapphire PAM 127 crystal seems to not be sapphire. I have a slight scratch on it that just doesn't seem likely unless it is mineral. Does anyone know where to source a replacement? I would greatly appreciate your help! I have checked with a couple dealers an no response. Cheers, Dustin

Hello all you Bay Area Folk. So do we have any more takers on the meet up tomorrow? Please post here to let us know. It will be great time and the first round is on the Chicken. I hope to see more of us there! Cheers, CM

Bump

Any time from lunch on will work for me. How many of you will be able to make it? Let's see if we can get a solid number. Cheers!

1506 + 20 1526

I'm in for one

Recently I've been telling people that my brain has been systematically shutting down as a way of covering up small mental lapses. Of course, I was only joking. Until last week when I was telling a particularly witty story to a friend of mine only to be told that I had already delivered that joyous nugget of comedy. "You lie!", I said. Only I didn't because sometimes I am actually capable of a modicum of tact. Nevertheless I expressed disbelief at the notion that I had re-told a troy only recently acquired. Until, that is, she informed me of the very time and place that I first regaled her with my mighty tale. Which was several weeks ago. I began to dig deep into my memory. What this possible? I swear to God I had yet to tell anybody that story. Moreover, I clearly remembered hearing the story myself only a day or two earlier. Untangling the hazy web of memories it all came back to me, and oh how wrong I was. I began thinking about other things that (I thought) had occurred recently only to find I was way off base. So it seems my joking about my brain shutting down was more of a prophecy than a joke. In order to make my failing body fun, I'm starting pool for what will go wrong next! Good odds: Liver failure, avian influenza Bad odds: Scurvy, club foot.

Don't worry guys, that job is ancient history. I was young and dumb and thought myself to be too tough to be bothered with any doctor and his crazy ideas. Today the most risked injury I aspire to is a paper cut. Not as much blood and guts working in Silicon Valley. Well, if you don't count the whole dot bomb thing. I'm happy you enjoyed the story. If nothing else I left that job with a story. Cheers, CM

After hearing Klink's great ski story I thought it was an interesting idea to share a funny, if not disturbing story. When I was in college I worked for a carpenter. The perfect job for a college guy just out of the military: no stress and immense satisfaction. I’m always in awe when I realize that I can actually do something new. This particular week is New Construction. We start with a hole in the ground and in a few months we have a house. The proud homeowners framed in their new front door, all four waving as we carpenters drive off into the sunset… another job well done, Kemo Sabe. Not really, but they generally seem happy when we leave. New Construction is back-breaking labor, and involves a lot of heavy lifting and awkward materials. This morning I dropped a sixteen foot, two-by-twelve, pressure-treated board on my ring finger. You can imagine the dimensions of such a piece of lumber, and take my word for it: pressure-treated (the green boards that don’t rot) are much heavier than the regular old boards. In the simplest terms, it is a very heavy board. Really. Very heavy. Imagine this long, unwieldy, ponderous piece of wood. Now imagine your finger resting – lazy and unaware – on the corner of a concrete foundation. Add a bit of clumsiness, a dash of gravity, and you’ve got a recipe for comedy! The worst part is that it doesn’t hurt right away. I watch my fingernail meld from a healthy pink into a radiant magenta, and the pain hasn’t hit yet, twenty seconds… 40 seconds… a minute and a half… I’m nervous in anticipation of the real pain… there’s a dull ache, and the color is changing into an interesting shade of purple… my fingernail is obviously adjusting to its new state of being, and is just gathering breath into its lungs before really letting loose with a horrific scream of pain. The pain finally comes, and it’s about as bad as I expected. But right now it’s a curiosity, and I show it to my boss with a “see how stupid I am” laugh. He says, “Oh, man, you better relieve some of that pressure, or it’s really going to start to hurt.” Start to hurt? uh oh. I look down and see that the fascinating color scheme beneath my nail has settled at bloated-corpse purple (the kind of purple-slash-black that Cure fans wish they could find in a lipstick shade). The blood has pooled from my cuticle and spread right to the edge of the nail. The pressure starts to build, and I can see the end of my nail wanting to separate from the skin beneath it. Still, the pain’s not that bad. I assume that the bleeding has stopped, and since no more blood is gathering beneath my nail, the pain should hold steady and maybe even abate. No. By noon it feels like the tip of my finger is trying to give birth to a tiny stegosaurus, sans egg. I’m sweating from the pain. I shuffle my feet as if I need to urinate. I’m having trouble following simple directions, ignoring my employer while I wander aimlessly around the job site. I’ve been grinding my teeth for an indeterminate amount of time; I force myself to relax my jaw and five minutes later I realize that not only am I doing it again, I never stopped. My finger is bloated now, a crimson balloon filled with pain, which is made up of serrated granules of pain, wrapped in pain and then beaten with a mallet of pain. I expect my fingernail to pop up like the hood of a car. The pain is radiating down my finger and infecting the other fingers. If something brushes against my index finger I have to stifle a scream. My chest is starting to ache now, and I start to wonder if maybe a blood clot worked its way loose from my finger nail and made its way into a heart valve. It makes perfect sense to expect a heart attack. I realize that I’m cradling my hand to my chest and whimpering. Finally I beg a coworker for an aspirin. “[censored], dude, you need to open that Fk'er up. Let it drain. I heard that if you heat up a nail it’ll burn a little hole in your fingernail. Seriously, here’s a lighter.” My face lights up at this news. At last, someone who knows what he’s talking about! This is a miserable failure. Not only am I not getting the nail hot enough (each time it approaches the prescribed “red-hot,” it gets too hot to hold), it’s becoming very clear that I’m a complete pussy. I just can’t summon the determination I need to drive that nail into what is probably the second most sensitive square of flesh on my body, made worse by the throbbing injury. You might as well ask me drive a shish-ka-bob skewer through my testicle. “Well,” says my glib coworker, “why don’t you try drilling it.” “You’re out of your Fking mind.” “No, I did it to my big toe. It’s easy.” “The Fk. I am NOT drilling my finger.” “Want me to do it?” “If you come near my with that, you and I are going toe to toe.” At this point the pain is clawing its way up my spinal cord and beginning to affect autonomic functions. My knees are starting to buckle and I’ve lost any capacity for rational thought. This is the point where I turn a corner in my paradigm of personal hygiene. Not only do I want this torment to stop, need this torment to stop; I have ceased to care how it stops. I go for the drill. Sweat is pouring down my face now, blurring my vision. My hand is splayed on a sawhorse, I’m blinking furiously, and my other hand begins to shake from the pain radiating from my infected finger, which I’m sure is going to burst at the fingertip, spawning a demon of blackest agony in a spray of blood and viscera. I give the trigger a tentative jerk and the drill bit spins across the smooth nail. I have to push on the drill to keep the bit from slipping down the curve of my nail, and this slight pressure is like a vice on my finger. I whir the drill to life. Nail shavings are starting to peel out of the hole. I start to get a little squeamish. The shavings are pink, then vermillion with blood. I have this insane desire to look away while I do this. In the vast scheme of things, one-eighth of an inch is very small. When discussing astrophysics, it’s microscopic. In carpentry, it’s negligible. When drilling into one’s own fingernail, one-eighth of an inch is huge. Cavernous. It might just as well be a railroad spike. The problem with drill bits (at least, it seems problematic when performing some self-surgery at a construction site) is that the tip is beveled to a point. So, as one drills into one’s fingernail, the point of the bit is the first to break through. Not enough to open the hole wide enough to let the pressure really flow out, but just enough to bite the flesh underneath the reservoir of blood. The drill creates a cone in my nail which fills with blood as I press down and makes it even harder to see what I’m doing. This goes on for five minutes before I have to admit to myself that I’m not pushing down on the drill hard enough. At last, the motivation to really mutilate myself in order to stop this pain has crested… and I press…. A drill bit is essentially a simple machine. Based on the screw, it’s a sharp edge of metal which winds up a shaft of varying sizes. For the most part, drill bits do the work for you. Like a screw, it pushes itself through the material without too much pressure. When you drill a piece of wood and break through to the other side, the drill will stop gripping the wood and push in and out easily. However, when drilling through a non-porous material, the twist in the drill will catch the material and drive itself through the hole. This is true for plastics, and sheet metal, and – as it turns out – the human fingernail. In my head, the procedure goes something like this: rzzzz…. rzzzz…. rzzzz….rz…. rzzzzz…. rzzzzzzzzz…. rzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*tick* SLOOOOOORP. There is a horrifying nanosecond when I realize that I have actually drilled my fingernail through, and that the drill has instinctively burrowed into my flesh. In a panic, I release the trigger and yank the drill, which causes considerably more pain than if I had reversed the bit and eased it out… but the blood is finally pouring out of the hole in my nail. I want to dance with joy. I feel like I just struck oil in the middle of the Great Depression. Each rivulet of blood is like a sip of ice tea on a summer afternoon. I think about all those poor clods out there who can’t stomach drilling a hole in their finger and begin a blissfully pain-free life, and it occurs to me that drilling a hole in my fingernail may be the most rewarding experience of my life. When I tell my helpful coworker that his suggestion worked, he draws a horrified expression on his face. “You actually drilled you’re Fking finger? You’re Fking nuts, dude.”

I would love to see some nice Zenith.