crystalcranium

Thanks veryone. I'll stay far away

I think he wants to pay my paypal account, the money from which I would transfer to my bank account and then use my bank debit card to fund the WU transfer. The hitch is that my bank account transfer from paypal takes about 3-4 days and has to go through a confirmation process so if paypal is funded by a fradulent credit card, there should be time to flush that out.

I was selling an item on the bay. I had an inquiry from an interested party who asked me if I would send it to Russia as a gift to his cousin for the shipping quoted. I said yes and today, I got the following email from the interested party "OK, also I would like you to send to my cousin $900 via Western Union as an additional part of my present. I can't send it myself 'cause my cousin will see my name as the sender's name in a WU receipt - I want it to be a surpirse. I could pay you let's say $200 for your help. I will pay for everything via paypal in full and upfront. My money is ready in my paypal account so please let me know if you could help me with that. Thanks!" What the hell is this? He's going to send me $1100 and trust me to send the product and the money to someone else? What's with the "keeping the name secret" business? His cousin would have to know the sender of the cash to pick it up. I think he would be "very surprised" to have a total stranger send him $900. Any thoughts on what this might be. Would I be helping to fund Chechen rebels?

On the topic of Chinese translation errors, I buy a good deal of my woodworking equipment from Taiwan and China. Some of the instruction booklets can be quite amusing. One quote I remember was "To adjust table height, loosen this screw" They translated it as "To adjust table height, loosen this fuc*"

I have more people tell me when I hand them my reps and gens, "How do you wear this thing all day? doesn't your arm get tired?" The trend in genuines appears to be towared lighter materiels like titanium or carbon fiber. Does anyone really think wearing a 200gm watch on their wrist results in "arm fatigue"? I don't hear a lot of complaints about leg fatigue just because a pair of shoes weigh 2 1/2 lbs. I like my watches heavy. It might sound stupid, but a mechanical watch in a lightweight case just seems cheap feeling to me. I thought about getting the IWC GST Chrono Ti but opted for stainless because I wanted more rotor movement dampening mass in the watch case. And I have never gotten to the end of the day and taken off my watch with relief like I just dropped a 20 lb backpack after a long day of hiking.

MBW=Money Basically Wasted Off the shelf, the vintage Sub MBW, (which according to our best collectors here are the only ones worth having) are not even close to being accurate, they are just the most modifiable with genuine parts. The poster who said when you open the box, you are going to think you got ripped off nailed it. They provide a good base for building an original parts masterpiece, but don't be lulled into the assumption that MBW out of the box is the holy grail. It's just the first 1/4 of what you will spend to get it right. Plenty of <$200 Rolex subs out there that are "wow" on delivery.

I think a well made 21j is a fine movement but I have had far more problems with them than the ETAs. Rotors falling off, winding stems pulling out, screws of unknown origin falling out.... I love the 12:00 snap date turn over in the ETAs Of course, the ETA movements are assembled by the same "little elves in a hollow tree" but there must be higher qc on them.

It was hands for a submariner and it was greatly appreciated!!! Hey, I agree a-holes pop up on these forums and in the PMs of knowlegeable members and they should be torn a new one. It's the poor schlub who is new to the forum, asks one of the 7 deadly questions, and is eaten by frenzied sharks that I feel sorry for. Now that is not to say it happens often. The vast, overwhelming majority of responses are curteous and helpful. I just didn't like and reacted to the "Christ, have we gotten soft" post in this thread. There's no need for that attitude.

What I enjoyed most was the tone of your post. You have an opinion about newbies without a "Who do you think you are wanting to play with us" mentality. I, being a teacher as part of my duties , have a different opinion about newcomer questions and the purpose of internet forums, (I mean come on, "individual time is valuable"?????. If I were really concerned about the best use of my time, I shouldn't even be on this site today!!! ) but I always appreciate a civil tone when reasonable adults disagree.

I'm not a big Corum fan but that watch is nice. I have a friend who has a bubble crystal genuine that looks like the crystal was once the eyeball of a giant squid but you know, even that ugly watch screamed genuine quality. The deployment buckle and leather strap were just gorgeous and the quality of the case was miles above what we see on these "other than Panerai, Rolex, Breitling, omega" replicas. $3500 is a great price for that piece.

Love this watch...and GREAT advice about waiting. My Dad always told me "No matter how much you love a new model car, always wait for a year or two for the bugs to start flying out".

Great post. My opinions on this are probably been expressed too well. I just don't care for either the lecturers or the frat house mentality. A naieve newcomer who asks a question answered thousands of times shouldn't automatically brand them as lazy or entitled to the "keys to the kingdom" some of think we have here. I submit that if you have experiential information that you feel someone doesn't deserve to know, then stay off the thread. It's not so much the attitude of "this guy hasn't paid his dues yet". Everyone has a right to their opinion and is free to make a chioce not to share "insider information". It's the posters who write "Do you believe this guy. Who does he think he is? Noobs...noobs...noobs...tsk...tsk...tsk." Nothing would speak louder to a novice who asks "Who has the best sub" than a 0 reply statistic. And if that thread happens to get 10 answers that are kind and helpful, and you're angered by that, I think you need to ask yourself why.

Seiko makes both mechanical watches and quartz watches that are either battery driven on driven by the electrical current produced by a small generator driven by a rotor. The mechanical 726s 17 to 21 jewel automatics are usually regulated to +- 30 sec/day. This is about as good as it gets for mass marketed mechanical watches. A quartz crystal regulated movement can cost as little as a few cents and will be accurate to +- 0.5 seconds/day. Hence the apples/rye bread comparison. The quartz revolution in the 1970s almost destroyed the Swiss watch industry. The consumer re-discovered the attributes of fine mechanical timepieces, (beyond simply what the hand position represented), just in time to save some of the oldest and finest watch making companies. The vast majority of replicas discussed here are mechanical. They are usually Chinese made copies of well proven Swiss movements. We buy, trade and discuss them because we are facinated by the technology, not just the thrill of getting something that is 95% accurate to a premium priced luxury item for 1/20th the price. I'm not sure what you are looking for in your post

Jewelry....exactly. When people look at me like I'm nuts when I tell them I have 20 watches and say "For God's sake, it's a watch. You can tell time with your cell phone" I just chuckle. What the hand position conveys is the least important aspect of these micromachines. They are incredible works of engineering, art, technology and beauty.

God...just fu&%ing gorgeous figured maple. I made a highboy out of this $25 a board foot tiger maple a few years ago and it was like working with a gift from God. One of my biggest motivators in the project was to pathologically minimize waste. Not much of it was in the form of solid stock. And yes the root neurons for this stuff is a common place in the brain for the watch beauty stuff. I would love to live in a 25X magnification world with micro tools and screwdrivers but unfortunatly by sie 13 fingers probably would make that difficult. I'll stick to medicine where my big clumsy hands are not important!!!!

Oh man.....I'm toast! I have paid as much as $1700 for a 10 inch wide, three inch thich 6 foot long piece of heavily figured birds eye maple. I used it in this pair of doors for a client commission as well as veneers of the same board for the drawer fronts. This would have made a few nice guitar backs!!! And Mr Tracy, sorry. We can continue the discussion over at woodcentral.com!!!

Sorry, the D-28 is what the book design is based on. Actually, the workshop need are pretty minimalist with the availbility of presawn sides and bookmatched backs but there is nothing like putting a 12 inch wide three inch thick piece of quartersawn south american hardwood into a bandsaw blade and cutting off 3/16" slices like cold cuts in the deli!!!! Indian Rosewood, bubinga, mahogany are all soooooo sweet!!!!!! An 18" wide drum sander with a conveyer belt feed doesnt hurt either. And a 6" wide stationary belt sander comes in handy for shaping the curves in the braces just right and for shaping the neck. Alright, I am bragging a little bit,....but a good supplier, some good chisels and rasps, WELL MADE JIGS!!!!! and the shop needs are not so prohibitive. As for the detail inlay work on the head and fretboard, lots of sharp Xacto blades are the only requirement. Man, my juices are flowing again....this isn't good!!!!!

You mean the initiation hazing here has gone from the good old days of forcing someone to chug-a-lug a fifth of vodka and then leave their unconscious, vomiting body, naked in central park to a wimpy politically correct and palatable simple head shaving???? What has happened to us here???? No flayed skin? No walking on coals? No "assuming the position"? This is a message board, a helpful discussion message board, not Delta Epsilon [censored].

This is the book by Johnathan Kinkead I followed. http://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Own-Acous...TF8&s=books The brace carving and tap tone refining he refered to was of the sound board alone prior to attachment to the body but I do remember him mentioning the use of a home made carving tool that allowed him to fine tune the bracing inside the assembled body if needed. The plans are for a version based on the Martin D4. This was a first and so far only attempt but I sure as hell could feel the rising waves of obsession starting. My wife did too and quickly put some restrictions on my outlandish plans to buy up all of the stocks of QS woods and sitka spruce I could get my hands on. There's a body and braced back of a second guitar sitting in a mold right now in a corner of my shop just starting to whisper to me again. The great thing about woodworking for me is that there are so many specialty nooks in it I can get lost in. I could easily see myself only turning bowls or carving Newport shells on Townsend reproductions or sitting in my shop building beautiful instruments without the space restrictions imposed by a bonet topped highboy and get a lifetime of satisfaction from just those little pockets of the craft The finish he used in the book was a waterborne satin lacquer brushed (echhhhhhh) on. I used linseed oil to pop the grain on the q-sawn mahogany and spruce soundboard and then sprayed it with a gloss solvent based nitrocellulose.

Makes me think of my other obsession, woodworking. Last year I built an acoustic guitar. It was a beautuful experience learning about tone woods, spending more time building molds and jigs than on the actual guitar, resawing beautiful pieces of quartersawn mahogany and maple, sawing and setting frets etc. I learned there is no higher marriage in woodworking between the technical and art than instrumentmaking. When the instructional book, and a very good one at that, said "carve and refine the soundboard bracing until a suitable tap-tone is achieved. This step is at your discression", I said "What the f*&$k is he talking about. I still don't know but I managed to make a guitar that sounds as good as my Seagul (no relation to the Chinese watch company) acoustic. I have a fantasy that some day, I'll have the time to figure out what the instructor was talking about and I'll be a custom guitar builder, a luthier oh la la, to the stars!!!!

There's a picture of me and my brother on the wall in my parents house. I'm about 2 1/2 years old and I have a wristwatch on. So it started early. I'm a Space Race kid so machinery has always held a facination for me both in the macro and micro sense. I've also been facinated for as long as I can remember by atomic clocks and the precision of being grounded in ultimate time. I remember watching Walter Cronkite once during a moon shot, looking at his watch saying "we should be picking up Apollo 12's radio signal as they re-emerge from the back side of the moon in about 45 seconds or so" and thinking "Man, thst must be one accurate watch he has on!" As a kid, I used to call the telephone company's time check number (TI6-1212) to hear the operator say "at the tone the correct time will be 10...23AM...and 10 seconds...beep.......at the tone the correct time will be 10...23AM...and 20 seconds...beep. "KYW Newsradio time...at the tone....9 am.....beep" Now time.gov has me by the throat!!!!!! The fact that a mechanical wristwatch that has to keep track of 86,400 seconds in a day is only off by 5 seconds in 24 hours ,or an error rate of .0058%, still amazes me. I hope it always will.

What has Paul ever done for me??? Prompt customer service/emails answered within 24 hours 3-5 day shipping to the east coast of USA Little details like a gift box with a watch display pillow Willingness to offset high WU transfer fees for some with "special deals" Just because the guy runs a bargain basement business that sometimes suffers from website access problems or some communication delays, that's no reason for the ongoing doubs about his honesty and sincerity. His reputation, for some reason, is always on probationary status here. I don't know any of the details about his business practices longer term but for the last 6 months, he has provided the best reps for the lowest prices on the web by far.

I wonder why this is? I love Patek watches but I haven't found a decent rep. This is a high horology brand that does have some cross over awareness with the general public so it's not in the same catagory with other small premium brands. You would think there would be a market for high fidelity reps of their more well known models. I wish the manufactures would stop putting display casebacks on them to show off ETA movements when a closed caseback with accurate markings would be much more convincing. I'm afraid to buy a manual wind with a plated crown because of the wear issues. I cant find a manual that isn't WG, YG or RG plated. Something simple with a good quality movement in stainless would be wonderful but so far, no luck.

man....can these guys sling it

Actually I thought the article was very flattering to both us and the rep makers and basically spurned the Rolexs of the world to get with the program, follow China's example, and put out a high quality product that doesnt carry a luxury price tag just for the privelige of wearing it.