nicewatchdude

I've thought a lot about this. The typical Brevet crown would be historically inaccurate because one is Swiss and the other American. It would have been nice having the screw down option, but for making this sleeve system work, I luckily had an unmarked crown that has the right stem tube length for all the parts needed to combine. He had something like this posted a looooong time ago in a Fiddy case set, different movement. He was a bit of inspiration for me to go through the trouble of figuring all this stuff out. It's taken a long time, but I was new to the hobby then. I named this post deliberately in Homage to that post

Thanks for you compliments everyone ! Here's a couple side angle shots I forgot to include

This Illinois movement does not use a detent to lock in the stem to the case. It's a 12 size and needed some size adjustments I had figured out a while ago how to get these movements to work for Pilot cases, but thought it would look amazing in a Radiomir if made to fit, wind, and set successfully. I wanted to give it a try and shed some possibilities and plus have an amazing build For this type of conversion I had to make a custom case tube because the stem and sleeve I found (after a lot of searching for one) to use had a very small sleeve and .9mm threads which would fit a crown that came with one of my JTSE auto movements, but not the typical 1.2mm 6497 size crown. Being I don't have a lathe, I managed with a dremel and some Jewelers EZ silver solder to make it. Old case tube on left, new one on right. Okay new one looks kind of funny It took me part of a day to do this and solder/shape the case as well I used brass tubes from a jewelry supply house to start with the basic shape, then refined it on the dremel. Staybright lead free SS solder was used to lock it into the case, same stuff as used on the lugs. Movement in the case along with new reshaped crown. Luckily I got Southy to make me a custom painted 2533 before he stopped making dials. I think it works, what do you think I designed and made the strap and custom for this watch. Special thanks to Blueraddish on HF for threading it! another movement shot with beautiful and extremely well made Athaya (HF) case back. Vintage ring of fire on the bezel under the plexi serves two purposes. It was made with 30 minute epoxy as a medium, so it holds in the plexi to the bezel as well. More movement shots Wristy Hope you enjoyed this, cheers :!:

It is nice wearing it! Even if not many other people I come into contact with don't see appreciation for it (although I don't work with many watch buffs). Any time I need a bit of inspiration I just take it off and look at the movement. Carving your name? Show some pics! I broke a few things on this one too, got an extra non-working one off the bay and scavenged some parts. yeah, got some more in the works too, but don't worry, not a burlington Care to show your dial idea? is it going into a pilot case as well?

You're an inspiration man! And no I'm not doing the Howard 10s I've got something to show you in case you couldn't see the above link. I would have put these in Fiddies if it weren't for my six and a half inch wrists.

Hello RWG, This build is an E. Howard wrist watch conversion I just completed. This conversion however was done with a size 12 pocket watch movement. I decided to post here because these types of forums have taught and inspired me to do projects like this. My last project like this... http://www.homageforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1851 was a bit easier, because the key work components do not extend to the edges of the base plate needed to trim in order to fit into the case. However, sizing down the base plate on the Howard was a bit more tricky as the key work components on this movement do almost go to the edge. There was only a hair line of edge left to keep an inner wall of the base plate surrounding them, and in order to preserve the fit the amount taken off is uneven around the circumference by fractions of a millimeter. The case back was also tricky as the wall that inserts over the movement and into the case was too thick to go over the movement edges, and the movement thickness places it there, so I had to trim the inner wall of the case back quite a bit (with my dremel press) while still preserving the mineral crystal lip. Minimal thickness was left to still allow moisture and dust resistance. Also I had to trim the outer edges of some of the bridges and refinish them to get them to look unaltered so that they would fit into the walls of the case-back. The result is no need for movement screws to lock the movement in. It is as snug as a snail in it's shell. Why do all this work for this 44mm case set? The answer is I couldn't find another anywhere that would fit a 12 size movement and still not be too big for my 6 1/2 inch wrists. Plus these cases are around 30 bucks and it's good to practice with. Then there was a problem with the original pocket watch stem being hardened metal and not being able to be re-threaded even after annealing. A 6497 style stem would not work as it had to be at least 1.74 mm thick in order for the detent to catch and lock it, so I had to make a new one as no watch smiths near me, even the one's with lathes would make me one from scratch because they all said it wasn't possible. The typical work around for that in the watch repair world is to order a NOS stem and cut it to size, not re-thread. That wouldn't work either because the threads on that stem do not go far enough in to get the crown into the right place. So I got a nail, a couple diamond and iron files, my mini tap and die set, my dremel press and made one myself. I also had to re-thread the crown as my first attempts at connection stripped the threads. The new size is too big for a 6497 style stem but correct for the Howard NOS stem for trivia sake. Needless to say, I don't have a lathe They are too expensive and I don't plan as of yet to do this to a lot of watches to make the purchase cost effective. Then there was another measurement I didn't do correctly with the dial. The distance from the hole from the seconds to the minute-hour hole was too small when I had the dial made, so ultimately, I had to widen the second hole. Oh well, might make a new dial, might not, your thoughts? Grail Shot Movement Shot Wrist Shot

thanks all filed them down using a dremel by hand.

Hi, they are a size 10 movement but they will not fit into a 45 mm case without trimming the sides down a little. They will however fit right into a 47mm case set and the open face case back shows the movement in it's entirety.

Hello again RWG. Just wanted to show some work. This is the 45mm radiomir case. Movements were sized down to fit, meaning the base plate was reduced in width. After that, everything fits perfectly inside really snug. The 917 has dark lume in the indices and hands The 921 has a water based gold metallic acrylic mixed with lume Although they do retain luminance at night, my canon doesn't catch it The dial is a type of faux finish I've been experimenting with.

I MEAN RWG, I keep on mistyping

woooops, sorry about that ............RWI............. lol, the pic just makes it look big. It's a 44mm case. thanks everyone for your comments

Hi RWI, Didn't know exactly where to post this piece because it's more of an homage to early American pocket watches. So here it is in the general discussion. I'm posting it on the rep forums because it is through sites like these where I learned the in and outs of building watches, as well as being inspired to search for and try new builds. It's been a neat experience to far. I really like the beauty of the Illinois A. Lincoln movements and wanted to put it in a place it could be more appreciated with a display case back. I originally had plans to put it into a 47mm fiddy style case but have learned they are just to big for my wrist IMO. So through research I learned that the early pocket watch movements were originally converted to wrist watches for pilots during WW1 or WW2 (hence the birth of the wrist watch?). They caught on in the public sector and the rest is history. So I originally thought a pilot dial like an IWC would work well for a pilot watch but after learning all that I realized, they used the pocket watch dials first, so I went after that style. I'll admit, the finish I used was a bit stretched design wise, but I wanted to be creative, so here are the pics. Please enjoy and tell me what you think.

One thing to take into consideration in determining the value. The shock assembly is not Swiss. Swiss looks like this Even if the shock assembly looks like that, it is not 'really' swiss if it comes on a rep. Might be referred to as swinese which is another way of saying, Asian build, made to look swiss.

thanks

Just finished this weekend. Thought I would share. Soldered lugs. Soldered crown case tube, made flush to crown. Modified (reshaped) the soldered Silix case, dremeled, filed, hand sanded, polished. Placed on a sanded plexi from a Hamilton pocket watch which fit pretty perfect and flush. Refinished the 3601 plates I had Cortebert do the Russian text removal and engraving to, so that the treated soldered areas had a new finish similar to the original Cotes De Geneve. Sanded down the DSN cali dial so it was flat enough to fit the hour and minute wheels from the 3601. Had to take off so much I burned my fingers from the heat Refinished (aged) the crown. Stripped, cleaned, oiled, and fixed some broken parts of the movement so now it sets, winds, and runs nice. Applied lume to the numerals and vintaged the dial. Applied matte finish. NW case back and case ring. Sanded and re-polished the case back to look older. Put thicker (brass) tubes over the lug pins to hold the strap tighter. Gunny strap