DocRaph

Wow, Now that looks like a really useful bit of kit. Currently, I use a Jaxa, which is great for all sorts of watches, but is such a pain to set up for the Panerais. One tool for 42/44 cases, and a second for 45/47 cases would probably cover almost everyone's needs, although there are a few odd ones out there (Eggi's ......) Be interested in prices.... Cheers, DR

Just a thought - took a couple of quick pics - All we need now is for some-one to do an iPhone Panerai History similar to the Rolex one out there in the app store (-another app well worth getting). Oh well...next stop iPad....end of the month if finances allow... just don't know whether to opt for 3G (and Sat-Nav) or just stick to WiFi, and leave the 3G/SatNav to the iPhone...???? decisions, ... decisions, ... decisions, ... Cheers, DR

Yup, Found it on the Panerai web site yesterday and installed it this morning. Been waiting for this for some time now - got the hint it was going to happen when I emailed then with a wish-list containing just that. The PAM clock now gets pride of place when my iPhone is docked (same as my Mac has the PAM screensaver). Def worth getting.... and its' free..... Cheers, DR

Hi, There is also the flash tutorial and reference documents on the ETA web site if you are really certain you want to go ahead and give it a try. The 6497 is probably a good starter movement for a beginner as it is fairly large and relatively simple. You will need a well lit, dust free work area, a good set of (sharp) jewelers screwdrivers, hand remover, movement holder, covered pots or other small containers to put the small parts in, Rodico or Cyber Gell to clean everything, Dremel and cutting disc to cut the pinion (any other type of cutter stands a good chance of bending it), a loupe, magnifier or extremely good eye-site, and steady hands. As has been recommended, try and find an old movement to practice on first - there are loads of old pocket watch movements out there (by the bucket load on ebay - as long as you don't expect them to work). Have fun.. Cheers.. DR

Hmm, Another possible entry for the spreadsheet.... Cheers DR

Cheers, I'll try and keep the spreadsheet updated - somewhere I had a list of movements and watches as well - I haven't been able to get hold of a copy of IW in the UK since last year when Borders, the bookshop that imported it, went out of business - have been thinking of getting a subscription..... (All the interesting magazines seem to be in the USA - already have a subscription with Blade magazine, plus get the watch and knife annuals via Amazon) I have also been working on a document version of the data in the spreadsheet, complete with images. The only problem is it is starting to get a bit big - Suppose I could turn it into a pdf document to publish it. Cheers, DR

Evening everybody, Just thought you might be interested in a little project I've been working on - it's still not totally complete, so if anybody can fill any gaps please do. Enjoy...PANERAI.xls Cheers, DR

Going back to one of my earlier posts, here are the differences between the 7750 and 7753 movements. The Basic movement assembly and Chronograph assemblies are identical for both movements. The difference is in the Date assembly - First the 7750 (note both date and day wheels present); Then the 7753 ; As you can see, they are very different. In order to move the chrono minutes hand from 12 to 3 ETA have completely removed the day wheel and driver to make room to install an extra two gears taking the drive from the original 12 position to the 3 position, however to place these gears below the date wheel they have totally re-designed the mounting plate (unlike the A7750 copy where the gears are above the date wheel). You can also see the additional lever to change the date wheel (at the 10 position), possibly needed as the date changer has moved position away from the crown. The ETA technical manuals make for interesting reading, and are free to download...well worth it if you have a watch with one of these movements. If anybody has any problems getting hold of them, let me know and I will attach them to a post here. Ah well...back to work. Cheers, DR

Hi All, Just scouting around, managed to download some interesting documents from ETA - the Technical and Manufacturing Design specifications for the 7750 and 7753 movements. Looking at the dial design drawings, the positions of all hands are identical between the two movements, however the date windows are shown to be different and the measurements are pretty close to those I estimated from the images earlier on. These are the dimensions, for all who are interested - 7750 - Centre of dial to edge of date window 9.30 Width of Date Window 2.10 Length of Date Window 2.80 7753 - Centre of dial to edge of date window 9.75 Width of Date Window 2.20 Length of Date Window 2.90 Dimensions of the Date Wheels - 7750 (part number Z0112745) - Diameter 24.60 Width 6.20 Thickness 0.500 7753 (part number Z0028011) - Diameter 25.60 Width 6.30 Thickness 0.308 Interesting reading those documents - they also have all of the part numbers, together with assembly drawings. I still haven't got the 7753 movement to have a look at yet, but while waiting decided to service my 251 as there were a couple of annoying problems - the chrono minute counter was occasionally stopping at around 20 minutes, and the date wheel appeared loose in that it would move around slightly while wearing the watch (strange - especially as it was keeping the correct date....) Stripped the movement out of the watch - all went well until I removed the dial ------ from what I can see it looks like an earlier owner had fitted another date wheel, except the replacement is slightly too thick and the inner edge catches the transfer gears which drive the chrono minute hand. There are a few more horrors to the movement, but I'll cover that in a separate post with pictures........... Cheers, DR

OK - taken some photos :- First with the supplied bracelet (too small for me - waiting for the spares) - Then with a Rhino military style strap - Then with a stainless steel spare bracelet (which does fit me) - Just the head, front and rear - And finally in the dark (apologies for the quality - I really was in the dark - camera set to manual focus, oops) - A beautifully colored dial makes this watch a bit special. Cheers, DR PS; Yes I know the date is the 22nd now - forgot to set the date

Now that Panda dial Daylight I really like - I did come across various rumors that Panerai did actually produce one, either as a prototype, or a one-off...there are lots of 'missing' PAM numbers after all. The contrasting subdials was one of the reasons I got a PAM168 - really stands out. The differences between the ETA 7750 and 7753 I've probably oversimplified - after all, it did take ETA a few years to come up with the modification - apparently it was supposed to be a 'mass' produced movement to replace expensive ones like Zenith, after all, look how popular the 7750 has been. Hopefully, I'll have a 7753 to play with next month - managed to find a couple of sources here in Europe - but until then I've a couple of custom knife projects to complete, and I want to give the 168 a service - chrono minutes is sticking (might make a photo diary of that for a post in the future) - need to pop into London to get some supplies from Walsh's at Hatton Gardens - I've run out of Rodico, and could do with a new oiler. (somebody told me there was a 'cheaper' version of Rodico, but I've yet to find it). Happy collecting everybody, Cheers, DR

I'll get some photos taken this weekend sometime and post them. No problem with the watch - love it as it is....was just thinking...as you do. (and yes.. do know it has an A7750..cheers) According to Trusty Time, the PAM168 models they have for sale have Titanium cases as per gen...color certainly looks correct - it's impossible to get that exact brushed tone with stainless steel - have a look at their photos. Anyway...off to dig out the camera.... Cheers, DR

On a bit further - I looked for some images of the movements themselves - although there are plenty of 7750 images around, there are very few of the 7753 (the image OFrei uses is just a 7750 without the day wheel!!!??) Eventually got around to looking at the ETA site and ...Bingo!!.. a few screen captures later and:- ETA 7750 - followed by, ETA 7753 - Apologies for small resolution, but the best I could do at the time The movements are both 13 1/4 lignes in size, measuring 30mm diameter, and 7.90mm thick. In essence, the 7753 is a derivation of the original 7750, but with the chrono minutes counter moved from the 12 o'clock position to the 3 o'clock position. The way this has been done is to remove the day wheel and drive gears, and replace them with the drive to the chrono minutes - everything else appears to be the same, except you can no longer change the date using the crown - there's a lever located between 9 o'clock and 10 o'clock on the side of the movement, usually activated by a button on the side of whatever casing the movement is in. Printed out, both sets of images are exactly the same size, so knowing the real diameter of the movement, I managed to get a few measurements from the prints (when I finally get hold of a 7753 movement I'll let you know how accurate these are). First a composite showing the front of both movements:- Looking at the composite, you can see the major differences immediately - no day wheel on the 7753, and chrono minutes moved to 3:00. What is less obvious is that the date wheel is larger in diameter, but not in width - the visual clue is that the date wheel on the 7753 is closer to the outside of the movement than that of the 7750. My simplified measurements show that width of both is 3.25mm, OD of the 7750 at 25.0mm and that of the 7753 is 26.0mm (1.0mm larger). This means that any date window for the 7753 movement would have to be 0.5mm further from the center of the face than that for a 7750 movement. ---Which provides the figures that backs up what all the experienced members have been commenting for some time - the 7753 DW's are larger than 7750 DW's and need a different dial. That's all for now folks... Cheers, DR

Hi, Just got a PAM 168 Luminor Chrono Regatta 2003 rep. This is a rep of one of the 40mm chonos made by Panerai. The blue dial and blue anodized hands make this a lovely looking watch. This particular rep has a steel case and case-back fitted, unlike the gen, where they are Titanium. I have seen some other reps of this, with Titanium cases and case-backs, however none of them seem to have the date-change pusher fitted (working or not), which makes it look odd. Does anyone know whether a Titanium case and back was made for this watch with a date change pusher? Cheers, DR

A 7753 in the Subzilla ??? Have you managed to get the screw date corrector working ? Cheers, DR

OK, here's a bit more - First, took a few photos of the rep 251 and picked a straight dial image:- Imported that into Photoshop and overlaid a dial from the gen 251 which colorized red, set to about 44% transparency :- Then finally took the PAM251 gen image into photoshop and overlaid a PAM250 gen dial set at about 40% transparency :- This all took a bit of matching - none of the images were the same size so they all had to be made the same, then it was a case of aligning everything up - for this I used the centers of the hands (main and subdials). Rep V Gen PAM251 - Amazingly, the circular hour markers on this particular dial are a good match to the gen - usually they are too big. The printed LUMINOR and PANERAI are almost aligned, but on the rep are of a slightly smaller font than gen. The printed Daylight matches for size, but is lower on the gen. Chrono minutes subdial numerals are far too small on the rep. The date window is larger and offset slightly further out on the gen. Rep DW font is not bad, but slightly smaller than gen - it fills the date window much more. Last - the T SWISS MADE T is obviously incorrect, but the printing does almost match gen. Gen PAM251 V PAM250 - As I thought, the DW font is much thicker on the PAM250 than the PAM251, however, contrary to what I thought, the date windows are the same size - must be an optical illusion caused by the difference in fonts. Now all I need is to get a decent image of a rep PAM250 to carry out the same comparison. I'll post more when I can. Cheers, DR

Also depends on which model you want to use the DW in. One of the odd ones out is the PAM 251 with the black font on white DW - the font is thinner than that on almost all other models - have a look at my review of gen Daylight dials. All other models I have come across seem to have the thick font, however I'm still short quite a few images of the rarer models so there may be some more out there. Cheers, DR

Hi, I think that subject is covered in an earlier post - Cheers, DR

Wow... love the blue...seems to make the perfect match with the white dial. Actually .... love the whole watch.... The Lizard straps are very nice - got a brown one for my 036 - never considered other colors...... big mistake... Cheers, DR

Hi All, Been away from home for a while sorting out family problems but all sorted and back again. I recently acquired a PAM 251 from Panther917, which I think tracks back via hackR to Rollie. Anyway... as per the normal "how do I make this better" thoughts, I decided to do a little researching, both via posts and other web sites. One thing that seemed to recur frequently was the matter of how the dials of the various Daylights should look and what differences there are between them. First I located a number of images on one of my favorite UK jewelers web sites - they photograph every watch they get in with lovely detail...it really is a good reference source. Sure enough, there were quite a few Daylights there, so I borrowed some images for demonstration. First off, comparing the PAM196 (G series) with a PAM250 (J series):- - Then the PAM188 (I series) with a PAM251 (I series again - right on switchover) :- - You can see that there are quite a few differences between the early (188/196) and later models (250/251) - The small seconds and chrono minutes subdials and hands on the 188/196 are larger than those of the 250/251 models - chrono hours is the same size as later models. The printing on the dials of the later 250/251 models appears larger and thicker. The date wheels are interesting in that the 188, 196 and 250 have a thick font, but the 251 appears to be quite thin and to me seems slightly larger. Also, because of the recessed subdials in the later 250/251 models making the dial thicker, you can clearly see that the datewheels appear sunken compared to the earlier models, where they appear flush with the bottom of the dial. The "L SWISS MADE L" font is larger on the later 250/251 models and seems to be placed further from the edge. The dial of the 251 is really an Ivory (off-white) color, as indicated in the Panerai literature, which is a contrast with the bright white of the earlier 188. One thing of interest to me is the bezel markings. From the images you can clearly see that only the 196 has a bezel marked with TACHYMETRE while the others are marked TACHYMETER. I thought this went against everything I've come across in these posts until I found a couple of earlier 188's, and sure enough :- As you can see it reads TACHYMETRE. It seems that Panerai appear to have changed the bezel markings from about the I series. I have yet to find any images of the later models marked TACHYMETRE yet. As an example of rep markings, I've borrowed a picture of my 251 (via hackR) until I take some images myself :- Faults I have so far come across:- 'T SWISS MADE T' ?? Sunken date wheel as per normal modified A7750 - although the font is not so far away from the gen, it is smaller and set ever so slightly in. Dial printing seems too small and the 'Daylight Luminor Panerai' too high. The worst problem, which isn't visible, with my rep is that it is fitted with a PAM196 back, but more of that some other post. In the ultimate mod, installing an ETA 7753 would require a matching dial, hopefully with more accurate markings. I could modify the existing dial - the spacing for the sub hands is OK, and doing a bit of playing with Photoshop layers hints that the date window could be slightly offset enlarged to show the larger font of the 7753 datewheel. Hope this answers the questions a few people have asked in the past about the Daylight dials and markings - certainly a good topic for discussion. Anyone interested in the source website PM me. A couple more projects I have been working on are well under way - the ultimate Panerai catalog, and a spreadsheet with all model details. Anybody interested, I'm missing a lot of data - could be a joint venture. Cheers, DR

Aha..... thanks guys for pointing this out. Couldn't see it for looking - must have passed it a thousand times. I suppose when you've been here long enough you manage to learn where everything is - I'll get there eventually. Cheers, DR

I've just managed to get my hands on a piece of Titanium - about 12" of 1" diameter rod. I'm going to machine a couple of thin discs from one end of it and resurrect the anodizing set-up at work in my lab (lucky I'm the only occupant). I'll try and get a polished surface on one side, with a brushed surface on the reverse to show the difference. I'll post some pictures when I've done this - could be a couple of days. Sorry but couldn't publish any of my company report - too sensitive apparently - something to do with the design of the parts I was playing with. Talking of Tantalum, did offer to clean my colleagues Tantalum wedding ring so I could have a better look at it, but I don't think he trusts me with it somehow - drat!!! Cheers, DR

Hi guys, I can see what you're getting at, but is there no way you could add a review section to the watch, parts, straps areas in the same way that there is for the trade section. That would allow both buyers and sellers to have some way of reviewing their transactions, good and bad. I've got to admit that up to now (touch wood - double fingers crossed) I've bought and sold, making some friends along the way (cheers hackR, Panther917, et al), with no problems, and to be honest I rather hope that it continues. The problem is that life is not always perfect and even in a group of like-minded enthusiasts such as ourselves, there will always be the odd predator, and that's where a review capability might at least save some of us from falling into traps. Is it possible?? Cheers, DR

I hate to be proved wrong .... But, found these pics on one of the UK Panerai jewelers web sites:- And the brushed Tantalum really does appear to be blueish grey in color, rather than the dark grey I saw on the wedding rings. Maybe the Tantalum oxide has a similar color change to Titanium.... with the really thick oxide being dark grey. To copy this effect with Titanium, you could anodize to about the middle of the voltage range to get that washed out blue grey colour - trouble is, it's a bit of a balancing act and easy to miss. Alternatively, you could brush a steel case, then heat it to get light blue-grey - probably not as robust as Titanium oxide, but you would have the weight. Interesting..... Cheers, DR

Just looked in the app store... Found loads of pseudo browsers but.... No Opera browser!!!!!! Come on developers, this is not good enough.... Just stuck with Safari on iPhone then. Cheers, DR