south105323

Thanks, I was getting 50% drop out rate either from luming, resin or text.  Nearly went blind squinting through a magnifier filling the indices with resin with an oiler...  All based spending time with a gen 201/A and a loupe.  What struck me at the time was the resin fill wasn't absolutely perfect, tiny bubbles, slight uneven fill - but the fill was always flat or slightly convex, on the one I saw they never underfilled the resin, your photo looks the same.

To me the above image looks machined, not stamped.  You can see the chatter of the cutter and the slight wavy path, particularly at the inside tip, and at about 10 o'clock as it comes up around to the top, caused by the sheet material moving slightly.  The picture Pete has is of more contemporary dials, which were higher volume production, where it made sense to make tooling.  The Pre-Vs were low volume, it made more sense to pay a higher part price but not have to pay for tooling, they were only selling small batches.

This would mean that the variation in indice thickness is easy to explain, every time they did a batch they had a different cutter, possibly even replacing them within batches. You are talking less than 0.1mm between a 'thin' indices dial and a 'thick' one, so cutter wear, cutter tolerance, or even 'Damn, broke a 0.7mm cutter, have a 0.8mm, it'll do, no one will notice' comes into play.  Small company QC in Italy for tool watches, not Swiss luxury QC...

Factor in 'painting over the lines' and thickness tolerance goes haywire.

Another thing that is interesting on thick indice dials: sometimes you can see where the cutter goes from the top of the '6' in towards the middle, and gets so close to the edge it leaves a tiny sliver of metal, which gets pushed slightly into the vertical part of the 6.  Couldn't be done by stamping, and shows they machined the '6' and '9' from the outside in...

Finally took photos...

 

Video of the alarm working.

 

http://s890.photobucket.com/user/south105323/media/boxes/IMG_1218_zpsctdap78q.mp4.html

 

Don't have a repeater video yet...

These two 6154s can't be separated; 'safe queen' and 'the well used tool'.

 

 

 

I only meant to make one, but they both turned out so well I couldn't make up my mind...

 

 

First one up is an Adrian 6154 case.  . Hands are NW, Q24 plexi, home made lug bars and a donerix strap.  One of my simpler builds...

 

 

The next one isn't so simple...  It started off as a Silix 6154, which is actually more like a 6152 no-CG.  A LOT of reshaping, welded the crown tube, needed a custom one becasue the hole was enlarged.  I made a new bezel with an inner wall, the caseback was a Nightwatch 6154 one, with a subtle curve. Crown is an Adrian V1, aged to match the case. Made the lug bars, strap is another Donerix.  The dial has a matt faded texture with a lot of aging (mould) in the indices.  Gaposis again - 37mm on a 39mm aged brass backplate.  Hands are NW/DSN, with a swiss 6497.

 

Next one –

 

The dial is one of three on my first batch that had a radial brushing before anodizing.  The anodizing looks changed under different lighting conditions and at different angles.  Three piece, and with a perfect fitting plexi.  Tall cannon pin.  Swiss 6497 and Nightwatch hands.  The case is an oldschool Cartel. The CG is my own, one of a very small batch I made, slightly bigger than NW or anyone elses, but not dumbo.  I had the lever machined wider than the slot, and hand sanded it down for a perfect fit.  Caseback and plexi are Nightwatch, strap is Donerix, aging nicely.

 

 

 

On we go...

 

This next one is a classic Esdee hornlug, beadblasted midcase, polished bezel and closed caseback.  My 3-piece dial again, swiss 6497, on Donerix

 

 

 

The first of my 'complications'...

The wrist alarm.  And none of that feeble Poljot/LeCoultre vibrate, this is actual ringing.

 

 

The case is a Jackson Dumbo, drilled for the pushers.  The top pusher allows you to set the time, the bottom one allows you to set the alarm time. These were standard pushers extended by welding on a separate piece. Two barrels - wind forward to wind the watch, backwards to wind the alarm barrel.  Really cool movement.  Had to get a custom stem made.  Dial is a really nice tobacco brown that changes colour under different lights.  Hands were never going to fit, so the seconds and minute had to be broached, the hour had to be filled with solder and re-drilled, the alarm hand had a big pin, so I had to use a brass tube fitted over a standard seconds hand tube.  custom bezel, Quisatz plexi.  The strap is a nicely aged B-Uhr with an Elias buckle.

 

 

The CG was custom made with a short lever, with a slot in the CG body that doesn't go all the way to the case.  This lets the pushers come half through the CG body, like modern PAM chronos.

 

 

The movement was serviced and cleaned by 'a friend' on HF, who sent me back the plate so I could modify it to fit the case.  Keeps perfect time, with a strong, loud alarm.  Custom engraved Nightwatch caseback with a Kpoy plexi.

 

 

 

Onto the daddy...

 

 

 

It is all about the movement...

 

1870 quarter repeater.  It took me 18 months to find one small enough to fit into a 47mm case that was relatively cheap (and it still cost more than a SF240...)  I wanted a slide movement, but this one is lever rather than stem set.

 

 

So I drew the case up in 3D CAD, and worked out that I could use the spring steel slide to not only activate the repeater, but if you pushed it the other way, it would push the setting lever.  While I was working out the case the movement was in Sweden  getting stripped.

 

 

 

The case took another 18 months...  I tried a couple of no-CG cases, but settled on a Jackson no-CG that was only available for a short time.  Bought a couple of them to make sure.  Mel shaped the case, I sent it off for machining, and the CNC guy promptly milled into it and destroyed it...  Reshaped a spare, and this one was machined right.  The movement is 40.3mm diameter, so it is a front loader.  There is also a recess inside the midcase for the repeater actuator to slide. 

 

What annoyed me about the case was the lug holes were too high on the lugs, and there was a big recess around the crown tube.  Off with the case to Canada, where Nejad did a perfect job of filling the recess and lug holes, then re-drilling them.  You would never know it had been done.  He also lathed down the custom bezel, the CNC guy had machined the case assuming a 0.5mm interference for the bezel rather than 0.05mm  

 

Dial is my own of course, plexi is from Gordon, hands not sure...  Crown is an Athaya V1.  The slide was custom made with the curve matching the case - domed to a complex surface rather than a simple curve on the inside.  I wanted the shape of the slide to sort of reflect the PAM CG, so a brushed finish.  Strap is Donerix

 

 

Caseback is a Nightwatch, he had to do custom thread as he didn't have a back for this case, along with really thin walls at the thread to allow as much space as possible for the gong.  Kpoy custom plexi.

 

 

The repeater isn't working yet, case is 95% there, once it is done, back to Sweden, hopefully it is something simple like adjusting the hammers.

 

 

And that is it...  Vintage box done.

I’m more into vintage, so might as well continue –

What’s in the (vintage) box

 

 

Bought from Donerix in late 2010, I replaced all the phillips screws with straight cut ones, sanding off the lacquer on the brass and egg aging them.  Lots of furniture polish, and the colour has come up nicely.  I foolishly thought that getting the date stamped 2011 on it would give me plenty of time to complete the builds that it would contain.

 

 

Five years later and I am almost there-

 

 

On to the box filling...

 

This is the first watch I ever made.

 

first dial I ever painted.

 

First (and nearly only) strap I ever made.

 

 

Doesn’t look like much, but from humble beginnings...

 

 

This was 2009...

Jackson fiddy case, with a Molnija inside.  Getting this movement running made me realise I'm not a watchmaker.  I painted the dial and used rubdown transfers for the text.  The resin fill was adhesive epoxy, and is really, really bad...  Had no idea about engraving at the time, and this was a copy of a copy, a VDB destro 6152/1 with a 240 in it.  The style at the time was 'beat up'

 

 

Next up is a 3646 RP.  I made this one in 2010, so it doesn't have the threaded movement holder with the bezel and caseback screwing onto it, the bezel is a push fit, the caseback was replaced with a nice thick Nightwatch one, which were just becoming available.  Silix case, I upgraded it with my 3-piece anodized dial when I started making them. 

 

 

 

 

I don't actually like 3646's that much, which is why it is on the bottom layer of the box, but had to keep one in the collection.

 

 

I really liked the shape of the Ferrari reps, but not the branding.  Then saw that there was actually a 'vintage' style Ferrari PAM, it was almost one of the cheapest reps I bought.  The case was polished and the square section just below the bezel was brushed.  I reversed this, polished the top part, and had the case beadblasted.  There was some overblasting onto the polished section, but I left it as it looked like pitting due to age.  I then half polished the blasting, to make it look less fresh. 

 

 

 

I removed the Ferrari text, and replaced it with a rubdown transfer, a little more in keeping with what I was trying to do.  Gave a light dust coat of black over the whole dial to bed the text down and stop it looking to white.  NW custom caseback

 

 

 

That's it for the bottom row.  The space on the right was for a clock which is MIA, so onto the top shelf.

More old school than the recent ones going around...

 

 

 

Only just got the cushions sewn up right...

 

First up is a 205/A:

 

 

 

 

 

 

111F case, modded and softened by me.  The shape of the lugs seems better for these later Pre-Vs, rather than the 111J for the 201/A to 203/A.  strap notch removed, drilled for double screw lugbars.

Fatty CG

My dial, lume filled flush as per the gen 205/A dial, these didn't have resin fill.

FGD hands

Jakob caseback

Original crown from the 111F

Lowbeat swiss 6497

Bigmatt C3 crystal

Dirk strap

 

 

Second - 202/A.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wolf case, DLC'd

Fatty CG, swirled pin

T48 crown

My dial, very dull lume, resin filled, with the resin dyed unevenly to get the aged colour rather than dye the lume, then lacquered.

C3 crystal

FGD hands

Jakob caseback

Swiss lowbeat 6497

Dirk strap unstitched with Rolexfinder buckle (DLC'd same as case) restitched in. 

 

 

Third one is a fantasy, was an April fool's a couple of years ago, had a bit of fun with it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DSN 24A case heavily modified.  Decided I didn't just want to use an auto movement with the rotor taken off, but use a 6497 like a gen Pre-V.  So had to get the crown tube hole welded up by Esdee, redrilled.  The whole inside of the case had to be machined out to fit a 6497.  This is the third case, first two got destroyed in the 'development' process.  The lugs had a lot of reshaping as the obvious tell on this case, but plenty of metal to work with.

Fatty CG

My dial.  Designed as the 'missing link' between Pre-V and submersible cases. 

HR hands

Flat mineral crystal.  Needed one to fit the case without a cyclops.  Couldn't get a sapphire to fit, this is cheap to replace if it gets scratched

Had the caseback engraved on a a blank DSN, turned out well - of course it is number '0001'

Lowbeat swiss 6497.

Can't remember where the crown came from, think the strap came from Donerix.

 

 

The box was made by a guy in scotland, changed the magnet, got the plate made and beadblasted, made up the cushions, all in a pre-V style...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lovely.  The varnish finish is pretty spot on...

Thanks, one of my best.  Much more hand made than Rolli/FGD

Not a 205/A (Need to take better pictures of mine), but definitely old school 202/A...

 

 

 

Wolf case, DLC'd

Fatty CG, swirled pin

T48 crown

My dial, very dull lume, resin filled, with the resin dyed unevenly to get the aged colour rather than dye the lume, then lacquered.

C3 crystal

FGD hands

Jakob caseback

Swiss lowbeat 6497

Dirk strap unstitched with Rolexfinder buckle (remember those?)  restitched in.

You need to get the handwind chrono Ferrari 024.  Silix had them:

http://www.silix-prime.so/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=115_138&products_id=2849

I did the first one, based on a Ferrari 024 rep.  There are three or four out there with modified dials.