freddy333

I would take what you find on ebay with 2 huge grains of salt.

CJT74 - Not to press the point too far, but just so you are aware - I think the 16613 was powered by the later 3135 & your 3035 probably came out of a ss or wg watch, hence the white date wheel. I agree that the white date wheel is slightly easier on the eyes, but Rolex uses champagne datewheels in yellow gold or two-tone cases & white in ss or wg cases.

Thanks D. I think this pic more accurately represents the way it appears live. Even though, technically, this 1 has more warts than MY's, it just makes the watch look that much more like a gen. And the more I look at the watch, the more I think I made the right decision making the switch.

Looks beautiful & I am much better with vintage steel watches, but is that model supposed to have lug holes & a white date wheel?

Any properly functioning mechanical movement (including a Rolex) can be regulated to keep very good time. Rolex movements tend to be heartier than other mechanicals, which allow them to take more physical abuse without affecting the watch's timekeeping. That said, the best mechanical can & will never equal the accuracy of even the cheapest quartz digital movement. However, I would much rather blame my Rolex for arriving +6 seconds early or -4 seconds late for my appointment than to arrive dead on time wearing a beeping quartz.

If everyone had the exact same preferences & sensibilities, then you could produce an effective grading system. But since this is not the case, a grading system would be about as effective as me telling you what color or food you will like best based on what I like best. And who would be appointed to grade each rep? Me? You? Harry? The seller (yeah, right)? The last buyer? Do you see what I mean? The only grading system that has any merit is the 1 I have used for nearly a quarter century - Visit an AD & try on the gen watch you are interested in. See how it looks & feels on your wrist. Try all of the functions to see how they feel when operated. Then, go online & archive as many pictures & as much information about the gen as you can find. Join a forum dedicated to the gen & learn it, feel it, live it. Then, after you are familiar with the look & function of the gen, begin your search for the best rep. Once you know how the real thing looks, feels & operates, you can better tell which rep is Grade AAA for YOU (all reps contain inaccuracies & the best rep for you is the 1 whose inaccuracies offend you the least).

Based on your description, it sounds like either your reps contain poor quality Asian-made movements or they are in serious need of servicing or both. I am not that familiar with either of those watch models, so I cannot speak with any great authority on the noise levels generated by better quality reps of these. However, in general, better quality reps are powered by Swiss-made ETA movements (or Asian-made copies, which can be very good if you have them properly serviced by a trusted watchmaker), which should only be heard (in some models) when their internal auto-wind rotors are in motion (ETA 7750-powered chronographs, both gens & reps, tend to be the noisiest). I would recommend checking out the Collectors forums here & also be aware that nearly all reps are sold with used or unserviced movements inside them. So, no matter who you buy your rep watch from, if you want it to perform optimally & last a long time, I would recommend factoring in the cost of having a professional (rep-friendly) watchmaker service your watch upon receipt of it. There are numerous threads & stickies around RWG that discuss this. Use the Search button to locate additional info if you need it.

Orbita makes beautiful cases. I have the Verona 2, but it only holds 2 watches (most of my watches have steel bracelets & I have never had a problem storing or carrying them in this case). You could get 2 cases or check out their other cases, which store more watches.

Either could probably be made to work, but read this & this for the proper way to do it.

Without good, clear (macro) pics of both stems, it is difficult to know what you started with & what you got. Or, put another way, whether you had a gen ETA 2836 stem in the 1st place or whether the stem your watchsmith got is the correct stem for a 2836. So, in this case, here is what I would do. As long as the movement in your watch is a 2836 (there are a handful of variations on the base 2836, so look on the base plate, below the balance wheel for the ETA symbol & note the exact movement number, whether it is 2836 or 2836-2 or whatever), go to julesborel.com & order the stem from them. I believe the 1 you need is part number 401/2802-2.4200. However, ETA offers a few different stems (different thread pitches, lengths, etc) & stems are only 5 or 6 dollars, so you might order 1 (or 2, in case your watchmaker damages 1) of each type.

Great pic, Lani.

Without knowing specifically which watches you are referring to, I can only answer your question in general terms. Many gen watches contain blued hands (& screws). This same process is often used to blue steel for use in firearms. This is an example of a vintage Rolex with a blued sweep seconds hand This 'blue' is attained by a special process of alternately heating & cooling steel to specific temperatures for exact periods of time. The process leaves the steel with a uniquely blueish discoloration that adds to the finish of a fine timepiece. I happen to think it is a nice detail when used (sparingly) on a watch. However, the process is expensive as it is labor intensive, takes time & costs more than the spray paint used to mimic bluing on rep watches, which produces a different shade of blue on the metal (& leaves an altogether different impression on this viewer).

For the phase 1 watch, I am using a modified slow-beat 2846. You can read the details here.

I have actually been pondering the idea of sandpapering/polishing the face of the insert to remove some of the 'new car shine' & to leave it with a slightly wavy surface to give it a more aged appearance. But a test on a couple of scrap pieces proved less than satisfactory, so I had planned to do more testing over the weekend. However, I took the watch out to dinner this evening & showed it to a gen collector friend, who was surprised when I told him the watch was a franken. Very surprised. In fact, it was only after I told him that I was unsure about the insert that he even noticed the placement & size of the dots. And, even then, he was only ambivalent about the insert's appearance (he thought it might have been a service replacement from the 2nd run (after Rolex had deemed the inserts free of radioactivity)). So, now I may just leave it as-is. Originally, I sent MY an ETA 2836 dial blank, thinking it would fit the case since that was the movement the Silix came with. But, unfortunately, I did not realize that the position of the date window for the 2846, which currently powers the watch, is in a slightly different position than the 2836. So I had MY strip & re-paint the Silix's original 'Cartier' Sub dial since I knew it fit both the case & movement perfectly. That is the dial you now see in the watch.

Sorry to hear about the strap issues, but unforeseen problems tend to be the rule when constructing watches (& not making everything yourself). And the Newman dials were definitely fitted to Oyster cases. These are often referred to as ROC (Rolex Oyster Cosmograph) Newmans. Just be sure to use Oyster-style (screw-type) pushers for that Oyster dial.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

Ditto.

Some yellow gold versions of early GMTs had all-black inserts (with gilt numbers), so you could probably get away with it.

Yes & no. Like the gen, the insert is essentially a clear piece of plastic with the colors & numbers added through the backside. As I mentioned, the numbers are set deep into the plastic & then the blue/red is painted on top of the entire backside of the insert. Then, they overcoat the blue/red paint with a darker layer of paint, which seals the colored layer making it opaque I suppose you could sand off the 2 colored layers of paint (polishing the roughened texture left by the sanding) & then repaint it. What are you ultimately trying to do?

No. Rolex never, to the best of my knowledge, produced a watch in a blackened case (with matching bezel).

The mostly clear insert creates a sort of optical illusion that makes the crystal appear taller than it is. The insert actually goes about half way up the side of the crystal, but it is hard to see where it ends in that picture because of the plastic's see-through nature. With relatively common watches, not getting comments in wristies is something of a (good) comment in itself. Alot of people have nice Subs, so unless yours has obvious problems or you post a wristie with an unusual background or composition, I think it just gets 'accepted'. At least, that is how I interpret it (& why I try to post new & provocative pics frequently).

Yes. I took the 2nd picture because that more accurately depicts the insert's colors (including the fonts). The 1st set of pics was taken outside in very bright sunlight, which washed alot of the color out. In indoor lighting, the fonts on the new insert are actually a closer match to the color of the lume on the dial & hands than the old insert, which was a bit darker & yellowish. Also, when looking at the 1st set of (outdoor) pics, keep in mind that the left side of the insert was out of focus, which makes the fonts look wider/thicker than the right side, which was the part of the insert I had in focus. So I would only use the fonts on the right side of the insert in those 1st pics to compare to the gens.

Yes, the font is slightly heavier on the new insert. But, also, the paint used to make the numbers on some of the gens has tended to bleed (widen) over time, which makes them appear even heavier than the fonts on the new insert. Here is an example of a gen with numbers that have bled or widened over time The dots are definitely larger on Eric's insert, which, along with their higher vertical positioning, is inaccurate. If only they had gotten the dots right. But, still, this is another 1 of those strange cases where the whole exceeds the sum of the individual parts. Meaning, while I can easily pick out inaccuracies, the insert, as a whole, when viewed on the watch, just seems to work.

I have been trying to figure that out. The numbers are actually indented/embedded into the plastic material instead of simply being painted on (like MY's insert), which is how they get that 3-D effect like the gen. And without digging the material out of the indents (which is way beyond my abilities), I cannot see how you could do it. I have considered applying iodine, which is 1 of my vintagizing tools of choice, but there is no way to keep the iodine from spreading (it spreads uncontrollably) outside of the numbers. So I decided to just leave it as-is. As you can see from the Maron pic, there are a handful of mint 6542s that still have very white numbers. So, while the bright white is likely to raise some eyebrows among the ultra WIS types, it is clearly not an immediate disqualification either. And the more I look at the watch with Eric's insert, the more gen-like it looks. Here is a new pic taken under more controlled lighting conditions