freddy333

Caught my APH, red-handed, today

This is 1 of the most objective, no-nonsense Rolex videos I have seen, especially for women -- I Finally Got My Hands On a Rolex!

In the brief time since The Golden Cuckoo was completed & seen in the wild, I must have been asked 'Is that real?' half a dozen times. More than any other watch in my experience. I always respond with 'What do you think?' The answer is always some variation of 'I don't know, but I wish I had 1!' Now, I know the Cuckoo will easily fool Joe Q Public & many Rlx dealers, but is it good enough to fool a bunch of experienced, hard core rep & franken guys? So let's see -- Based ONLY on the dial text (circled in red), which of these is a gen & which is a fake? & state the reasoning behind your choice. If you are unable to tell 1 from the other, just say that. Remember, 1 of these IS a fake.

I think you need a better handset. The current hands look very rep & betray everything else. Or, at least they look sufficiently suspect to make me feel the need to give everything else a closer inspection. With a proper set of hands, the dial might just pass without drawing too much attention to itself. It is 1 of those cases where if everything else feels right & looks homogenous, I might accept what I see on face value.

Alligoat -- Do you have any info on this? Do you mean that Phong's son was arrested per Rolex lawyers, or do you mean he was physically attacked by police?

In spite of the dial's baked-in issues, the most obvious tell for me are the hands, which look wrong/aftermarket & new/artificially-aged. In fact, if it were not for the hands, I might not even be provoked into taking a closer look at the dial. I would try to locate a more accurate handset & give them a more natural-looking patina. If you have not already done so, I would google pics of vintage gen Subs of the same era & find/study the appearance of a set you like. Then, try to replicate that exact look. In my experience, having a single, clear target to copy always inspires creativity & results in a better finished product.

I would try lower temps (200-250 degrees F) & avoid applying anything, including polish, to the lume or dial text. Whatever you use, I would try to bias your application towards the center hole & the solid brown areas.

If I remember correctly, the 6536/1 dial came from MQ, but you may be able to search out the original build threads describing the parts & construction details. Paint is probably not going to work well, because, by definition, it adds a solid layer to the underlying material. Shoe polish, on the other hand, is applied, smeared (by finger) & then LIGHTLY buffed, leaving thin/variable layers of darker color that are burnished INTO the dial rather than drying as an additional solid layer ON TOP of the dial. I think that may be why your result was less than expected. This is the type of work that I would recommend you practice on scrap dials BEFORE attempting on your target dial. As I said, you have to be careful not to over bake (ie, burn) the dial paint, which is easy to do. This is definitely more art than science.

Wearing The Golden Cuckoo today

The Big Kahuna's time was last set (to our company's email server, which is linked to an atomic clock) a little more than 1 month ago. I just checked it for the 1st time since then -- it lost 5 seconds! That is less than 2 secs/week! Of the 4 quartz watches I have, only 1 maintains more accurate time than that! Although The Kahuna does contain some gen (movement) parts, it is technically a fake Rolex, whose total financial outlay was less than $3,500 -- & without the games, waiting lists & various other issues that are part of today's 'gen buying experience'. The Golden Cuckoo, fitted with the same contingent of gen parts (&, likewise, w/o any timing adjustments!), continues to run within gen specs, +/- 2secs/day. I will say it again -- these 1165xx clones are 1 of the best buys in rep watch history. As further evidence of their accuracy, I just returned the gen gold 23-704 crown/tube I had purchased for The Cuckoo back into storage because they are nearly indistinguishable from the clone parts these 2 watches came with from the factory. Yes, these fake Rolexes are so good that it is not worth my time to swap gen parts for these fakes.

The best way I found to naturally patina a tropical dial is to add a tiny bit of black shoe polish to some of the brown/blank areas & then bake it -- carefully -- until the desired effect is achieved! Done properly, you should not see where the polish was applied & some of the shininess will be reduced. You did great work on the Explorer & I look forward to seeing the outcome of your tropical Sub. In the meantime, here is some inspiration --

Both dials are knockouts, so you win either way. But I would always give the nod to well done (ie, believable from an arm's length away) tropical dials.

$1,300 for a few vintage Rolex parts. Crazy -- but this time next year, crazy will have been a bargain.

I have not forgotten about that. It just takes alot of time to remove the curtains from the rod, pull together all the contestants & then set everything up, which I have not had. But I plan to do an update as soon as time permits.

Another interesting project. A couple of random thoughts -- Have you considered using another dial? The print of the Yuki dial pictured is pretty poor. I think even most standard rep dials today might be a better option, let alone 1 from 1 of the better franken parts sellers. Also, will you be removing the corrosion on the metal before finishing? It looks like mostly surface rust that could easily be removed. I know it is not seen once everything is cased up, but I think it would be worth the time/effort to deal with the rust before assembly.

Working @ home & wearing The Golden Cuckoo (which continues to encourage copious amounts of slobber to seep from my oral cavity). I have been bewitched by this watch.

Free market & beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Update -- The Golden Cuckoo is now fitted with gen hands, balance/bridge, reversers & various screws to replace those that were either damaged or of poor quality. Although I had planned to swap the coronet for a gen, once I had the dial off & compared the clone to the gen -- & you are not going to believe this -- but the coronet on the clone dial is a clone of the gen 116508-0009 in the 2020-2021 Rolex catalog, page 141 if you have 1. Had I swapped the coronet, it would not match the catalog, so it had to stay. Some of the details, like the coronet on this particular model, seem to be unique to the 116508-0009. Another of these unique attributes are the 3 subdial hands, which are not only GLOSS black, but the paint is applied to the entire hand & is so THICK that it forms a cone around the center rivet. It is quite a distinctive look & something I have never seen before on a Rolex, especially when the light is reflected on an angle from the center of the hands. This is the only Daytona model I have seen that is painted this way (the subdial hands on all other Daytonas are painted with flat paint &/or have bare center rivet sections). Really, the only remaining tell -- & you have to know about it in the 1st place -- is the lack of an 'intense black' dial color. The 'intense black' of the gen is achieved much like many high-end black car finishes, which are often composed of a combination of deep purple & blue applied as a fine mist so it appears nearly matte from a distance. The clone is more of a semi-flat black, which, from an arm's length, looks like the gen. But this is the only detail that is missing as you view the dial close-up or through a loupe. If the case was solid 18kt, I would probably finish her off with a gen dial. But because gold plating is never permanent, I decided to draw the line there. Unfortunately, once again, because the clone's original parts are so good, the external gen parts swaps are subtle, so it may be difficult to see the improvements. But, like the gen, the macro viewer is well rewarded for their close attention with a stunningly beautiful handset. Also, because the watch sits about 3/4 mm lower on the wrist with the solid caseback, I may not fit this 1 with a display caseback. 3/4 mm may seem like a tiny difference, but it is quite noticeable when the watch is on the wrist. Still deciding -- gen auto-wind bridge & crown. The clone parts are so good (greatly exceeding Trustytime's pics of those parts on his website) that I am still ambivalent as to whether they are needed. So these are to be determined. This watch is incredibly beautiful. The more I look at her (yes, she's so striking that she's a she -- &, yes, I know what a she is when I see 1), the more I fall under her spell. How John Mayer could make a fuss over a mundane gold & green Daytona & miss this 1 entirely is beyond me. They are not even in the same galaxy & I say that as someone who -- up until now -- thought (most) yellow gold watches look needlessly ostentatious & silly.

I will try to shoot an updated SOTDC after the work has been completed on The Golden Cuckoo. Until then, I hope these will do --

The Golden Cuckoo Just in case --

In the video, because they included large pics of the watch in good light (which I have never seen before), it also became clear that the crown was steel while the rest of the watch was white gold. Always demand good, clear macros when buying anything of value (including sellers ), especially those things that are known to be faked.

Update -- The Next Big Thing (aka The Golden Cuckoo) is scheduled to arrive by this weekend. If all goes well, I will post 1st pics then. Stay tuned --

The Biggest Rolex Scandal in History Just Happened

It was that dirty 'test' insert you made that put my '42 over the top. It was too bad you were not able to reproduce that insert, with the dirt/shipping damage (that resulted in the insert arriving in 5 or 6 pieces), for the actual production run. Comparing the 'test' insert to the finished version, the 'test' insert won hands-down. Sometimes, our mistakes turn out to be strokes of genius. That 'test' insert was a prime example.