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And it's a perfect fit, and color match. Thank you. That change freed up the original insert, so... I'd found a vintage pearl with no fill on Ebay, and it happened to arrive last night as well. So I mixed up some antique white/almond lacquer and filled the pearl and pressed it into the insert. That beauty is going on my Snowflake when it comes back from its Arctic Spa visit.

Well gents, I was wrong. I reported earlier that I was finally finished with this project after all these years. Then, the heavens opened and Ubi stepped through and he made an extremely generous gesture. NOW, this project is finished. Thanks to Ubi and his kindness.

How about a Silver "Black Conquistador"? I've seen someone on Ebay selling tiny Black Lung USD stickers. You could take a SUB 300T, get JMB to machine an HRV hole in the side and fit something that looks believable, then persuade him to make you a Conquistador dial decal. Strip a Doxa dial, brush it radially, apply the decal, and a Black Lung USD sticky. Done. Here are your reference photos.

Oh man that's a nice dome. I'm gonna get some fine sandpaper and a sheet of glass and grind down a donor T39 and see how it looks. Thanks!

That's a great build. Can I see a profile shot of the crystal? I'm not happy with the T-19 on mine and am thinking about cutting down the sidewalls of a T-39 to see if it's better. The Josh case has tiny little stubby crown guards and they make your crown look gargantuan. When you're ready to go the next step, how about this idea... see if you can source a cast-off crown and tube from someone's MBW upgrade. Then sweet talk JMB into some of his mad machine shop skills: see if he can cut off some width from the crown, then cut a bevel into its case side, to look like a narrow 702 crown. Then have him cut down the length of the tube to match. That might give you a sweet result!

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice! I like the vintage touches they put on this one.

Sorry Ronin, when Doxa got started they were closely aligned with US Divers. The original Doxas were orange, and they put that big fat USD black logo on the dial and made some prototypes and sent them out to dive shops to sorta "test the waters" and see if people would buy them. Hence the low numbers. People reported that the hour/minutes hands would get lost against that big black logo, so they altered it to a silhouette logo and the Black Lung saga was ended. It wasn't until later that the silver SeaRambler came out. Interesting historical fact: my late buddy Larry, source of the DRSD, was working with USD and Doxa when SeaLab was being developed and Doxa asked him for some real-world testing of the design. He abused several Doxas to the point of failure and they improved the design to beef them up. As a thank-you he was given one of the Black Lungs. In one of his many moves, in Chicago, he accidentally lost the box containing the watch. A few years ago a Black Lung went for sale on Ebay and I wrote the owner. He was selling it because his uncle had left it to him and he knew nothing about it, other than his uncle had found it in a box in a dumpster in Chicago.

So, you agree that when parents work hard to make a living and raise good kids, then their kids will do well in life? Regardless of circumstances? This is "the best indicator"? If that's true then your state in life does not depend on coming from the ghetto or your socio-economic status. It is also true that there are people who are simply better than others, be that in aptitude or intelligence or determination. Bill Gates started in a garage and by force of will, changed the world. Nobody else in his high school class or neighborhood did what he did and they all came from the same socio-economic strata. Disagree? Then you better tell Darwin that he's wrong too. Some of us are more fitted to our environment and we succeed where others do not. Some can jump and they excel in the NBA. Some can shoot a puck 105mph and they excel in the NHL. Some can do spherical trigonometry in their heads and they excel in grey matter areas. The NBA star and the NHL star and the math-head were born that way. It's in their genes. If they did not work to develop those extraordinary talents then they wouldn't be much better than the average athlete or mathematician. Likewise, if the average Joe on the street does not work hard to develop his talents then he won't get any better than average either. You couch many of your arguments in "squishy" terms that cannot be quantitatively measured, only qualitatively. IMHO that makes them weak arguments. When something cannot be measured then it cannot be disproved. Neither can it be proved. You can point to statistics and say "see the general trend is a correlation to so and so" but your narrow field of focus determines how you perceive the data. It is subjective. An objective observer would say there is no provable correlation and you are trying to fit a preconceived bias to a set of observations. It would be just as easy to "discover" a correlation between performance, and study participants having more or fewer vowels in their surname. All IMHO of course.

Sorry, I was wrong before, attributing one of my count to a member here who owns a SUB 300 (no "T"). For some reason I remembered that as being a Black Lung too. My bad! FOUR examples of Sweet Black Lung Orangeness now walk the hallowed halls of RWG. I bet heads would explode at WUS, the "official" Doxa home, if they knew that.

Maybe it's just the perspective of the photos, but something doesn't look right between the two photos in the circled area. In one the missing screw looks deep beneath the plane of the balance. In the other photo it looks flush to the spacer ring.

You got that right, Ubi. Looking closely at the pictures, it's in remarkable condition. If anything it's in better shape than mine, and to date I had the best and most complete example out there. I need to alter my totals count down by one; there are now TEN known examples in the world, not eleven. And how about this news: the new owner is a proud member of RWG. How cool is that?!!! Congrats to the new owner! Maxman said it best... Sweet Orangeness.

Similarly, they tend to respect that other people worked hard too for what they've got, and I hope, will not feel entitled to it.

I read a very compelling article today on this subject: Young Westerners -- Deprived or Decadent A once civil and orderly England was recently torn apart by rioting and looting -- at first by mostly minority youth, but eventually also by young Brits in general. This summer, a number of American cities witnessed so-called "flash mobs" -- mostly African-American youths who swarmed at prearranged times to loot stores or randomly attack those of other races and classes. The mayhem has reignited an old debate in the West. Are such criminally minded young Americans and British turning to violence in protest over inequality, poverty and bleak opportunities? The Left, of course, often blames cutbacks in the tottering welfare state and high unemployment. The havoc and mayhem, in other words, are a supposed wake-up call in an age of insolvency not to cut entitlements, but to tax the affluent to redistribute more of their earnings to those unfairly deprived. The Right counters that the problem is not too few state subsidies, but far too many. The growing -- and now unsustainable -- state dole of the last half-century eroded self-reliance and personal initiative. The logical result is a dependent underclass spanning generations that becomes ever more unhappy and unsatisfied the more it is given from others. Today's looters have plenty to eat. That is why they target sneaker and electronics stores -- to enjoy the perks of life they either cannot or will not work for. We might at least agree on a few facts behind the violence. First, much of the furor is because poverty is now seen as a relative, not an absolute, condition. Per-capita GDP is $47,000 in the U.S. and $35,000 in Britain. In contrast, those rioting in impoverished Syria (where average GDP is about $5,000) or Egypt (about $6,000) worry about being hungry or being shot for their views, rather than not acquiring a new BlackBerry or a pair of Nikes. Inequality, not Tiny Tim-like poverty, is the new Western looter's complaint. So when the president lectures about fat-cat "corporate jet owners," he doesn't mean that greed prevents the lower classes from flying on affordable commercial jets -- only that a chosen few in luxury aircraft, like himself, reach their destinations a little more quickly and easily. Not having what someone richer has is our generation's lament instead of lacking elemental shelter, food or electricity. The problem is not that the bathwater in Philadelphia is not as hot as in Martha's Vineyard, but that the conditions under which it is delivered in comparison are far more basic and ordinary. Second, the wealthy have not set an example that hard work and self-discipline leads to well-deserved success and the good life. Recently, a drunken, affluent young prospect for the U.S. ski team urinated on a sleeping 11-year old during a transcontinental flight. And the more the psychodramas of drones like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, or some members of the royal family, become headline news, the more we see boredom and corruption among the pampered elite. The behavior of John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, Dominique Strauss-Kahn or Arnold Schwarzenegger does not remind us that good habits of elite public figures follow from well-deserved riches and acclaim -- but only that with today's wealth and power comes inevitable license and decadence. Third, communism may be dead, but Marxist-inspired materialism still measures the good life only by equal access to "things." We can argue whether those who loot a computer store are spoiled or oppressed. But even a person in faded jeans and a worn T-shirt can still find all sorts of spiritual enrichment at no cost in either a museum or a good book. Did we forget that in our affluent postmodern society, being poor is often an impoverishment of the mind, not necessarily the result of a cruel physical world? Finally, there is far too much emphasis on government as the doting, problem-solving parent. What made Western civilization rich and liberal was not just free-market capitalism and well-funded constitutional government, but the role of the family, community and church in reminding the emancipated individual of an affluent society that he should not always do what he was legally permitted to. Destroy these bridles, ridicule the old shame culture of the past, and we end up with unchecked appetites -- as we now witness from a smoldering London to the flash mobbing in Wisconsin. Our high-tech angry youth are deprived not just because their elders put at risk their future subsidies, but because they were not taught what real wealth is -- and where and how it is obtained and should be used.

What has already not been mentioned is the easiest way to tell a 702 from a 703. It's the cooooool factor.

It makes a guy wanna be Ubi's next door neighbor. "Hey man I'll mow your lawn for another 702 crown." Of course it would get old, all the maniacal laughter from the basement on dark and stormy nights. "And THAT my friends is how a Rolex is made."

Oh yes definitely use a 702 ... it's a FAR cooler crown/tube than a 703.

That, sir, is Ubilicious. Isn't it remarkable how much bigger a "31" is than a "30" in the wonderfully wierd world of Rolex? Let me know if you need a Superdome 39.

I wonder if The amazing RepAustria COMEX caseback deserves a place in the RWG Hall of Hallowed Horology?

Pretty close, eh? The foreground is an ancient MBW with a whole lotta lovin'

How to make a better caseback? It's possible, with time. Which one's gen?

Living in the high arctic, and there's no other place I'd rather be. This is Don Sheldon's cabin perched above the Ruth Amphitheater on the flanks of Denali. It would be heaven on earth to me.

Please PM me what you would like to change.

I decided to go ORANGE today.

Red, I know what you mean! A day without a Snowflake is almost unbearable! I've got a 9411 made up from a Josh 5512 case, Yuki dial and custom hands, with a low dome T-19. That's the one that will be up for sale, with the original gen tropic-125 on the side. The other is a verrrrry tasty little 7016 with all gen parts in a Phong case. Yum!

Nick finished it, and sold it to me. I've got it and its sister at Ziggy's place now getting a spa treatment. One will be up for sale as soon as it returns from the Master's Hands, untouched by mere mortals such as myself.