Nanuq

Life in Alaska, baby. It gets weirder than that!

Who is Hammer? WHO IS HAMMER??!!!??? Ken Just fell over clutching his chest! This is Hammer, baby.

Nice photo, Wheaton! Hey what do you think of Bauer 5000s vs. those CCM 952s? I've got both and my CCMs feel like I'm skating uphill through grit all the time. The Bauers just fly.

Sorry, he's a dentist, not a doctor. He got away without a mark, here's what he had to say about it... "Yep, that is me in the picture. Yep that is a whale that was just around the corner from the ferry terminal. "Paddle really fast" is the only thing I could think of at the time.. Also thinking that I don't look like a herring, don't smell like a herring but with the same herring instinct of "get the hell out of the way of that big mouth!!" Still living to tell yet another story.. Rich K"

Actual photo, not photoshopped. The good doctor in Sitka was out for a morning kayak and this whale surfaced beneath him.

I can see Gunnar on the dance floor now... Congratulations, my friend!

Here's a mostly Rolex collection ... not mine, unfortunately. I think we can title this photo "So that's where all the Daytonas went..."

Magnificent! That's going to be a jaw-dropper. So... what's the chances of finding a bubbleback or similar and engraving a meatball on there? That would be heart-stopping. You might talk to FXR. We've been tossing over some ideas about machine work.

I do like the fonts better on the white, and I would have gone that way but for two things. The top of the 12:00 triangle looks slightly curved, and from what I can suss out from the photos online, it should be flat like the black dial. Second is the "E" in "ROLEX", its middle "leg" should be above center like your black dial. Stephano's photos notwithstanding. I wonder if that was just a "gilt thing"? edit: also look at "certifiEd" and "mastEr" and "chronometEr". They're apparently all different.

I like the black dial much better. Can you switch the white dial's date window to the black one? Then you'll be 99% of the way home.

Rolex "Scientific"?? Lovely piece. You can see it here.

TT comes up with the perfect mouse trap. Well done!

YEAH BABY!!! You guys are pushing all the right buttons with these photos of Rainier and boarding.

Take a look here ... this is as close to a gen Doxa as you'll get. Plus they included some very cool features people "over there" have been asking about for years. It uses an ETA movement so I'm thinking a dial might just drop right in there.

I got an email back from Yuki this evening and he can't get these or the 9315. "Yet" ... hopefully.

I left my bezel tight enough I had to press hard to seat it, and did not damage my gen T21. A littje custom fitting won't hurt, go slow and measure often.

Congrats on the milestone, Red! Y'know, Ken reached that in, oh, a week or so. Let's hear it for 5,000 posts! Keep 'em coming.

Unfortunately, yes. Remember when we asked for a non-expanding 7206 and he had to sell out his exandros before he would bring 'em in? I also asked for 9315s and he was pretty noncommittal. But it doesn't hurt to ask again. Yo! Yuki! Help me out here!

Out my front window last January, a nice crisp morning.

WOW!!! It can't be long until a 9315 comes out. Waiting with bated breath...

This thread reminds me of Mark Twain's essay. Enjoy! My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come to believe it infallible in its judgments about the time of day, and to consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. But at last, one night, I let it run down. I grieved about it as if it were a recognized messenger and forerunner of calamity. But by and by I cheered up, set the watch by guess, and commanded my bodings and superstitions to depart. Next day I stepped into the chief jeweler's to set it by the exact time, and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to set it for me. Then he said, "She is four minutes slow -- regulator wants pushing up." I tried to stop him -- tried to make him understand that the watch kept perfect time. But no; all this human cabbage could see was that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator MUST be pushed up a little; and so, while I danced around him in anguish, and implored him to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed. My watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day. Within the week it sickened to a raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred and fifty in the shade. At the end of two months it had left all the timepieces of the town far in the rear, and was a fraction over thirteen days ahead of the almanac. It was away into November enjoying the snow, while the October leaves were still turning. It hurried up house rent, bills payable, and such things, in such a ruinous way that I could not abide it. I took it to the watchmaker to be regulated. He asked me if I had ever had it repaired. I said no, it had never needed any repairing. He looked a look of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open, and then put a small dice box into his eye and peered into its machinery. He said it wanted cleaning and oiling, besides regulating -come in a week. After being cleaned and oiled, and regulated, my watch slowed down to that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell. I began to be left by trains, I failed all appointments, I got to missing my dinner; my watch strung out three days' grace to four and let me go to protest; I gradually drifted back into yesterday, then day before, then into last week, and by and by the comprehension came upon me that all solitary and alone I was lingering along in week before last, and the world was out of sight. I seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking fellow-feeling for the mummy in the museum, and desire to swap news with him. I went to a watch maker again. He took the watch all to pieces while I waited, and then said the barrel was "swelled." He said he could reduce it in three days. After this the watch AVERAGED well, but nothing more. For half a day it would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a barking and wheezing and whooping and sneezing and snorting, that I could not hear myself think for the disturbance; and as long as it held out there was not a watch in the land that stood any chance against it. But the rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until all the clocks it had left behind caught up again. So at last, at the end of twenty-four hours, it would trot up to the judges' stand all right and just in time. It would show a fair and square average, and no man could say it had done more or less than its duty. But a correct average is only a mild virtue in a watch, and I took this instrument to another watchmaker. He said the kingbolt was broken. I said I was glad it was nothing more serious. To tell the plain truth, I had no idea what the kingbolt was, but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger. He repaired the kingbolt, but what the watch gained in one way it lost in another. It would run awhile and then stop awhile, and then run awhile again, and so on, using its own discretion about the intervals. And every time it went off it kicked back like a musket. I padded my breast for a few days, but finally took the watch to another watchmaker. He picked it all to pieces, and turned the ruin over and over under his glass; and then he said there appeared to be something the matter with the hairtrigger. He fixed it, and gave it a fresh start. It did well now, except that always at ten minutes to ten the hands would shut together like a pair of scissors, and from that time forth they would travel together. The oldest man in the world could not make head or tail of the time of day by such a watch, and so I went again to have the thing repaired. This person said that the crystal had got bent, and that the mainspring was not straight. He also remarked that part of the works needed halfsoling. He made these things all right, and then my timepiece performed unexceptionably, save that now and then, after working along quietly for nearly eight hours, everything inside would let go all of a sudden and begin to buzz like a bee, and the hands would straightway begin to spin round and round so fast that their individuality was lost completely, and they simply seemed a delicate spider's web over the face of the watch. She would reel off the next twenty-four hours in six or seven minutes, and then stop with a bang. I went with a heavy heart to one more watchmaker, and looked on while he took her to pieces. Then I prepared to cross-question him rigidly, for this thing was getting serious. The watch had cost two hundred dollars originally, and I seemed to have paid out two or three thousand for repairs. While I waited and looked on I presently recognized in this watchmaker an old acquaintance -- a steamboat engineer of other days, and not a good engineer, either. He examined all the parts carefully, just as the other watchmakers had done, and then delivered his verdict with the same confidence of manner. He said: "She makes too much steam -- you want to hang the monkey-wrench on the safety-valve!" I brained him on the spot, and had him buried at my own expense. My uncle William (now deceased, alas!) used to say that a good horse was a good horse until it had run away once, and that a good watch was a good watch until the repairers got a chance at it. And he used to wonder what became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers, and engineers, and blacksmiths; but nobody could ever tell him.

I like metaphors too. Some of my favorites: As nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. As happy as a clam at high tide. As busy as a one legged man in a butt kicking contest. I'm as pleased as a pig in an orchard. It runs like a cat on carpet.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm, nice find Gran! It has a sort of Doxa-esque look to it. Does the original vintage come on that nice mesh?

I feel for ya, SFA. Thanks for taking one for the team. That really bites. I was so hot to buy one of these, and mine was going to spend its life in water as a surrogate for the gens I can't really justify taking swimming/diving anymore. It stinks to see this happening. You got to hand it to the factories for thinking outside the box to find a way to make this rep, but there's got to be a better solution. I wonder if it's found in the Omega parts catalog? Or by separating the crystal layers, and using something cheap, waterproof, and easily accessible instead? Something like, I dunno, SUPERGLUE? C'mon factories, how hard was that?

Wow, who would have seen that coming? I mean ... people getting a dive watch wet??? I know that Watchbitz can draw from an amazing variety of crystals. How about if someone measures the diameter and thickness of one of these, and we can see if a replacement is out there? Hmmmmmm, these are advertised as "1:1 to gen" so I wonder if a gen crystal will work?