Nanuq

I don't mean to speak out of line here, but... Ziggy has earned his reputation the hard way, like an artist: one excellent piece after another. It's one thing to do simple overhauls and lubes... it's another thing to do "art" with a watch. Anyone who treasures their watch will want someone with some cred. Ziggy's got that in spades. I don't mean to diminish your watchmaker in any way, but there are watchmaker/artisans and then there are watchmaker/artisans. IMHO Ziggy is at the very top of the heap. I've got a few very special watches and over the last couple decades I hadn't found anyone I was willing to trust them with. Sure, most watchmakers are competent... I wanted a heck of a lot more than that. So I read a ton of reviews about his fine service, and I took a chance. I have a 50-years old Submariner that was in serious need of an overhaul and I gritted my teeth and sent it to him. And long story short, he went way WAY beyond the call to make my baby *perfect*. I hadn't trusted it to anyone for over 10 years, but he was the one whose skills convinced me to give him a try. I couldn't have been more pleased. Literally. So... anyone who wants to play in that rarified atmosphere has a huge uphill struggle ahead of them. There will be enormous expectations, and you'll want to make sure your watchmaker is up to the task. Again, not to diminish him/her in any way, but there are Monets and there are finger-painters. Ziggy's a Monet.

Here's my "watch box". It's a simple way to store them, and if they need winding just fire up the beast and run it WOT for a few seconds... presto, all wound up!

I wonder if it's possible to age the red DAYTONA on your dial with UV to make it paler/brighter? I've thought a lot about that and MBW DRSD dials.

Both the MBW and NDT are often better than the gen piece. Some truly awful bezels came off those Swiss workbenches. Like a dictionary, in the Book of Rolex "consistency" always comes before "quality".

Here's the one she wants. But she'll have to bring some burglary tools to get one for

Lord have mercy, HOW do they decide which way to go? "Okay guys, everyone LEAN LEFT!!" "What?! We're going RIGHT!" "Left!" "Right!" **Crash Tinkle**

Nah, it earned its scars on the decks of dive boats and the bottoms of every northern sea in the world. They're tough watches.

Nahhh... THIS is my daily beater.

"watch crazy"?? I should say so! You're not wearing a watch?! Good Lord man, have you gone insane?

You are not alone.

Nice bike! Send me those groovy platform pedals... there is nothing nicer when it's -20 to -30 and you can't feel your feet! You'll want some tires with at least a bit of tread so you get fewer flats. If the knobs hold the carcass up off the pavement and glass, you'll have to stop for fewer repairs on the ride home. Also keep the tires well inflated so you don't get pinch flats (snakebite) on curbs and potholes. We should have a competition and see who can put down the most miles this year, onroad and off!

That was some fine, fine work. Hats off to ye, mate!

sweet bike, and lots easier than a MTN bike for putting on the miles. Another like this is Jake the Snake. Whatever fits YOU is what's right. Get a GOOD lock.

Here's what a MKII coronet should look like. Also check out the "O" in ROLEX. It ought to be thinner at the top and bottom.

Nice piece... note the "droopy" bottom lug at the crown guard... an MBW giveaway. Well done!

I'm glad you like the movie, but remember where we live and what we do here. The things that he failed at, and died for, are simple problems that we deal with. I take my scout troop out camping with less than what he had and junior-high age boys survive just fine. I've read a lot of reviews about it, and for the most part people here see it as "how could he have failed so miserably at something so simple?" I do admire his willingness to embrace the unknown... THAT is appealing to me.

In my humble opinion they need to be a bit wider.

Here's my favorite sign...

Sorry, I haven't seen it. The general consensus here is that the guy was loonie. I mean, any woman here could walk into the wild with nothing but a swiss army knife and survive a winter just fine. Alaska... where the men are men and women win the Iditarod -or- Alaska... where the dogs are beautiful and the women are fast.

Well, lead *is* a naturally occurring substance......

Only in Alaska... http://anchorage.craigslist.org/spo/638903075.html

I tend to do things "Sinatra style" ... I do it my way. Put them in place with tweezers, then use the ink refill from an old BIC ballpoint pen and press the hand down onto its post. Easy-squeasy.

Sorry, I don't. Check Borel or Ofrei. I seem to recall them posting measures for those. Or were those numbers for crystals?

My Watch by Mark Twain ca. 1870 An Instructive Little Tale 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 a desire to swap news with him. I went to a watchmaker 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 king-bolt was broken. I said I was glad it was nothing more serious. To tell the plain truth, I had no idea what the king-bolt was, but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger. He repaired the king-bolt, 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 hair-trigger. 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 half-soling. 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. -THE END-

The Rolex AD here in town doesn't provide watchmaking services, sends all their work to Seattle. I lamented being able to have a watch recalibrated without spending hundreds of dollars, and the lead sales gent told me they'll send it to Seattle for regulation and return it for $25. And that's insured both ways. Too good to be true? I dunno... I know the Rolex watchmakers in Seattle and this might be legit. Try the ADs in your neck of the woods to see if they offer the same services. Who knows? As an aside, Ziggy regulated my 6536 last time he had it, and provided traces showing its performance on his timing machine.