ROKA

Hi everyone, Beautiful pictures!! Hi Texski I really appreciate your help, this is some great advice thanks! Well, that was what caused the paint on the subdial hands to chip off, the chisels were too thick to actually go under the hands... (i ended up using two screwdrivers.. not ideal... but it worked OK.) I think though that you don't only mean the height of the ends...? but also the width? Please do post some pictures when you get the time! Hmm... i didnt know there are other options...!? Any suggestions? I had no idea! Thanks! I 'll pm you about the dials and crown, Thanks again, RK

Ha! Same here Any help would be great!

Hi everyone! First of all let me just say a huge thanks for all the great knowledge you have been sharing! I started lurking the forum one year ago out of curiosity when a friend of mine bought a new, expensive, IWC watch. It was stunning but I thought "can't they replicate this? using cheaper, or better sourced materials and sell it half the price or even less? (surprise!)". There is something philosophically pleasing about replicas that i can't very easily put my finger on... I think it falls in the same category as file-sharing and building an Eames chair on your back yard (or replicating a pickle recipe for 1/10 of the cost ). I am all for luxury goods and intellectual copyright (and for that matter I would buy a gen as easily) but for some reason I feel things change when they enter mass production and this rep side of things is what has sparked my new interest in watches! So..... Two weeks ago I pulled the trigger on my first rep. I went for the 3717 from Andrew. First because I wanted an IWC and second because of the ease of modification. I decided that if I start having this hobby, i should do all the modifications myself. So many posts in here have been an amazing source of knowledge so far. Thanks again! Andrew's service was great it arrived in the UK in 4 days (!) It is a stunning watch! (and the more i wear it the more i like it) I purchased an all black NATO strap. It is 20mm and not 21mm so you get an awkward 1mm gap but it is not very noticeable and it is still stunning. What I could tell were some obvious flaws (in no particular order): 1. The minute and hour hands are not as white as they should be, slightly fading in the centre of the hand. 2. The texture of the dial is not like the gen (as always I think.) 3. The subdials are not as recessed as in the gen... (and it seems to me they are even less recessed in V3 than they are in previous rep photos i have seen on some posts.) 4. Timer hand (? the long white hand in the centre... lol) was a fraction of a millimetre off to the right. (i fixed this! yay ) 5. There was a tiny white piece of dust on the inside of the crystal (it magically disappeared after a couple of days, i think what happened is that it fell and got stuck on the side of the crystal. I Joed this off!) What i can't notice: 1. I have no experience with AR so I can't judge There is the blue/purple tint people talk about in the V3. I will buy a Taka AR when it is available (or if anyone sells one here) just to see the difference (and make the swap although I haven't found a post of how to do that yet) 2. DATE FONTS!! The date fonts on the watch i received seem like they are not the horrible looking A7750 fonts! They were actually pretty decent, comparing them to the ETA datewheels online they seemed identical. I ordered the ETA ones from Cousins. There are actually some differences that you can see when you put one next to the other. ETA fonts or a bit whiter, bolder, slightly bigger and slightly more squeezed. REP number 7 though (!!) is closer to the GEN as it has a small vertical line on the up-left side of the number. I have a small suspicion that the REP dial might be closer to the GEN than the ETA... could this be possible?? I ordered some tools from amazon, cousins and watchpart and yesterday I decided I was psychologically ready to proceed with changing the datewheels! (I didn't see a real reason to do it, other than that I bought this thing to open it up and not just wear it) a.I closely followed pugwash's tutorial (thanks!) http://www.rwg.cc/to...-an-asian-7750/ . b.I came close to losing some parts 3 or 4 times (i didn't!) c.When trying to remove the hands I chipped off a small part of the black paint of the red hand @9. and a tiny dot of black paint off the hand @12. (i decided to paint the missing areas with a black marker, it is unnoticeable if you don't know where to look, but i will change (or repaint properly? can i do this with some modelling paint?) the subdial hands. d.I spent a loooong time trying to reinstall the hands and put the covering plate back on. 4 and 1/2 hours later... success! It has been running fine since yesterday. (A question: is rodico the same thing as blue tack? I use white tack and it worked great both for holding things and also cleaning spots and fingerprints.) What i want to do next? I want to purchase and mod the following: 1. GEN (or rep) Subdial and dial hands 2. GEN dial 3. ETA 7750 4. TAKA crystal 5. Maybe GEN crown and tube Also i want to buy another rep (preferably IWC) and start modding that. I want a more formal possibly white dial classy watch. I like the 3714s but I think I slightly prefer the 5001s. Ofcourse the main decider for the next watch will be ease of sourcing mod parts! I understand Concepta can source some gen parts... is there anywhere else I should also be looking? Any advice will be really appreciated! Please bare in mind that I would prefer to do the modifications myself Thanks again everyone! RK something interesting I learned on a recent trip: Greeks' name for "a rep" is "a monkey". I think that's hilarious! I wondered if other nationalities have names that mean something different than "replica".

Love the black one!!

We want to know!!!!