panerai153

Beautiful Place. long plane ride though!! Would go back to Kauai in a heartbeat. My wife loves the Caribbean better, she loves the warm water and big sand beaches, so guess where we go!!

OH God !! Now you guys have opened up a can of worms!! Everyone that has a 44 FC get out your 10X loupe !!

Just looked at my profile, today is my Eight year anniversary. Doesn't seem like that long, but a lot of thing's have happened in the rep world in those 8 years!! Reps are better, but more expensive too. Sadly, a lot of the guys that were around here when this forum kicked off way back then have moved on, a few have stayed active, most encouraging is the presence of all the newer members who have come on board and are making great contributions to the Forum. Happy to have been a participant for the past eight years, and I hope I'm still around in eight more!!

Sorry that this happened Daz. I'm leaning to what others have said, it's probably not worth the hassle, and then you are filing a fraudulent claim on top of that. It's a bunch of money that seems like it's been thrown to the wind, and it was, but I don't believe It's worth all the trouble. Even if you file a claim, they will take months to pay. and will look for every little loophole to crawl through to keep from paying.

Good to know that Ryan has them, APBands has the strap screws, but are out of the case screws, plus they are really expensive. 39 bucks for 2 pins and caps!!

I'm sure this has been posted here before, but I'll take a chance. I'm not a terribly big fan of deployant buckles. I've had them on a lot of different watches, and frankly some are better than others. in fact some are just about as comfortable as a tang buckle. Unfortunately, on my wrist, I don't find the AP deployant to be particularly comfortable. I don't like the way it's curved, as it doesn't follow the contour of my wrist. Convenient yes, nice looking again yes, comfortable with these big top heavy watches, no. I would like to try a tang buckle on one of my ROO's just to see if it makes any difference comfort wise. My question is outside of APBands is their any other supplier of tank buckles that will fit a ROO Hornback strap? The APBands buckle looks nice and it's available in Satin PVD and Yellow (I suppose this is yellow gold?) downside is the buckles are 69.00 USD each, and the PVD is 79.00 USD. Sort of steep for a stainless steel buckle. I could use a couple and I'm sure there are other members who would like to try a tang buckle in place of the deployant. Anyone have any leads?

Not me sir, My momma taught me better!! I try to give folks the benefit of the doubt and sometimes it's hurtful when your hospitality is not returned. But you know I learned a long time ago that being polite and thanking people goes a long, long way. You never know when you might need that person that you were short with or made look stupid. It's awfully hard to go back and ask a favor of someone that you offended. Truer words were never spoken than those in your signature.

That is a beautiful build. nice how everything comes together when you use gen parts!!

Thanks Joey, I believe that you answered a lot of questions that folks had about different case options, bezels, etc. Obviously there are a few different ways to "Skin the Cat" some harder than others. What's nice about folks here sharing information, it makes the next guys build easier because he doesn't make the same mistakes the first builder did, that is if he reads and does his research!! I didn't mention this in the intro as I was talking more about problems and solutions rather than what was used. This insert which is absolutely the best that you can buy, and I had several in my hand including the one from Ming Quy which came with my case set, is the one that JoeyB makes. It is by far the best available. If you build a 6542, you definitely need to get one of his inserts for your project.

thanks A, I'm always glad to help, but it really disturbs me when folks come on with 1-2 posts and ask for help when they could very easily find the info out by using the search function. Ditto on the thanks too. Lots of ungrateful noobs about!!

Yeh, but it's sooooo much fun!!

Man if you read the NYTimes, there are about a thousand different conspiracy theories out there, and they are growing by the minute. Legend, AFA the ringing phones, when your cell phone is out of range of a cell tower, or is turned off, it will still ring, the ring you hear is the cell tower attempting to contact the phone, it's not the actual phone ringing. Many people have said"why didn't people on the plane use their cell phones to contact someone. Simply because the range of a cell phone is about 10 miles from the last tower it was in contact with. People who live in urban populated areas think that cells have infinite range, they don't, the signal is being handed off seamlessly from tower to tower, but when you get to the end of the line, and are 10 or so miles past the last tower, your cell starts to show"out of Range" or "no Signal". Believe me, when you live out in the country in isolated areas, you get plenty of those signals!! When it gets out of range, it now becomes and IPod. There are a fair number of pilots on the forum, commercial as well as Military and ex-military, You guys have a lot better knowledge base about transponders, radar, and other methods that the aircraft uses to identify itself and to be tracked. If this was indeed a hijacking, it certainly would seem that it would take several people on the ground as well as the pilot or pilots working in concert, not only in the air, but when the plane landed. It would need to be concealed, passengers either taken care of or disposed of, and then what? Was their something in the cargo hold that was valuable enough to risk stealing the plane for? Certainly doesn't seem like a hostage situation, you would think that as soon as the plane was safely on the ground the hostage takers would have started making demands, but thus far nothing. This may be the mystery of the century!!

TD means Trusted dealer. AFA the lug screws, You might contact the dealer you bought the watch from. APBands sells lug screws both the ones that attach the inserts to the watch as well as the screws that attach the band to the inserts. Google APBANDs. they are not cheap, andi have heard that outside the CONUS, their shipping rates are high. Other members may well know of other sources for these screws.

If you read the rules of the road here, you will come across several "DON'TS' on this and every other forum. Read This http://www.rwgforum.net/topic/24786-read-our-forum-rules/ Pay special attention to #'s 25 and 26. If you read this thread, you will know what you can and can't do on the forum.

Go to the dealer section, and look at what they have on offer. There are no dealers in the EU, however some of the dealers offer "triangle" shipping where they ship to someone in the EU who forwards it to you. Use the search function, it's your best friend here.

Very nice!! Great job on your build.

Thanks guys, It seems like this one has been "Finished" about 3 or 4 times!! I hope that it's going to be a "good little watch" for a while and give my wallet a break.It makes me feel good to get positive comments from you guys who are the true Vintage Rolex experts.And Freddy, a special thanks to you for the kind comments, as you are the true Zen master of the 6542! Just to answer a couple of questions that were posed by one of the fellows here. What case: This is a Ming Quy Case from Vietnam. If you follow the link http://www.rwgforum.net/topic/148940-more-6542-how-about-this/ here are some photos of the case. Like Freddy and others have said, just because it comes from Ming, and it's expensive, doesn't mean it's always correct. This one had the tube misaligned, and it had to be re drilled and retapped. i couldn't send it back, because I bought it from another member who never tried to use it. There are other cases out there that will work, just need to do some reading and research to decide what you want. Another question was what would I do different and what advice would i give. hard question, because hind sight is always 20/20. Lots of times you don't anticipate trouble until it's right on top of you. I started this out with a Puretime 6542 which i was hoping would be a good donor watch, it wasn't. All I ended up using was the movement, nothing else was compatible. So from that probably skip that step and try to find a 2846 movement and convert it to GMT. or use a DG3804 GMT movement. If you are not concerned about using a slow beat movement, then an ETA 2893-2 would be my movement of choice as it's a real workhorse GMT. Another thing i would do in retrospect is have the movement serviced up front , before putting it in the watch. This alone would have saved me a trip to the watchmaker and a month or two of lost wrist time. I did not plan this build as carefully as I should have, it should have been more thought out ahead of time. Things like changing the dial, and then having the dial lumed were things that had they been done at first would have saved a lot of time and another trip. I believe that another thing that you need to do, if you can't do all the work yourself, find someone who has the skills and time to put everything together. Good planning will take care of a lot of stumbles down the line. A good example would be the dial and hands. If the watchmaker doesn't do lume work, then you need to send the dial and hands off and have them relumed while you are gathering all the other parts for the build. When you do this, everything is ready when you need it, and you don't have to do a bunch of backtracking. Remember one thing, when you are dealing with building modded or franken watches, just because a part looks like it will fit or it's "Supposed" to fit doesn't necessarily mean that it will. So be prepared for some setbacks and hopefully with good planning and a whole lot of luck, you will end up with a really nice watch.

Back in August of 2012, I embarked on what has ended up being a long, expensive and torturous journey, my goal was to build a nice believable 6542 White Dial GMT ( If you believe the White dial 6542 ever existed). Here is the link to the original thread from back in 2012. http://www.rwgforum.net/topic/150062-6542-is-it-the-executive-suite-or-mailroom-or-somewhere-in-between/ This watch has really had it's ups and downs, and probably more downs than ups! I can't remember all of the problems, would probably have to go back and read all my emails and PM's to get and accurate picture. But to list a few, movement problems which required a complete tear down and replacement of parts, including a balance and gen tube and crown. while this was being done we replaced the dial with an ingod44 White dial and a ubi Roulette datewheel. this was all sone over about a two month span ,Oct.-Dec 2012. then in the early spring 2013, the bezel fell off and had to replace crystal to fix the problem, and of course a couple of trips to get other things done,which included a trip to The Zeigmeister to relume the dial and hands, as the Ingod44 dial had no lume. Everything rocked along good through the summer, and fall, then a few weeks back I was removing the watch from my watch box and the bezel fell off again!! I sent it to mymanmatt who fitted a new crystal and got the retaining ring on tight. When he removed the crystal, it looked like it had several cracks at the base, may have been tight and between installing the crystal and retaining ring, it cracked. Matt and I agreed that this watch may well need and exorcism rather than a watch repair person, as it seems like with it, if anything could go wrong, it has. At the moment it's running fine, keeping great time, and the bezel is tight and Matt says it's water resistant. Not that i'm going to swim snorkel or dive with it, but it's nice to know that it will withstand water from washing my hands. I haven't tallied up what I have invested in this watch, I'm scared to even think about it!! But like all projects like this one, it's not for the faint of heart!! Plan a budget, and then be prepared to spend a lot more before it's over. I replaced the old rep Oyster bracelet with a genuine Jubilee, I know it's not the bracelet that was standard to this watch, but it was and option with 1675's. It's very comfortable and light. Well, that's my story, thus far. Here are a few photos I took several days ago

Very nice. Plus with the BP's they are genuine construction and will accept a gen bezel/insert should you ever decide to mod this one into and almost gen like GMTII C. Right now, I would bet that the Batman inserts are not obtainable at any price!!

Hi G, They offer these because EBAy is filled with people who are either completely ignorant of what they are buying, believing that if the seller says it's "real" then it must be, or the other segment of buyers who are the people who have a little knowledge, but are blinded by greed. they want something, and they see it at a "bargain" price, they think that the seller is either 1) Stupid and doesn't know what he has, or 2) He is desperate and needs to move something quickly, maybe it's hot, the guy has a gambling debt, divorce, you name it!! Of course the sellers love both of these types because neither is going to do his due diligence and ask questions about the authenticity of the item. Another thing, I believe that people feel like with EBays "Buyer Protection" plan will protect them if and item turns out to be a fake, they can get their money back. Problem is this doesn't always work, and often it's months before a buyer discovers the fake. By now it's too late.

6542

I thought AP bands used and insert with their AP straps? I know that Orloff does as well and I believe that Jacob straps uses plastic inserts. I have heard from posters on this and other forums that the AP bands straps were not easy to attach. I don't have one, so I cannot say one way or the other.

I would like to know as well. Funny this bracelet has no markings at all, is that usual with the AP bracelets? also the endlink fit to the watch in the photo is terrible!! I doubt that a gen bracelet on a 25-35K watch would fit like that!! What other clues? Do the genuine bracelets come with all of that blue plastic film on them like this? I know all the reps do.

Sorry no decent wristies of this one!! maybe tomorrow if the rain stops.

Welcome. The way acquire knowledge is through reading and research. If you are knowledgeable about what you want to buy, then you won't make as many mistakes, and will suffer less disappointment. The search button is your best friend. Use that first, then if you need more help, folks here will be happy to assist you.