slay

Slightly faded insert on one of my recent 1665 DRSD builds:

FYI you don't really need to use a drill press to enlargen the hole if your Yuki Pearl doesn't fit! You can use a round Diamond Needle-File / Hand-File - aluminum is very soft and will probably take at most a gentle quarter-turn back and forth by hand. Just turn the needle file a bit inside the hole and check every quarter or half turn if your Pearl fits. Always good to have a set of these inexpensive Diamond Files for a variety of minor watch repairs: https://www.amazon.com/Premium-Grade-Diamond-Needle-Stone-Protian/dp/B0048087RQ

It should be obvious to any vintage Rolex lover that the stock bezel inserts on all Cartel Vintage Rolex watches are outright hideous. I was also never happy with any of the alternatives offered by Phong, Yuki & the rest - their fonts are inaccurate, they are lacking serifs, and both numbers and tick-marks are way too perfect and too straight for a Vintage Rolex Insert. I think many of you have heard about the saying "If you want something done right, do it yourself". So that's what I did! I have a particular fondness to Fat Font and "Kissing 40" Inserts and the bezel insert was that important to me - anyone who ever went from a bad to a good insert will know how much the bezel insert changes the face of the watch. It took me over a year with many revisions and a lot of trial and error to make a bezel insert that is (in my opinion) the closest thing to a real Fat Font insert on the market. Background: To give you a bit of context on what makes Fat Font inserts unique and special: You may have read about "Fat Font" and "Kissing 40" and even "Kissing 50" Bezel Inserts and Genuine Inserts with those features often come with a $2k+ price tag. The reason why such inserts are both rare and so sought after has something to do with how they were produced and when they were produced. The printing pads used by Rolex to make bezel inserts wore out over time and this wear and tear resulted in numbers that started to be less and less perfect. Numbers and tick-marks started to bleed out on the edges and into each other, resulting in features such as the "Kissing 40". Today such imperfect inserts would be discarded, but back in the days, Rolex did not care much for perfection and consistency, which meant that bezel insert produced close to end-of-life of these printing pads made their way onto watches. In making these MK1 "Kissing 40" Fat Font Bezel Inserts, my main goals were: Production technique: Mimic the worn-out printing pads that were used to add the non-conductive paint for the numbers on the insert before they were anodized. "Fat Font" and Kissing 40 were a result of wear and tear of those printing pads I made custom molds for both the aluminium bezel itself & for the Font of the numbers / tick-marks. Font & Serifs: Used a Genuine MK1 Font and kept fine details, such as Serifs, as accurately as possible Including for example "odd" serifs on the base of the number 2 No two big or small tick-marks are exactly the same and they are not perfectly rectangular either - each one of them was custom-drawn. Size & Fit: These have the same inside/outside diameter and the same back-side profile as Genuine MK1 inserts. Outside Diameter: ~36.55mm, Inside Diameter: ~30.3mm They should snap-in to both Rep and Genuine Bezel Rings and don't have to be glued The inserts have a thinner outer edge compared to most Replica/Cartel inserts, which means no more sanding necessary for the insert to sit properly (i.e. slightly recessed) in the bezel ring Color: A color mixture was used during the anodization process that will fade to blue when exposed to oxidizing agents or bleach (and not red or purple). You can also make them tropical brown instead of faded-blue if you like. As you can imagine, this wasn't easy: it took me over year of going through numerous sampling cycles and re-designs in order to get the result I wanted. Not to mention that I drove my manufacturing partner nearly insane and they would have stopped working with me if I hadn't visited them in-person twice and showered them with gifts I primarily made these for myself, but to give something back to the community and in order to recoup some of my investment, I'll be selling a few inserts to those of you who are big Vintage Rolex lovers like me. How to Order: Please send me a Private Message so I can keep track of things Include the quantity and your shipping address. Payment by PayPal Gift preferred Price: 60$ shipped from Europe to anywhere in the world via registered airmail (10% discount on each additional insert) FAQ: Do you offer these inserts Faded or Aged? No - individual tastes with regards to how aged or how faded vary significantly and unfortunately I don't have the time to do this for every insert. However, there are many modders on the forum who offer this service. Do the inserts come with an Acrylic Pearl at 12? No - the inserts come without acrylic pearl. I had too many issues trying fabricating the pearls and since Athaya and Yuki sell them for 5-10$ anyway, I shelved that project for the time being. You could also re-use the bezel pearl from an old Cartel Insert (the 1680 on the pics below re-uses the Pearl from a Cartel insert). Many genuine inserts will also have lost the top part of the acrylic pearl by now, so you could also glue some yellow paste into the hole with epoxy in order to mimic a broken-off pearl Will you make any other Designs (MK2, MK3, Long-5, GMT)? Perhaps at some point in the future - I've done some of the design work already, but whether or not I will produce them depends largely on how many inserts of this production run i'm going to sell. Will they fit a Cartel 5512/5513/1680/1665? Yes. They should also fit in MQ/Phong/Vietnam/Genuine Bezels I've seen another Genuine MK1 insert on the internet that looks fatter/slimmer - how can that be? As Explained somewhere in the middle of this post, "Fat Fonts" were the result of worn out printing pads, so other inserts that are MK1 and less fat were created earlier when the printing pads were less worn. Some other inserts were created later when inserts were even more worn out (for example, the following ultra fat insert, where the 5 started to bleed into the 0: https://imgur.com/a7wjKOP ) Are these perfect? Probably not - nothing is 100% perfect. However, it is my opinion that these are by a wide margin the best inserts you can get, unless you want to spend 2000$+ on a Genuine Insert. Pics: Snap-in Fit in a Cartel Bezel, will sit slightly recessed as on a Gen Bezel: Slim Edge Custom MK1 Insert (left) next to a Cartel Insert (right):

Shamed be he who thinks evil of it Perhaps he wants to clear out old stock. I don't know enough about 5711s to give you a definitive answer, but there should be plenty of posts re: the 5711 either on this forum or on RWI, so try using the search function if nobody chimes in here.

FYI - unless you really want this particular (old) version, there is a much much much newer version out there. The watch in the link you provided is from 2017. This here should be the latest version, albeit from a different maker: http://www.trustytime.biz/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=39_199&products_id=19078 In the future, you can tell when the watch was added to the site by looking just below the pictures, there it says something along the lines of... "This product was added to our catalog on Wednesday 26 September, 2018."

Hey, I sent you a PM a few days ago in case you didn't see it

Just keep in mind that the 6238 had a symmetric case, so the side where the crown sits is less thick than on a 6263. If you use a 6263 case with a smooth bezel, it wont look right. Rolex made the crown-side fatter than the other side when they started using 7mm crowns and screw-down pushers (although 6239s exist in both variations). Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I like the sandblasted look between the lugs! A few things to improve: The lugs itself need a bit more work on the top, the stock Cartel cases have a big bulge. The crown guards are also more oval shaped on the gen, especially from the underside. I have a side-by-side somewhere to compare, I'll post it if I can find it. Also, the crown position on genuine 1665 cases is NOT centered like on the 5513 etc.! The 1665 has a much taller bezel, is thicker and as a result the crown sits slightly off-center (to the top). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

WARNING, the site in the title is run by a scammer who pulled my pictures and is advertising franken watches for sale. I am in no way affiliated with this website: premium.dtime.store If you see my pictures posted on any website other than RWG and RWI you can be 100% certain it's a scammer and not me. This is a scammer who stole my pictures from the forum! Do not buy anything from this site. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Mostly genuine

Not a gen dial, but it's different from the other gilt dials I handled. Almost like the dial plate has a different shade of gold. As you can see, lume on the bezel, dial, hands and the gilt lettering all match in color Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have a love/hate relationship with this watch... I love it, because it's one of the most beautiful vintage Rolex in my opinion. What stands out to me is that it is one of the few Rolex where the acrylic crystal sits very low above the dial. The 6542 is one of the few watches that strikes a perfect balance between looking different & unique and modesty. I hate it, because finding gen parts for it, especially for the movement, is virtually impossible. Why you ask? Because across the entire Cal. 1030 movement family (1030, 1035, 1036, 1040, 1055, 1065 & 1066), there is only a single reference [the 6542], which used a GMT Version of these movements. To make things worse, even the parts that look identical to those of a regular Cal 103X or 106X, have slight differences which will drive you nuts when assembling the watch with non-GMT versions (calendar ring, hour wheel, cannon pin, etc.). Anyway...

Oh hello there Mr. JetMid Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

As long as it's still mine.... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk