archibald

Final production is happening this week, I'm told. But as I posted before, these babies are made in not one, but 2 state-of-the-art shops, at which 100 DW's is a miniscule job and at which I had to beg, bribe, and sweet-talk them into even doing our thing. They fit us in when they can fit us in between "real" jobs, but so far they've been withing a couple days of their ETA's. Bottom line: Final production approaches; then it's just pulling out a few random samples to test. When those pass, we'll take orders and start shipping.

Looks nice...I wonder if the movement and dial will fit in the cheap day-date versions---getting rid of the stoooooopid date hole (which we're just going to have to get used to on 3-6-9 asia "7753"'s) would make this baby damn near 1:1. Probably the day-date case is too thin, though....

Yeah, he was from somewhere in Northern Europe somehwere, I recall...no CNC, all old fashioned machining. Absolutely amazing.

IMO, you can make a strong case for reps, but you have to be completely honest to do it "I like the way Rolex watches look and I like wearing a watch that has the Rolex's reputation attahed to it but I'm not dumb enough to spend $500 for a decent watch and a $5000 surcharge for 5 letters, especially when I can buy a watch that's almost as good for $200" ought to do it for most people. Nobody is going to believe you if you say you do't care about brand names, though--especially w/ rolex. There are too many "gens" that look exactly like rolexes for anyone to believe you "just like the way rolexes look and don't care about the brand name."

I think there would be a demand for the 2892 copies as well as any of the newer Seagulls--big date, PR, etc.

Join the club--I have 4 frankenmullers (all with OEM dials, OEM straps, and modded rep crowns) waiting for hands...Can anyone say why hands, especially blued hands, are so hard to get. You'd think there'd be hands for every model of every watch floating around by the bucketfull with all of the "retired watchsmith" auctions on ebay...

I looked at a scan of a decent modern sub overlay w/ the hopes of suggesting to ubi that we add it to the list of watchmiester datewheels, but even dicking around with it in Illustrator for a few minutes, couldn't improvew it much--certainly not enough to go through the hassle of printing. Unless they stop making the good-overlay subs I think buying a used one for the overlay and spare parts is the way to go.... As far as the vintage wheels, I learned on friday that the final production run will be carried out sometime this week!

I think it will be more visible over a black dial. Nice job. Note: For those going the lenscrafter route, keep in mind that not all stores, even stores w/ in-store labs, will do it and as previously mentioned, the lenscrafters near me only had the option of a greenish tint. I found a local chain that would do the blue, green, or purple but it is a bit more expensive than chieftang's joint w/ per piece, not a per run cost.

Nice work on the graphic. Thanks for posting it!

This can't be true. If it is, it seems to me that GAF ought to be careful of whh auctions they pull. I an't imagine that hey have a right to pull an auction of someone selling an autentic rolex part. If they think they do I hope they pull the auction of someone with pockets deep enough and a temper bad enough to fight it. Can you imagine what would happen if a court upheld the right of companies to use their brand name copyright to prevent the sale of used parts? Think about it: cars, computers, anything. It would be chaos. Slay, do you have a copy of the pics and auction test you used? I'd love to see what GAF thinks gives them the right to stop the sale of a genuine Rolex part.

I've seen many of them on the Bay for between $150 and $200 for both the black rubber and the orange croc. Might want to do a quick sear over there..

In the interest of honesty, I shold admit I bought a box and papers set for my 111, no matter how embarrasing it is: I just didn't like the way the big honkin' 44mm PAM looked in my boxes next to the 36-41 watches...looked out of place. Hey, I'm anal. Sue me. The papers came w/ it and I don't even remember where I stuck them. That being said, I'm with you. I worry aboutj people worried about the D in Certifidato the same way I worry about the people who worry about unique serial numbers....but only a little. Probaly they've just gotten a ittle too caght up in the acuacy game or maybe just get a rus out of fooing people. I doubt highly that very many of us are hawking reps as gens. The real question is, how can anyone smart enough to ahieve the requisite disposable incom to spend 5 grand on a watch be dumb enough to buy a rep sold as a gen?

I pop an Allegra and look at pics of IWCs when I can't get to sleep, but the fit and finish on that one makes it the first really 1:1 rep of the current run of 1:1 reps...

How tight is too tight? Just till it stops turning easily? Great tutorial! Thanks!!

Ubi's right about that--I've read that the majority of extant gens have white wheels due to the service replacement. But, if you really really want silver wheels please read post #29.

It's a shame nbody can source asia 7750 datewheels. The asia "7753" is the movement for which direct-to- wheel printing is the only way to go.

Nice work! Love the strap on the VC, and the fiddy is as good as PAM reps get!

In light of marks trials and tribulations w/ the PAM wheels we decided to finish the 2836 vintage wheels first. These are in final production and will be available soon. So if you want to see the general quality and accuracy (including true 1:1 "printing") of our way of doing things, check out ubi's "Watchmen Vintage Datewhwwls v3.0) thread. Since Mark's project won't be coming out for a while and since he's not going to do any 7750's, we're going to go ahead and do a production run of the asia 7750. We're tweaking the gen datewheel image to make them look more accurate w/ rep cyclopses (the time frame of which largely depends on my available free time). The good news is that the time frame beween giving the production shop the go ahead and recieving the finished products can be as low as a few days depending on their workload.

What the heck, I'll go in on the group buy. Are these those Korean Super Bags everyone talks about?

If this were yet another PAM, IWC, or Rolex the movement engraving and lack of gold hallmarks would be dealbreakers and my money would stay in my wallet. But Angus and whatever shop he's working with are making the attempt to do what a lot of collectors have dreamed about--making high quality reps of interesting and unusual watches. For that reason, I'm going to buy one of each of these new models, and I hope all collectors who want this trend to continue do the same. Even if these flaws do bug some people, it seems a little...er... inconsistent to moan about some on-the-back flaws when versions 1.0 of these watches are more accurate than version 83 of a lot of PAMs and Rolexes that we wear every day.

I'd say the best accuracy/value combo would be EL's w/ Davidsen capped hands and a dial lume. 2XX for the watch, $35 for the hands, and about $50 for the sandwhich relume plus whatever you spend on the strap. Anal retentives like me will want to have someone rebrush the case more aggressively as well as service the movement and polish the bridgeplates and brass gears to fool another 1.2 percent of the WIS's who take a passing glance at it.

Maybe he's nuts, maybe he just knows he's the only game in town. I hate dealing w/ the guy too, but, for example, can anyone tell me by way of example who else has a as large a selction of hands as he does?

Wait a second...I thought the lever was centered on H series guards---yeah they might be getting smart: a bunch of guards, 99% alike, but different enough that unless the chinese copy them all, collectors will be able to tell rep from real as long as they know which version gores on wich watch. I'm actually OK, w/ that since 99% of the people who see my watches couldn't tell and the the other 1% either collect reps, in which case they approve, or gens, in which case their so dumb I don't care what they think. Wait a second...I thought the lever was centered on H series guards---yeah they might be getting smart: a bunch of guards, 99% alike, but different enough that unless the chinese copy them all, collectors will be able to tell rep from real as long as they know which version gores on wich watch. I'm actually OK, w/ that since 99% of the people who see my watches couldn't tell and the the other 1% either collect reps, in which case they approve, or gens, in which case their so dumb I don't care what they think.

Seems more like an opinion than a question, but to asnwer it: I assume the thinking was that if RWGers wanted to make TRC the main--and I guess only if RWG went dark--rep board then a large number of members would have bolted RWG to make TRC their homes when it became clear that RWG was spiraling out of control toward an inveitable crash and burn. A few did exactly that, many more didn't. Thus, there seemed to be a demand for whatever RWG was and Admin and the RWG Founding WISes ment that demand w/ RWG II. I think the desire for RWG existed because RWG and TRC really were different in many ways, which were probably clear to anyone who frequented both. I've always been a RWG guy, although I'm regular reader and infrequent poster @ TRC. I'm glad they're both doing very well. RWG wil always be home, but I joined RWI a few weeks ago and definitely reccomend you and any other collector check it out. There are several excellent threads over there, including one which looks like it may have permanentlysolved the annoying (if minor( "A" problem on PAM dials.

Great news! Time to practice popping off those crystals! Chieftang, it would be great if your lens shop would reccomend the best adhesive for both glass and sapphire...