kilowattore

From my preliminary thoughts I will use DSN new dial and CB on a noob or H case set and Sead CG. Pity I can't re-use the CG I bought for the 036 build as it got destroyed during my "experiments" Well, I'm surprised you didn't get a 087 yet. Mine came in yesterday, and I'm more than impressed. Great case and beautiful dial, bezel and pearl. CG lever operation is good, bezel clicks fine and is tight, not wobbly. Even the strap looks awful but feels better than any other rep strap I had so far. And that dial... trust me you need one Imho one of the best reps of the year and based on the success it's having I would start to make room for a 064 and a 024/025. Now they made the case set they would be crazy not to release them all.

Thanks mate, your builds have been very inspiring to me and after seeing your post on RG next I have been thinking about a 082 for a while now, I might try something next year I agree with you, the dial makes the watch, the rest of the mods are essentially a lot of work to get to that 0.001% closer to the gen. Case-wise, there is no perfect choice for this build: noob/Hfac cases have a better shape, DSN has the engravings and that's why I chose it. Besides it has a round crown tube already installed although maybe not exact gen dimensions. And I had to forget about Sead CG. Decisions, decisions... Mate, you should be VERY happy with your franken, don't touch it

I'm not confident to work on other's watches, too many things that can go wrong or break. But in the future, maybe. In the meanwhile make up your mind about which PAM you want, may I suggest you to check PAM 390 (closed CB, gold hands) and PAM 176/177 (brushed titanium case, sandwich dial, open CB)? They are as close to gen as a 111 and might suit your likes better

I work on a fairly tight budget, but this got close to 900 for the parts only including the strap.

Sorry for double posting...

Luminor Marina Militare PAM 036 A review in two parts PART 2 - the rolli/FGD 036B build Here's the follow up to my review of the OOB new Davidsen's 036B, found HERE. This is for sure the most elaborate and challenging project I completed so far. The amount of work I put on it has been, well, a lot. But it has paid imho. Some details could still be perfected, a few problems arose and I had to work my way around them the best I could. Most of them I solved, for others I had to accept a few compromises. Watch has been assembled and disassembled completely a number of times before I was satisfied with the results. I beg your pardon in advance if this thread will turn into a long read, those of you who are not that interested in the details of the build's process may skip the text and go directly to the pics Ok then, but what did I do to this watch? CASE Davidsen's case set was my choice for this build, mainly because it's the only available case featuring the engravings on the back as per the gen. The case was completely disassembled and washed with chemicals in order to remove the dullish patina it had when I received it. Afterwards it went through a full spa treatment with a few different grades sandpaper, the area near the lugs was reworked to achieve a cleaner finish where they join the case although some of the machining marks could not be removed completely. The crystal was re-seated in order to have a little less height above the bezel, crown was cleaned and repolished, I even polished the sides of the lugbars. Not a single part remained untouched In the works: Finished: Old case: New: Old: CROWNGUARD I ordered an A-F series crownguard from Sead for this build as it is known to be the closest to the gen CG, and it really is. The lever shape is scary close to gen, it has a perfect curve and the tip points nicely towards the watch body. Unfortunately though when I mounted it on the case I realized the fitment was not good at all, there was a 0.2 mm space in the upper and bottom part, where the CG should touch the case, due to the slightly different shape of DSN and noob cases. So the choice was between a better overall CG with a perfect lever or a slightly worse CG and lever but with a perfect fitment. I chose the latter. I then disassembled the CG completely, cleaned and refinished a bit the inner shape, retouched the lever tip, shortened a tiny bit the steel CG pin and brushed it to match the titanium of the CG. Old CG New CG Crown detail DIAL I managed to find one of the few dials produced by rolli at the end of last year. I was very lucky indeed as these have been sold out for a long time and no one knows if they will ever be made again. As I stated in my review DSN's new dial is great, but of course it can't compare to this dial. Here's a GEN vs DSN vs ROLLI comparison DSN GEN ROLLI As you can see rolli's dial is scary close to the gen one, perfect sausage lume application with a glossy, raised and rounded surface. Perfect numbers shape and inscriptions font. Most of all a perfect match for the tobacco color which rolli claims to be painted using the same Pantone color used for the genuine Panerai dials. The gen dial looks to have a polished slope around numbers and indices that is not visible in rolli's, and that's the only difference I could observe. I talked with rolli about this feature and was told it's due to the coin stamping production process used by Panerai. From what I understood the press that stamps theindices and markers on the brass dial plate leaves a polished rim around the indices that remains visible even after painting the dial surface. Using the same equipment to produce these rep dials would have raised dramatically the production costs, making them too much expensive, so the contours have been machine polished achieving a similar result, close but not the same. GEN Rolli I have to say this dial has a tiny blemish near the 3 marker on the seconds subdial, so tiny though that it can be seen clearly only under specific lights at 10x magnification. Nothing I worry about The real issue I had to face here was with installing the hands: the FGD hands that came with the dial were not finished very well, there was a lot of lume spilling over the hands' sides and the seconds hand had a tiny blob of lume underneath that prevented the movement from working. It took me quite a bit of time and a mighty migraine to fix these issues, the lume material in excess has been very gently removed with a tootpick from the side and the back of the hands but for the life of me I'm still not completely satisfied with the result, there's a microscopic spot that seems to appear and disappear like it's playing with me Anyway I digress, maybe I will just ask rolli to sell a spare hands set to me with his new dial once it's released ;) Here you can see clearly the lume glowing on the sides of the hands: Way better now: CASEBACK AND MOVEMENT GEN One of the details that were haunting me about this 036 build was the golden outline of the jewels holes in the gen movement. It's one of those things that you just HAVE to do something about it or you will never be satisfied, so here's where I got completely crazy I found online a special paint with real metal scales in it and bought a micro-brush used in modellism, then I painted the holes by hand. I cannot even begin to describe how much time and patience I had to put in painting those three little holes without spreading the paint all over the bridges, two movements where sacrificed in order to achieve an acceptable result. Sacrificed movement I didn't have the guts to do this on a swiss hi-beat movement worth 250-300 usd so in the end I opted for a hi-beat asian 6497-2 I sourced from Helena Rou. I have to say it is a little more expensive than the usual a6497 you find on the bay but it was by far the cleanest and nicest looking I have seen so far. This means though that there is no Y incabloc installed on this movement and since swapping it is far beyond my skills I will have to live with this flaw. As I said there are always compromises you need to accept Here's the final result: NEW OLD Now I'm sure I wrote too much as usual, but I tried to describe what goes behid the scenes and unnoticed each time we look at the nice builds that some members are posting. I'd like to thank each ad every one of them for the inspiration and for what I learnt reading and looking at their builds. On to the rest of the pictorial: Final wristie! :rockon:

Luminor Marina Militare PAM 036 A review in two parts PART 2 - the rolli/FGD 036B build Here's the follow up to my review of the OOB new Davidsen's 036B, found HERE. This is for sure the most elaborate and challenging project I completed so far. The amount of work I put on it has been, well, a lot. But it has paid imho. Some details could still be perfected, a few problems arose and I had to work my way around them the best I could. Most of them I solved, for others I had to accept a few compromises. Watch has been assembled and disassembled completely a number of times before I was satisfied with the results. I beg your pardon in advance if this thread will turn into a long read, those of you who are not that interested in the details of the build's process may skip the text and go directly to the pics Ok then, but what did I do to this watch? CASE Davidsen's case set was my choice for this build, mainly because it's the only available case featuring the engravings on the back as per the gen. The case was completely disassembled and washed with chemicals in order to remove the dullish patina it had when I received it. Afterwards it went through a full spa treatment with a few different grades sandpaper, the area near the lugs was reworked to achieve a cleaner finish where they join the case although some of the machining marks could not be removed completely. The crystal was re-seated in order to have a little less height above the bezel, crown was cleaned and repolished, I even polished the sides of the lugbars. Not a single part remained untouched In the works: Finished: Old case: New: Old: CROWNGUARD I ordered an A-F series crownguard from Sead for this build as it is known to be the closest to the gen CG, and it really is. The lever shape is scary close to gen, it has a perfect curve and the tip points nicely towards the watch body. Unfortunately though when I mounted it on the case I realized the fitment was not good at all, there was a 0.2 mm space in the upper and bottom part, where the CG should touch the case, due to the slightly different shape of DSN and noob cases. So the choice was between a better overall CG with a perfect lever or a slightly worse CG and lever but with a perfect fitment. I chose the latter. I then disassembled the CG completely, cleaned and refinished a bit the inner shape, retouched the lever tip, shortened a tiny bit the steel CG pin and brushed it to match the titanium of the CG. Old CG New CG Crown detail DIAL I managed to find one of the few dials produced by rolli at the end of last year. I was very lucky indeed as these have been sold out for a long time and no one knows if they will ever be made again. As I stated in my review DSN's new dial is great, but of course it can't compare to this dial. Here's a GEN vs DSN vs ROLLI comparison DSN GEN ROLLI As you can see rolli's dial is scary close to the gen one, perfect sausage lume application with a glossy, raised and rounded surface. Perfect numbers shape and inscriptions font. Most of all a perfect match for the tobacco color which rolli claims to be painted using the same Pantone color used for the genuine Panerai dials. The gen dial looks to have a polished slope around numbers and indices that is not visible in rolli's, and that's the only difference I could observe. I talked with rolli about this feature and was told it's due to the coin stamping production process used by Panerai. From what I understood the press that stamps theindices and markers on the brass dial plate leaves a polished rim around the indices that remains visible even after painting the dial surface. Using the same equipment to produce these rep dials would have raised dramatically the production costs, making them too much expensive, so the contours have been machine polished achieving a similar result, close but not the same. GEN Rolli I have to say this dial has a tiny blemish near the 3 marker on the seconds subdial, so tiny though that it can be seen clearly only under specific lights at 10x magnification. Nothing I worry about The real issue I had to face here was with installing the hands: the FGD hands that came with the dial were not finished very well, there was a lot of lume spilling over the hands' sides and the seconds hand had a tiny blob of lume underneath that prevented the movement from working. It took me quite a bit of time and a mighty migraine to fix these issues, the lume material in excess has been very gently removed with a tootpick from the side and the back of the hands but for the life of me I'm still not completely satisfied with the result, there's a microscopic spot that seems to appear and disappear like it's playing with me Anyway I digress, maybe I will just ask rolli to sell a spare hands set to me with his new dial once it's released ;) Here you can see clearly the lume glowing on the sides of the hands: Way better now: CASEBACK AND MOVEMENT GEN One of the details that were haunting me about this 036 build was the golden outline of the jewels holes in the gen movement. It's one of those things that you just HAVE to do something about it or you will never be satisfied, so here's where I got completely crazy I found online a special paint with real metal scales in it and bought a micro-brush used in modellism, then I painted the holes by hand. I cannot even begin to describe how much time and patience I had to put in painting those three little holes without spreading the paint all over the bridges, two movements where sacrificed in order to achieve an acceptable result. Sacrificed movement I didn't have the guts to do this on a swiss hi-beat movement worth 250-300 usd so in the end I opted for a hi-beat asian 6497-2 I sourced from Helena Rou. I have to say it is a little more expensive than the usual a6497 you find on the bay but it was by far the cleanest and nicest looking I have seen so far. This means though that there is no Y incabloc installed on this movement and since swapping it is far beyond my skills I will have to live with this flaw. As I said there are always compromises you need to accept Here's the final result: NEW OLD Now I'm sure I wrote too much as usual, but I tried to describe what goes behid the scenes and unnoticed each time we look at the nice builds that some members are posting. I'd like to thank each ad every one of them for the inspiration and for what I learnt reading and looking at their builds. On to the rest of the pictorial: Final wristie! :rockon:

Of course. Nothing beats a gen tritium dial. Looking forward to see more

That's perfection.You made a good choice on the AR imho. Even if inaccurate for this model it improves its look in a subtle way. Well done!

I use homage/parnis/marina militare sandwich dials. They go for 5-10 usd each shipped. Carefully separate the two layers with a blade, scrape off the lume and eventually make the plate a bit thinner by rubbing it on sandpaper.

Ouch! Beautifully done

Grim is right, the machining marks inside the lugs are what you have to look for. I would hazard the case is gen though, based on the shape of the lugs in last pic. Noob are fatter, shorter and closer to the upper part of the case case. Also, there doesn't seem to be any frozen halo around the date mag. Definitely worth a secons look imho.

The MP is the perfect match, almost impossible to find something better

Both nice watches and combos, but the strap mounted on the fiddy wins the show hands down, congrats!

I just re-read the whole thread and what I see here is a parade of grumpy egos, nothing less nothing more. Sad to see this coming from long, established and reputable members. On the other hand it's funny how those who defend rolli are those who bought his dials and those who detract him are those who didn't. Is that really a coincidence? I could care less to compare 20.000 pics that are shot in different light conditions, with different cameras, lenses and distance from the object, enlarged or shrunk to appear the same resolution when they aren't, and besides showing dials of different series. Even in the same series a very tiny variation in the finer detail is possible, even for the mighty swiss makers. The indices appear to be fatter than some of the gen pics shown, so what? This remains the absolute best result achieved so far in replicating a 000 dial. You might want to buy it or not, nobody is forcing anyone. Fact is that every batch has been sold out despite this awful job of bashing the seller. I get that rolli could reply in a less harsh way, but I also get he dedicated years (and most likely a discrete sum of money) to achieve these results and sell them to a few enthusiasts, not to defend himself from these repeated accusations. Please stop the mud slinging and enjoy the hobby

Wow, impressive! Finally a sausage dial with properly slightly recessed lume application. We've been waiting for it for a while. I think the pic under sunlight makes the indices appear even deeper than what they really are. It's not very evident in the pics, but I think another great difference IRL, in respect to the noob, is the base paint of the dial. It has a different and more matte black that makes dial and indices merge in a nicer way. I won't comment on the fatter numbers and indices, quite noticeable in the lume shot because I don't know which one is correct. If I know rolli a bit though, and his attention to detail, I can imagine his reply already Good job rolli and congrats abba zabba zoo!

Since 201a and 202a are almost ready to go, I would say 205a