HauteHippie

Welcome aboard. You've come to the right place. A good starting point might be the rep of the year discussion. As a Breitling fan, you might well want to consider the "Swiss" Super Ocean Steel Fish replica for your first acquisition.

I'll concur that the Submariner is a lightweight, unimpressive $5k watch at the AD. Side by side with a Planet Ocean it feels like a toy. I'm sure the objective was to keep it light and comfy, and many people will appreciate this. The bulky, large dial watches seem to me to be a fairly recent fad and one that is not likely to drive Rolex out of business or towards radical design changes any time soon.

I'll drink to that!

Admin?

Sorry to post off-topic, but who sold you the Speedmaster Broad Arrow?

A vote for the UPO.

Single sided if anything.

Quite nice looking actually... an Omega Aqua Terra lookalike.

The volume of "modding reps is dumb" posts is in the noise for this forum. The vast majority of RWG members do mod their reps to some extent.

Nice gift. But go Yankees!

Single sided if anything. I've done a few Fiddy crystals double sided for members and they looked great but not true to the gen. And, to be honest, single sided AR (on the inside surface) is very subtle... you can live without it.

Many of the stock rep coatings are inexpensive spin coats such as those used on eyeglasses. These require care when cleaning - using only a microfiber cloth and special cleaner or soap and water. Proper AR is not so delicate. Spit and a T-shirt is not a problem. ;-)

There are Military specifications for scratch resistance that my double AR coating exceeds. I listed them in another post yesterday, so you could look them up and read them for more details. But, the bottom line is that the coating is not as scratch resistant as uncoated sapphire and can be scratched in situations where uncoated sapphire would not be. In general though, if you use common sense, and are reasonably careful the coating should not scratch.

Well, probably 1164. In any event, hopefully you're right. The 3303 series was available in 2001 and has suffered from serious quality control issues and design flaws ever since.

DLC coaters will have no clue what kind of watch cases they're coating... replica, gen, from outer space, etc... They deal in engine components, tooling, etc.

Well I've tried to talk with k2222 via PM to get details about his coating so that we would definitively know the differences, but either he doesn't know, can't obtain the details I inquired about, or he doesn't want to tell me. In any event, both coatings definitely look the part. My questions, though, are centered around long term durability (not necessarily short term scratch resistance), and coating technology (sputtered vs. evaporated, layers, etc). It's the only way to compare apples to apples. By the way, my coating has now changed. I've (1) changed to a new coating company; and (2) changed to an improved coating technology offered by this company. The new company recently coated a sample sapphire crystal for me and all I can say is: Wow. This is better than anything I've yet seen on RWG and is probably better than what I've seen in the AD. Typically it is difficult to evaluate AR on a loose crystal, but this just stands out. It is amazingly non-reflective. Some of the pertinent info about my new coating and service is the following: * Full aperture coating - i.e. no tooling marks, no border whatsoever at the edges * Maximum 0.5% reflectivity across the entire visible spectrum. (previously it was a max of 1.25% but less than 1% in the sweet spot of the visible light spectrum) * Exceeds the durability requirements of MIL-C-675C, MIL-C-14806A, MIL-C-48497A and MIL-F-48616 US Military specifications. * Slight blue/purple tint - even slighter than my previous coating * Can be cleaned with water, alcohol, acetone or detergent * $45 USD / crystal, stripping of existing AR and polishing offered at $10 USD / crystal if needed (for sapphire only). Pictures soon. The holiday has slowed down the current run that will be using the new process, but results will be available in the new year! Also, I will continue to accept only bare crystals. I simply don't have time to work with entire watches doing disassembly/reassembly. However a fair number of members in my coating runs use trusted members such as Vaccum (USA) and The Zigmeister (Canada) to extract the crystals for them. It's a win/win for everyone this way.

It's an excellent rep. I would be willing to bet archibald is correct, too. There probably is a version printed just like your dial.

Yes, all the thin film coatings are sort of "see-through" which is why the surface prep (bead blasting) is so important.

A = Amorphous. I'm under the impression that DLC and ADLC are equivalent and interchangeable.

I'll agree that Rolli's person has improved on the PVD, but this still looks great. The bead blasting is absolutely flawless on this one.

It doesn't need to be a Snap-on bit. But a #55 Cobalt (0.0520") should be fine. Buy a few, as you'll probably break one or more. http://www.skygeek.com/012-55.html Refer to the following pinned thread also, as my memory might be failing me... http://www.rwg.cc/members/index.php?showtopic=15565

Only if cost percentage were the only consideration would the Cartier take the cake. Look at it this way: how many people were waiting with bated breath for the release of the SFSO rep? I didn't see a swell of anticipation, and in fact it just seemed like the SFSO became popular after the fact when word got out that it was a good rep. Perhaps even the "super rep" marketing caught hold and sucked more than a few in. And all that's fine, but if a great rep ultimately has that "so what" factor then should it really be ROY?

Looks gorgeous, T! The application looks very even, unlike some of the PVD jobs that can look a tad grainy somehow... Very nice!

The 3717 dial print, especially the numerals, is too bold compared to the gen. The Slevin and Cousteau have printing issues that are less obvious around the rehaut/bezel ring. Look at the thickness of the inverted numbers vs the thickness of the directly printed numbers. They're different but should be the same. Also compare the thickness of the directly printed numbers to the gen... too bold in comparison. I also think the IWC and SCHAFFHAUSEN print is a little too big and bold. Still, IMO, the Slevin dial is quite good - much better than the 3717 dial.

Good analysis, jj. Even though I'm not a fan, I could definitely buy in to the HBB being rep of the year - not one of the easier reps to pull off. The IWCs are good, but too flawed out of the box (and perhaps even after modest modding) to be contenders IMO.