manodeoro

Hi folks ... it's been almost months since I haven't posted here ... I've had to put dialmaking and watchmaking aside and stay off from the forums for a while because I moved to a new house with my new GF and kids ... reconstructing a new family takes a lot of time. Then, early 2022, I had to take care of 2 old guys I love ... really close family ... One is almost OK now, though his brain is still so so ... The other one leaved our good hearth last week ... not in a starship I mean, he died after hard weeks of intensive care at the hospital ... Sometimes life is shitty and old age is not a bed of roses ... Now I start again working on watches and it proves to be helpful to avoid thinking about bad things ... so let's put sadness aside ... I'm happy to be back here ... So during the past week I 've been making some Doxa dials ... precision work was helpfull to sothe the mind ... Aqualungs ... one standard early Doxa and two from the Synchron era ... Blacklungs too ... not that much cause they require specific dial plates (I'm waiting for some more) ... Divingstars ... All Synchron era ... two standards and one "Poseidon" with that nice logo And two Sharkhunters ... those are not as popular than the others but they are really nice too ...

just WOW !!! you did a great job ... Mine says hello ... I built it 2017 if I remember well home made Burford dial, fixed bars and 2 parts steel/german silver bezel ... a long journey ... it's been a box queen's for some years but now I've seen yours my wrist ask for it ...

Hi buddy ... A7750

Back to the origins ... 1946 - Air Liquide founded "La Spirotechnique" to sell the "Scaphandre Cousteau-Gagnan", aka C45, aka Aqua-Lung ... 1952 - René Bussoz, Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Emile Gagnan founded U.S Divers Company ... 1957 - Bussoz sold U.S. Divers Co. to La Spirotechnique / Aqualung International 216 - Air Liquide sold Aqualung International to Montagu Private Equity ... Next ???

Some weeks of friend of a friend sent me a pic of a rarely seen *doxa sUB 300 T dial ... something you'll certainly never se in real He asked my if I could print the same dial with some customisation. He is a former U.S. Navy Commander and his initials are H.G. ... so I worked on the design and made the print test below. The future owner said he wanted a dial to be more reddish than the "standard SUB 300 orange" So I sent him a color chart and made some color tests so that he could choose the color he wanted and here we are ... still orange but more close to red ... and ready for lumework 🙂 the orange/yellow dial with "la spirotechnique" logo on the background is one I'm making for my son

Something special on my wrist today ...just finsihed that build around 7PM 6610 Explorer negative-gilt red depth dial

Finished some more Doxa dials last week ... BLACKLUNG DIAL and HANDSET ... for NH35 SUB 300 T "NO LOGO" DIAL SUB 300 T "IRISHSTAR" DIAL I'm still waiting to hear back about the SUB 200 CORALLINE print test ... As soon I'll get a "GO" I'll resize the dial down to 17.5mm and proceed to lume work

Thanks [emoji3526] I didn't had the handset while luming the dial so there's a slight difference ... But Peter said me it's soooo slight that not really noticeable ... I'll post some pics of a lumed BlackLung dial next week's ... I thought I could do that sooner but I've found a better way to make the yellow dot so I've decided to remove everything and start from a blank dial plate [emoji33]

Irish Star shipped 02/03, received 08/03 and cased 09/03 ... a smoothly runnig operation Yesterday evening my friend Dr Peter Millar sent me some pics ... everything's ready for Saint Patrick's day

Hi guys … some really good news today ... Members who check that thread from time to time have already read about my « Irish Star » Doxa project I posted here October 2000. The original Irish Star dial was made for Dr Pete Millar and was quite nice but, IMHO, it looked too much"modern style". So I decided to redo it, "vintage style" and with a real Irish shamroc, not a 4 leaves clover. Since then I’ve had too much work at the office and I postponed that project. But sometimes things catch up with you … Mid-September I received a PM from the Doxa guy himself … Dr Pete McClean Millar. For those who didn’t heard about him, Pete Millar has writen books about the Doxa subs, collaborated with the Company and is a(the!) specialist about those divers. You can check his website here http://www.doxa300t.com/ , his books about Doxas here http://www.thedoxabook.com/ an his last book about the Aquastar here http://www.adiveintotime.com/ ... I was really honored to read what Dr Millar wrote about the work I had already done on those Doxa dials, saying I had progressed to almost perfection … though I’m still far from it … We chated about Doxas, divers, dial-making, Oil & Gas industry, etc … and decided that the Irish Star project had to exist « in real ». First thing I did was to prepare a blank ETA dial plate to the exact dimensions needed to fit in the Doxa Sub 1200T case were it will be … no pics of that step as it’s standard work … The next step was to select the perfect « Irish » green I would apply on the blank plate. We agreed that « Mickey Finn’s Irsih Green Apple » was nice So I painted the dial using the same green, then I applied 2 coats of glossy lacquer While the final glossy coat was drying, I did a print test on a blank copper ETA dial, just to check that the position of the date window was good enough Everything looked OK … both for me and Pete, so I went to the print process and got that result Here we were really close to the end … But there was still the lume work to do and though the last ones I had done were nice they were not good enough … that one had to be as « close to perfect » as I could do… I wanted to achieve sharp angles on the white rectangles in daylight and on the lume in darkness … So I searched for a new method to apply the lume I searched and finally found the way to proceed … simple and easy, no expensive tools, just steady hands and some imagination … And today I’m glad to show you the result … The « Irish Star » is alive and glows in the dark …

Thanks buddy ... Custom dial made by myself a few years ago ... Custom Burford dial, custom (and fully working) A/6538 german silver bezel, fixed bars, engraved midcase and caseback, etc ... almost every part of that watch has been custom made or reworked by me I took me months of work but that's one of the really few A/6538 Reps available ...

The second one is a Blacklung dial with a custom handset ... Making that custom handset proved to be MUCH more difficult than I thought at first ... I designed the hands using Blacklung close-up pics, send that to my maker and waited for some weeks ... Just before New Years Eve the handsets arrived in my mail box and I was not that happy ... The hands were nicely cut but the finish was so so and none of the tubes really fitted to the movement So I decicde to rework everything : - remove the lume -nsqueeze the tubes on hours and minutes hands -nbroach the tube on the seconds hand - redo theblack varnish finish It took me hours but at the end I achieved ti get something I liked. So I just had to lume everything ... off-white lume with low-green glow ... Then I proceeded to the final mounting on a an ETA 2824-2 movement ... now it's just ready to ship ... BTW ... I have almost finished another Balcklung dial and handset, same design but made for a Seiko NH35 movement ... I just have to lume evrything so I'll post the result next week if everything goes well ...

Today I'll post some news about those Doxa dials ... I have just finished 2 dials and handsets that will be shipped tomorrow to a friend ... I had already worked on a "sharkhunter" dial but the future owner was hesitating between that one and a "conquistador" ... So, after some emails back and forth, we decided to make something in the beteween ... So I'm happy to present you the "SHARQUISTADOR" - Black "sharkhunter" dial - "sharkhunter" handset - "conquistador" print That dial is for a Miyota 8215 so I've had to slightly modify the design to make it fit the dial size and the date window The handset is a white Soxa one for Miyota movements that I have partly painted in matte black to make it look as close as possible to an original "sharkhunter" handset The future owner wanted all that look "like it had been lost in deep water for years" ... I've made my best to match that description and we are both pretty happy with the final result ...

Some news about my "now glossy" Doxa dials in progress ... I have 5 dials on my bench those days ... 3 gens specs for ETA movements and 2 for NH35 The dials for ETA are still waiting for varnish finsih but here are the 2 for NH35 ... Sorry for the bad pics ... I'll make better shoots when finished SUB 300 T Professional "no logo" ... waiting for lume work SUB 300 T "Blacklung" ... I still have to print the yellow dot and put the "Blacklung" logo on

Last week I have prepared some orange sprayed dial plates for Doxas ... no more "orange peel" and glossy enough IMHO ...

No the faintest idea on how they applied in production ... sorry I do use a silk needle ... and a magnifying glass 😁 This evenig I've made a print-test of the Blacklung I have re-designed for NH35 a few days ago Here's a pic showing how it will look through a Seiko rehaut As there's no paint on the dial plate, the thin black circle around the Blacklung logo simulate where the yellow paint will go ... May I say that I'm pretty happy with the result ?

Somebody here asked me if I would lume those dials ... and the answer is "YES Sir" ... Here are some pics of the lumed dials and handsets ... "Sub 300 T Aqualung" day light pic and lume pic "Sub 300 Blacklung" day light pic and lume pic I even achieved to make the 1/3mm lume dot to the left of the date window ...

caSt ... no caTs

the die is cats ... I'll try my chanve to make them glossy ...

I don't have no idea if the original dials were printed glossy or semi-glossy ... but looking at the pics I found on the web it seems they have all become semi glossy or even matte ... except for the sunbursts of course ... The blacklung below, published by Michael Stockton from on Fratello Magazine, is a good example IMHO ... I'll do some trials with glossy finish, just to see how it looks, but I don't want my dials to look brand new so I'll probably keep on doing them semi-glossy or matte ... BTW ... I avoid using varnish on my dials ... as few varnishes can withstand a stay in water

Some days ago a member here asked me if I would make a Black Lung for his Seiko Prospex ... so I started working on the design as the one I already made was for an ETA dial While doing that I realized that I had made a BIG mistake while designing the first version of that dial On almost all the SUB 300 T, including the early Seamasters : - the 5mn marks "touch" the rehaut - there are 1 to 3 tiny marks between the lumed 15mn marks and the rehaut - there are 3 tiny marks between the date window and the rehaut If you look closer at the SUB 300 Black Lung (no T) dials you can notice that there's a tiny gap between rehaut and the 5mn marks so I have modified my design to respect that specificity The second specific point is that on the Gen Black Lung watches (ETA dials) the date window is really close to the rehaut. Considering the internal diameter of the metal chapter on the Seikos (27.72mm) and the dimensions and position of the date window, it is clearly impossible to keep the same design and the date window will be more distant from the rehaut (metal chapter on Seiko's). So there are 2 options : 1 - keep the exact "Black Lung" design and accept that there will be a larger blank part between the black rectangle around the date window and the rehaut 2 - modify a little the design and add 3 tiny printed marks between the black rectangle and the rehaut Below are 2 comparison pics that illustrate those 2 options. Left is a Gen SUB 300 Black Lung dial and right is the design for a NH35 movement. On the NH35 design the black exterior circle shows the size of the Seiko dial (28.55mm) and the orange part shows the part of the dial that will be visible through the metal chapter (of course in real all the surface of the blank dial plate will be painted orange). OPTION 1 - respectful of the original design OPTION 2 - modified to match Seiko's window date position My opinion is that the second option, though less respectful of the original design, would be a better choice as the 3 tiny printed indices on the right of the date window will be less noticable than the "gap" between the date window and the rehaut on the first option. The future owner agrees with me ... plus he thinks the 3 tiny marks on the right of the date window will be a perfect "tell" so people will easily know that the dial is not a genuine one ... so we have decided to go with option 2 which is definitely better balanced. BTW ... I'm a honest guy and I always stand by my work ... So the guy for whom I made the first ETA Black Lung will get a new dial with the new better design ... I have already prepared a blank ETA dial plate and I'll modify the ETA design and print it within a few days ...

You know what ?... I can't wait to see it in real ... I have some blank dial plates coming to me so as soon as they arrive I'll make that one and post some pics ... I hope shipping won't be delayed because of Covid 19 ... I'm waiting for this too ... from a retired watchmaker near Paris ...

Another design ... just a project for now ... I had seen the "Irsih Star" that Doxa made for the Flying Doctor and it looked much too "modern style' IMHO ... So I plan to redo it, more "vintage style" and with a real shamrock ...

Thanks ... If I ever decide to replace the "Aware" logo on the Palawai dial ... that watch is "French Made" so I would probably use "la spirotechnique" logo About adding a mark on the back of my dials ... I know my work is thousand miles away from the work Dark Lord did ... when I look at his dials I feel like a candle looking at a supernova Nevertheless I think it's a really good idea and I'll search a way to do that ... possibly some sort of "stamp" if I find a way to do that