jimcon11

Please report your findings

I totally agree that it's splitting hairs....the 50s Rolex hands are intricate as all hell. Yet they fit the dials so perfectly and they've made me a huge stickler for proper sized and detailed hands in all watches . I'll see a beautiful old JLC and then the hands dont reach the chapter ring--what fresh hell is this? We all key in on different details so a community like this one is essential. I thought the 6204 pencil-set minute hand was identical to the 6538 Mercedes-set minute hand (like on your big crown), but looking closer I see the lume plot and really the whole hand is a bit slimmer on the former. The one you have on your 6204 now is pretty damn close. The pencil hour hand I have is for ETA so I'll get it reshaped and relumed here shortly, just PM me your address.

Awesome 6204. Now that I've been here a little while I have a lot more appreciation for the slow opportunistic style of build where you just accumulate parts and let it finish on its own time. Results in a more cohesive end product. And in this instance it's cool to see your decision process and a lot of parts that are old/rare/unknown origin that add up to a really unique build. You mentioned the hands being not quite right and I'd agree for the hour and minute at least. When I search 6204 I see plenty of Mercedes hands come up so I'd venture that Slays handset could be perfect on this watch. If you are dead set on the pencil hour hand I have a spare here from Raffles that I could widen out the lume plot on and send you.

@slay As cool as the white seconds hand is, I kind of prefer gold I see that it's gold on the underside.. do you think removing the white with some paint thinner would reveal a gold matching the other hands? I've found seconds hands hard to polish because of the little rivet holding the post so I'd rather not try unless you know what's underneath.

fall

I find the crisis of authenticity hilarious. The experts are getting better along with the replica parts so I don't think the prices will ever fall that much, but it's funny how most in that community are just raring to pounce on someone at any sign of a fake. I will always stick to Ebay and thankfully forums like this one have given me the knowledge and ability to judge quality in watches. Whether it's original or aftermarket isn't a major concern of mine if it looks and feels the part.

@Bart Cordell just fantastic I received my handset too and they are just right, can't wait to get started on another watch.

As far as I know there isn't evidence of even a single person being harmed by their radium watch, anywhere in history. That's kind of astounding. All we have is some fairly alarming dosage math that doesn't seem to square with real world experience. Maybe because a full-body dose as outlined in the safety data is a lot more deleterious than a point source mainly on the wrist. Or maybe people have been affected and it's just impossible to single out radium as the cause of some metastatic cancer. If that's the case, It would take huge advances in how well we understand cancer for a causal link to be established. For now, it seems like the general precautions established long ago have done a good job at keeping people out of danger, so I'm not going to worry. It would be great if there was a second radium panic though, it might make some of my favorite watches actually attainable.

Zero to hero for me is UG, specifically the Polerouter. I originally thought it was such a brutal and overdesigned hunk of metal, totally opposed to the simple elegance and legibility of the military and sports watches I tend to gravitate toward. It was the last watch I would pay attention to for a long time. Then the right picture in an ad (attached below) totally changed my mind. The way the different finishes of the case, dial, hands, inner bezel, work together is unlike anything else; its otherworldliness echos midcentury abstract art. Looking further into them I found out about their legit history as pilot's watches and the exceptional quality of their microrotor movements. I used to think I hated artsy "dress" watches, but as I age I'm realizing that it's the dress watch aspects in sports watches that I really love, the Mercedes hands and chamfers on a big crown Submariner for instance. The Polerouter is like the extreme end of that spectrum, a sports watch fully disguised as some artful dress watch. Hero to zero.. well, I've tricked myself into disliking a lot of brands whose watches I can't really justify the cost of.

so true. For every great bargain in my past, there are a several 'impatiently overpaids' and those watches never manage to stay long. It's all about learning to resist the initial must-have impulse; if the need exists a year later, it's less intense and you can wait for the proper deal. Those are some nice chunky diving instruments up there, making me long for a fifty fathoms a little...

I think he means like this 😀 I'm very interested in one of these cases. Would it be possible to get a sterile case, so that one can get custom engravings done later? Any estimate of what the price will be? I assume they will come with one of your early inserts that are in the works?

Speechless

Depends on what type of 1016 you're making, the reference evolved a fair bit over time. The earlier radium hands are harder to get than the later tritium ones.

https://www.mochacha.org/ Looks like decent stuff, hard to tell if the gilt dials are actually gilt. Cool to see a Commando, I always like when the more obscure references get a rep.

I wonder what would have happened if the American companies had kept to civilian production and didn't lose that several years of technical development to the war. They seem to me like some of the most critical years in the history of watchmaking. The 40s Rolex bubblebacks, for instance, exhibit all the DNA of the first sports watches of the 50s, and I wonder if any American designs would have rivaled or even beat them in the race to the civilian tool watch concept. On the military side, US watches seem to me technologically on par with those of the Swiss brands, and certainly less expensive to produce. The A11 pilots watches had the same +-15 spd accuracy standard and hacking feature as the RAF 6b/159s from Longines, Omega, and JLC. And while not as flashy as a Radiomir, the Elgin and Hamilton canteens were probably the best proto-dive watches of WW2. Once again, it's obvious that the 40s were a critical formulative period since many successive Swiss military developments like the Submariner, Blancpain FF, IWC Mark11 all sooner or later became hugely successful civilian classics. Pocket watches are a topic I have yet to explore much, but just browsing some of the movement pics from the models you mentioned makes me really want to get one and start tinkering with it.