jimcon11

Congrats man, that is simply an amazing 5513. Can't really go wrong with that decision

Is the real one on the right ? I'm guessing by the cyclops magnification. I always wonder why Rolex chose to alter the perfect shape of their case to make it so blocky, remove the bevels, etc

Nice job man. It hurts me to age a dial once I have one nicely made but it needs to be done. I'm planning on doing a final dial eventually, with gold electro-plating, white paint under the lume markers, better lume, and textured a bit like yours. From all the pics I have seen, the Tudor dials tend to look fairly matte now; I'm not sure how glossy they were originally but probably not as much as the concurrent Rolex dials. Now how to get the raised ink effect on the text... that is the final frontier

fresh snow

^I love the Snowflake I guess I was wondering, relevant to the topic here, if the HR 5517 dial is on par with the VN dials in terms of accuracy and fineness of print. It might be possible that HR can do gen movement dial feet too, and this would be an option for the OP to consider. I haven't studied the 5517 closely but I love military watches so I'm thinking there might be one in my future

How do the HR milsub dials compare to the others? They seem to be regarded best among all the HR dials and I've seen a few nice builds with them. I think the cost is less too although cost shouldn't be much of a factor in a build of this caliber. To me the MQ and Ruby look over-serifed. The Phong dial looks good except the I-beam effect on the batons is oddly exaggerated. You might realize that nobody makes a dial you're happy with, and in that case it's possible to make your own with printable decal paper. That way you can take all the typography directly from the real dial. The downside is that it's quite a lot of work to produce one finished as nicely as the good aftermarket dials.

Jack gives some excellent advice. Regarding the build, it could be as simple as assembling it, or it could be more involved. Do you need the case reshaped? Do your crown and tube look right and actually function correctly? Do you have the right gaskets, and a proper watertight seal around the crystal? Does your movement fit the case perfectly as is? Do you want your dial and hands relumed? Do you want it aged to look 50 years old (and what amount of aging)? I would try to answer these yourself before you get someone else involved. There's an art to building these so that they look like an authentic watch instead of a bunch of brand new parts thrown together. Many people can accomplish the latter but only a few the former. And it really comes down to luck whether your parts all fit together well or if you need a lot of craftsmanship to get them to. I could help you out but there are a lot better builders here that I would defer to and I'm sure they will contact you. It does look like a great start though, you already have some of the hard pieces figured out.

You need to post your whole collection some time, it appears that you have countless breathtaking watches

Keep the gilt dial train rolling

Thanks amigo, it wouldn't be without your insight. We need to see more of your superb watches around here

boum

This is the way to do it! Own the gen first, then decide exactly how the build should be done. Nice looking project.

I think so. I've noticed some 7928s, 5512s, and 5513s have the long flat hands well into the 60s, but they always look original, i.e. old, so I don't think the flat hands were often used at service centers, if ever. It's just a little disturbing that I've come to care about these little details more than the person who is about to drop 6 figures on this watch with incorrect parts

Thanks man. What's really bad is when you're browsing pics and you see a nice old big crown listed in the "Superlative ROLEX" catalog as a model example, and then you notice that the minute hand doesn't reach the chapter ring

You need higher resolution pics of this baby. I prefer your 6350 but the milgauss is no slouch That's an interesting fix for the hour hand, I'll have to remember that trick. Dial says perpetual so you need to get that autowinder going. I'm thinking of household items that could be fashioned into extra long movement tabs... pen pocket clip, old Zippo lighter.. I'm sure you have something. Man, the way that offwhite dial catches the light is something else

I don't think it matters whether you work from above or below, as long as you keep the blade perpendicular to the hand itself (on the z axis). I ended up doing whatever was easiest based on the fact that I had to hold the hand in my left hand carefully without bending it. Just light pressure and many passes to keep things even, it's easy to go too far by accident. The Raffles 6204 minute hand is the full 13mm, which ended up being too long for my chapter ring. I'm not sure what the exact size of the chapter ring is on gen dials, but 26mm is right to the edge of my "gen spec" case, so my chapter ring is more like 25mm. Depending on the size of your chapter ring you might have to shorten the hand. I merely cut off the tip square and basically whittled a new point. I was worried that I'd never be able to make a good looking, even point, but again it wasn't as hard as I imagined. Just go easy because the damn things are 25 dollars a set JK hands: http://www.jkhorological.com/Product-detail.php?product-id=2477 The JK minute hand isn't terrible but it has some issues that are impossible to correct in my view. Can't wait to see the result, your milsub is going to be a monster

Of the 4 rep boards I'm aware of, I stumbled upon this one last, which is unfortunate because it's far and away the best community and best knowledge base, IMO. My understanding of vintage builds took off once I found this place, even though it's the one forum without a vintage section

Maybe just try on some scrap hands first to get a feel for the technique.. After you get the commando hands right, I know your A/6538 is screaming for some flat Mercedes hands . For reference I used the JK hour hand and Raffles 6204 minute hand. For the second hand you're on your own.. I'm not aware of a perfect one besides the old HR big ball that isn't really available anymore.

Thanks guys. Honestly, I think you will find the shaping of the hands very easy. I can barely lume a dial and my attempts to cut lug chamfers have been disastrous. I didn't even use magnification doing this... there's a lot of room for improvement. The JK hour hand has the perfect outer dimensions, it's just too fat everywhere The hardest thing for me, besides lume, has been getting a deep, even bronze finish on the hand surface. I have a bad habit of working by lamp light and it totally masks the luster of the hands and convinces me they are uniformly the right tone, then in natural light I realize they are half polished and half dull, mottled between brass and almost silver color, and usually way too bright and shiny, overpowering the gilt dial. Most of the gen hands I've seen have a tone even with the chapter ring or are even darker/more tarnished. I found one method that kind of works, using ammonia fumes, but the effect was pretty uneven. Anyone know how to darken and dull the hands without them just going silvery and rusty looking? I added this absurd early-style second hand after noticing a couple gen Tudors with them. It's a bit too long, and I don't think it was ever original, especially for the early military 7922s in the big crown case, but it looks hilarious to me and the little dot way out there helps to emphasize the low beat movement. A luminous second hand is now an ISO standard for dive watches, so I'm told, and it's funny how these early tool watches met all the modern standards but in such a stylized and barely-functional way, i.e. the Rolex way

Looking at this watch.. something still wasn't right. I thought: I finally have hands that are the correct length and general proportions, but they nonetheless look off. I looked around at some gen flat hands, and what I noticed is how incredibly thin they are structurally. Compared to mine: 🎳 Gen is on the left. I knew what must be done.. The thought of trying to thin out tiny, delicate hands while somehow maintaining their perfect lines seemed like it would end in disaster, but I had to give it a shot. I started with the minute hand. After removing the lume, I simply held it by the post hole and scraped a #11 blade at about a 45° angle against the interior of the two columns that hold up the pointed tip. After about 20 passes of shaving off small bits of metal, making sure to remove material evenly from the entire interior of the lume plot, I stopped to check the work. Before long, I had nice, thin columns. I thought: this is great, but surely the complex curves of the hour hand will be a different story. I noticed that just about everything on the hour hand needed trimming: the interior of the point, the whole ball of the Mercedes logo, and the rectangular plot at the bottom, which needed to be lengthened all the way to the post. I set to work, and soon realized that curves are even easier and more forgiving than straight lines. The hardest part was extending the bottom plot and keeping right angle corners square.. even the tiny tip of the #11 blade starts to round them out if you're the slightest bit imprecise. After about an hour of work on each hand, I was able to get a satisfying result: They aren't perfect, but overall, I was really surprised how easy and forgiving it is to alter these hands, and I'd recommend to anyone that they order some spares and give it a shot. It was a lot easier than luming my dial 😓. I'm sure that someone skilled with a rotary tool could get better results in less time. My big ball second hand was an unfortunate casualty in this experiment; it was just too thin and flimsy to work with after I've over-sanded it trying to get an even finish, and I mangled it trying to shave down the tip. So this was a two steps forward, one step back sort of endeavor, and my nice looking hour and minute have to endure being stationed with a crummy generic sweep second hand for now.

I think not all gen parts and replica parts are created equal. There are some extremely nice watches here, like the Daytonas and big crowns.. builds that cost thousands, yet do not meet the criteria for "Frankenstein", although they are in many cases more beautiful and more accurate than builds with >50% gen parts. In my view, the selection of parts, modding, fitment, and the aesthetic eye to maintain balance and pull everything together in the finished watch, is far more important than counting the number of gen parts. In the end, it matters very little to me if it's classified as rep, franken, genstein, etc.

Attention: the watches in this thread are Unsatisfactory in their finish, strap, and magnetic character. As a service to the community, for a limited time you may send me the unsatisfactory item and I'll dispose of it free of charge

Mate you need to consider our ocular safety before posting a Submariner torching that brightly

^Wow you even reproduced the Rolex box and guarantee card, impressive