Watchmeister

The AR is too blue on the rep. I had the opportunity to wear a friend's gen for a few months and loved it. It inspired me to go through both the original Honpo and the 7753. By the way, congrats Burnz. 187 is one I have always lusted over. Digisquid, if you look at B's pictures you will see the two principal flaws on the rep. The "He" should be engraved rather than raised lettering on the valve and the the actuator button is too large relative to the entire date set mechanism. Still a ridiculously good rep and that datewheel looks great.

Absolutely gorgeous watch. You have done a remarkable job. Date section looks great.

I do hope they rep that one - especially given the movement that Gran showed from Seagull. A little decoration and you are good to go. One of the things about the 5120's is that virtually all I see are precious metals. The other issue is that particular watch is just a little too subtle for a substantial portion of the rep buying population. No matter how well they made it I suspect it wouldn't sell as well as a Rolex, Breitling or Panerai. But the movement is there. I will admit that at some point many years ago I owned a gen and frankly I found it to be boring on the wrist. There was a limit to how many times I could stare at the Patek name. I got rid of it.

I think I would be showing off too. Congrats on the new wheels. That is a potent combination.

Very cool mod. Not sure the aging is right for all models though but it would look great on certain models. In truth AP has done different things with their date wheels, date windows and even cyclops over time.

Very nice.

As the title states I am wondering if there is an equivalent process to AR (eliminating the reflection) for plastic. I know that the typical AR process for glass and sapphire crystals requires a good amount of heat to properly apply it. My assumption is that the plastic would melt at the required temperatures. I am wondering if there is a chemical coating solution which has a similar impact to the optics but doesn't require excessive heat. Thanks in advance.

The original PAM Ferarri's were some of the best reps ever. I have never been a fan of watches affiliated with a car I don't own. Although I have never seen a matching car and watch in the wild. In any case there are plenty of posts about it on the forum and as I recall one or two are spot on. They haven't made new reps in a while. I am not sure Panerai makes gens anymore. I believe Panerai has discontinued their association with Ferarri.

Isn't that the day the crazy man predicted the end of the world? I just want to know when the 187 is coming. But for sake of this thread I will go with July 4rrh ..... 2013.

Absolutely beautiful.

And my reference point for this one - one of the original six MBW frankens: And ultimately I like Theo concluded that it required the EOD style case and bought one of the old case design cheap quartz versions and did the transplant.

One of these days I will have to chase down one of the VRF threads. It actually is a very simple topic. Tritium is a gas. How it ages or decays will be a function of its reaction to the substrate to which it is attached. Do folks who have t dial PAM's and vintage Rollies agree with me that Panerai's binding agent is (from a longeviy perpective) far inferior to Rolex's.In the case of Panerai I am also convinced that they put a top coating on some of their tritium dials. They certainly did it to some of their hand sets.

Well that explains why I can get a reading from a geiger counter on a much older radium dial but not on a tritium one.

If that is the case it is a function of the substrate (phosphorous adherent) and how it interacts with the tritium and any contaminants (air, light, water, etc.). Tritium is a gas.

Welcome. I applaud your approach to collecting. As you have already found there are a whole lot of nice people with a whole lot of horologically knowledge. Good to see you diving right in.

It is if you know the answer.

I am with Freddy. Tritium is a gas. Without some form of phosphorous material there is no glow. That material or substrate will have a huge impact on how your tritium ages in terms of luminosity, color and even amount of physical decay. Whether the tritium and its substrate is exposed to air, water or even sunlight will have a big impact as well. For all those reasons no two watches age the same - and IMHO that is what is cool about tritium. For my money Rolex is the one that found the best substrate for longevity. I have a '66 Rolex and it still glows and maintains a yellow rather than brown color better than my 10 year old Panerai's. In the past my watch smith has even made tritium with very different results based on the substrate.

Very nice. Wear that one well.

H- If you have time and don't need the hands you can have one from me. I am building another franken and can ask my watchsmith to ship me back the original rep movement along with the watch. But it will be a few weeks as I just sent it out. Shipping from my end to you is your nickel though. If you need one sooner let me know and I will leave it there. - W

I wouldn't worry about franken fiddy's with gen parts. The parts are getting only harder to obtain. I might be shorting those standard EL 4rth generations though. Then again you would feel pretty stupid if the new one is not as good.

I would say that just because he wants trade them doesn't mean you want to buy them. I would suggest which if any you would want to own (trade or no trade). establish a price for them and ask for the balance in cash. I say this only because they are very different watches and if I were a betting man you were interested in some but not all of the pieces being offered.

Actually a watch is a watch. Some are just built better than others.

As I have listened to people and looked around on the various dealer websites clearly some rep crystals are better or at least sit better than others. Do we think that one crystal will fit all the various second at 12 variants in spite of the differences?

I typically sell frankens to build frankens (most recently an older PAM to do a recent AP build) and gens to buy gens. In truth there are probably no more than 4 or 5 that are sacrosanct and 3 are frankens. So you know where my love lies.

It has been a lot more difficult ever since they moved the service center to Texas and stopped returning old parts.