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vintage 5513 project pics


theapexseal

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I have been dreaming of building a vintage 5513 for years and years now, and finally decided to take the plunge and get underway. With the help of my friend Woof (whom I have to thank once again for all of his guidance and patience!) along with all of the great info on these boards I have just completed my first build!

I already have my second vintage project lined up and really wanted to get everyones oppinion on this first one. What do you guys think? Please dont hold back, Im trying to learn as much as I can still!

Please excuse the bad pictures, but here is a list of what was done:

Josh 5513 base

aged/ polished case and bezel numerous times

CG shaped

lugs drilled

aged hands and dial

bleached bezel insert

Yuki tube installed

yuki springbars

gen 703 crown

gen t19 crystal

still waiting on a better pearl to arrive, and also have a yuki rivet band here waiting to install.

I had originally gone a different route with the case shape, but after holding a few dozen gen vintage 5513s this past week I opted to go with a more agressively "overpolished" look.

Dont hold back guys! Please let me know what you think!

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Thank you guys for the kind words and advice! I will try to post some better full frontal pics later on.

For the dialI got a little crazy trying some stuff to age it.. I started by putting it in the oven for about 40 mins, checking on it every 3 minutes or so. It simply made the markers a bit darker then I sprayed it a few times with workable fixative to try to get a bit of texture. The fixative didnt really have the thick texture I was looking for so I bought some matte varnish spray. I sprayed a thick coat of matter varnish then as it was drying just placed some really really coarse sand paper on top of the dial (not moving it at all to sand) as a negative mold to create a 3d textured effect. After that coat dried I sanded the dust from a rusty nail onto the dial and spayed another coat of matter varnish on top of it. This sealed in small rust colored particles that added some discoloration to the dial. Finally i took a little bit of watercolor to the markers to make the color less consistent throughout.

I think if I were to do it again I would probably do all the same steps with the exception of the oven. I feel like they may be a bit too dark in color for my taste.

For the hands I started by scratching them up with a loupe and an exacto knife. I went as far as to remove a chunk of lume in the middle of the minute hand. After this I just dunked them for about a day in a mix of water, coffee, salt, rusty nails, mud, dirt, and brake fluid. Once I pulled them out I cleaned them up and added a touch of watercolor to make them a little more consistent with the markers. The look came out quite aged as there is a hint of green rusty patina in some areas.

For the next one I am going to try to buy some lume and try to build up the puffy tritium marker look, but ive got to go in baby steps.

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Very convincing look! I love the smooth, polished sides.

Thank you, in looking at the gens I noticed that they really generally all were repolished probably dozens of times, so I did the nail and coins in a can trick maybe three times with alternating polishes. There are some deeper cuts that I left "half polished" and still can be seen through, but in general I just repolished everything.

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With as much discussion as I have seen about Josh's crown guards I dont think that they are totally horrible..Deffinatelly short and very wrong without a doubt, but the gens come in so many different sizes and shapes now after all the repolishing that it really is impossible to call any watch out just because of crown guards alone. The thing that gets me the most about this watch is the caseback. Woud it be possible to flatten this one a bit? Has anyone tried grinding it down flat? Seems like there is enough material back there to support at least a little less bulbous grinding. If not is there any other case back that could be cheaply substituted back there?

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P,

I gotta say your a really focused person... you really just pick up the ball and run with it!

Your watch came out great, and as already mentioned... those crowngards on this particular case couldn't look better. Dial rocks! Very creative aging.

Job well done. Hate to think how good you'll be after youv'e done about ten more watches! :)

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