Ultimate Rolex Mercedes Hands Comparison

[Kime]

Gilt Sub Hands... Most people put effort into their case, then the dial, the movement and the hands become an after thought. I have always thought that the dial and Mercedes hands are KEY elements and key "tells" on any vintage build budget or high end.
There are so many myths surrounding what is correct, good, accepted in this world and I find learning this stuff as frustrating as everyone else, I have had to learn this stuff through trial and error (and error, and error). I get asked the question all the time when I post builds about what hands were used and read all the time "what hands are best" etc. etc. and finding a definitive answer is near on impossible because everyone says something different. I thought it was time to dispel some myths and help a whole mass of people out by showing these hands side by side.

So here we go...

Every hand set that I have, laid out next to each other, and all photographed to the same scale, next to a gen reference set (not my photo)... It should be noted that some of these have been aged and/or damaged, some are as delivered.

 

Gen Hands
I tried to make some general points about the gen hands, some rules that we want to get close to
Points
*1 - The second hand should have a tapered end
The lollipop should have the same size of the base of the hour hand and be roughly twice the width of the minute hand
*2 The walls of the hour hand shaft should be almost half the thickness of the lume plot
The height of the shaft should be slightly SHORTER than the diameter of the Mercedes sign
*3 - The diam of the Mercedes sign should be roughly a third bigger than the base
*4 - The size of the Mercedes lume plot should be as big as the diameter of the hole (however the hole sizes differ, gen is 0.8 and ETA is 0.95mm)
*5 - The length of the "point" should be more than half the diameter of the Mercedes sign and a third of the width at the base
*6 - The distance from the hole to the start of the lume plot on the minute hand should be short
*7 - As with the hour hand the walls of the minute hand shaft should be almost half the thickness of the lume plot
*8 - The distance from the end of the lume plot to the start of the point should be small, approx 2x the width of the side wall

There are more observations that can be made but these are the main ones.


All Together




The comparison candidates - Left to Right

1. Gen reference. It is important to say that this is a reference image and is not my photo. I have scaled this to an approximate same size as the other based on knowing the size of the hour hand hole (. compared to the other ETA (.95)
2. HR New - 2015 these are the replacement hands that HR currently have, the minute hand is not long for their oversized dial. However the hour hand is better than the older ones.
3. HR OLD - circa 2014. The minute hand is long for the HR oversized dial and the dimensions to a gen minute hand are almost perfect. A MUST for an oversized dial. (HR is apparently getting these back in stock but this is unconfirmed at time of writing)
3. Clarks Tudor Sub hands for ETA 2015 - These new hands are excellent and in fact probably the best of all for a very reasonable price $20 USD inc shipping
4. Tiger Concept (OnlineStoreHK). These are the clear looser, terrible in fact. Only buy these for the lollipop second hand if MY is out of stock.
5. Michael Young (Classic Watch Repair CWR) - An excellent set of hands that comes with 2 lollipop second hands, a gilt one and a white one. These hands have an excellent finish but the edges are not sharp and the lume job is terrible and hanging over the edge of the hands. At $65 + $28 Shipping these are the most expensive hands here and I would say, from a shape perspective, only slightly better than the $20 Clarks hands. It should also be noted that the hands shown are for a gen movement, not ETA. But MY used to stock these for ETA but he was out of stock when I asked.
6. Clarks Vintage Sub hands for 157x - I am including these because i have them, I struggled to broach these and ended up bending them. A good shape but now superseded by his Tudor Sub hands for ETA builds.



Hour Hands


Minute Hands




Conclusion
I hope it is clear to see that many of these hands are "wrong" not close to vintage sub hands AT ALL. The Tiger concept hands are in last place, however, these come with a lollipop second hand.
The winners are Clarks and Michael Young if you don't want a lillipop second hand Clarks is the hands down winner. But it must be noted that by the time you buy a set of Clarks Tudor Sub hands and a set of Tiger's to get a lollipop second hand, you are basically at the same price as the MY hands (if he has them in ETA)
An additional note must be made for HR "oversized" dials, for this dial there really is only 1 minute hand, the old HR hand as it will correctly reach the chapter ring on the dial as it should.

PLEASE NOTE, I am talking solely about vintage early sub GILT hands here. By the time we get into 5513s particularly the silver hands and most definitely the later ones, the design of the hands has changed very slightly. Many of the gilt hands from the 5512 and early 5513 appear to be the same as the "6538" or "50-60s" era hands I am comparing, maybe these were old stock at the time?. But as the years move forward it is easy to see changes in particular the side walls of the hands get thicker, so if you are doing those builds this reference will not hold up.


I hope this helps and means you don't have to buy all of the damned hands that I have bought
Kime

[martijnp]

Great comparison, thank you for sharing this!

[djulink]

Hi Gents,

 

That's tremendous work, Kime. Many Thanks.

As a matter of fact, I was thinking about changing the hour hand to the Yuki 28mm 4 liner dial I'm using; only thing would be to age the new hands to match the actual dial.

[danza1812]

Great post. Would be interesting to see how TC hands line up.

[dieselpower]

Thanks for all the effort. Much appreciated.

[JoeyB]

Great work!

 

I believe that the chapter ring itself measures 26mm in diameter on chapter ring dials. For our purposes, Gen or aftermarket outside diameter of the dial itself doesn't matter to hand size. Only the chapter ring size does. 

 

On the early GMT and Submariners, a 13mm minute hand was used. That put the tip of the minute hand right to the chapter ring. The small arrow GMT hand used on 6542 and 1675 chapter ring dials also measured 13mm, and the tip met the chapter ring. Helenarou is the only source I know of for an ETA 13mm minute hand. 

 

[Dlf]

Fantastic comparison.

The original HR long minute hand was great, But it's been out of stock for a year, the Pictures HR uses are in fact the same but product is not! as Kime stated.

[HaydenM]

I can see this getting pinned pretty soon. Brilliant post.

[Lorenove06]

This is the reason why this place is so useful to consult: wonderful posts like this one...

Thank you, Kime.

[Nanuq]

Pinned it.  Heck of a post, Kime! 

[Ephry73]

Great comparison for sure. Wish I knew you were doing this. The ST hands are missing from the list. They offer gold and silver color in both gen 3135 sizes and Tudor 2824

[Kime]

Thanks guys and thanks for pinning this, doing that should help even more people out.

Of course I don't own all hand sets that are out there, if people want to send me hand sets they don't want or send pics I will be happy to try and include them in this post. I know I don't have yuki vintage gilt hands here but I know they will not top the most accurate list so there is probably not much point posting them. I have no idea what ST hands are (yet another esoteric supplier, which just confirms why we need these references) but if anyone can point me to them I can decide if they are worth including.

[Geof3]

Another good add would be Yuki hands. He has both Rolex sized and ETA sized. I would be very interested to see those, and how they stack up.

[djulink]

Another good add would be Yuki hands. He has both Rolex sized and ETA sized. I would be very interested to see those, and how they stack up.

Here you are: Yuki ETA hands (Kime, feel free to use the photo for comparison):

 

 

 

[Kime]

I think its pretty easy to see that these are not great for vintage sub hands. In my opinion these are very close to the new HR hands, in particular the hour hand. I would avoid buying these for any vintage sub/Tudor build.

[djulink]

Yep, that is why I've ordered and received the Clark's model you suggested, but Yuki hands came with Yuki dial so I did not really had a choice back then and it was a good way to practice aging and placement on a movement.

[Ntoronto05]

Wow. Great breakdown

[highoeyazmuhudee]

clarks have potential to be the best, just has to fix the bottom lume spacing.

[Skywatch]

Great work on a nice resource for hand sets. Bookmarked for future reference. Thanks for posting.

[gemballa]

Fantastic write up. Really appreciate this Kime.

[Sogeha]

This is a great resource. 

If HR get the long minute hand back in stock it might be useful for 1016 Explorer builds. 

[hugop]

Great information here Kime! Thank you for taking the time to post this up.

[hologramet]

If only there was a similar one for "modern" hands

If I've understood it correctly we have

MBW 5513/1665/1680 hands (NOS)

Clarks Tudor hands

TC 11610 11613

onlinestore.hk

 

Any other tips?

[Hardik315]

Thank you 

[Champagnesky]

I need to get some gilt hands for a 5513 gilt PCG build, which ones should i buy?