Got to love Japan

[Tiyal]

On a layover in Hiroshima,

After opening up my lug holes on my 5513 I never got to debur perfectly. This has been on the todo list for a couple months. It's very very slight but you know how theat goes. 

I've been in Hiroshima for the past couple days. Today I was in a department store called Tokyu Hands. They had a little watch  repair section. Case openers, dust blowers, loupes etc. Also all the metric drill bits I could ever want. Great tweezers stainless steel buffing cloth and micro fine sanding mesh. 

Time to kick back and  re-drill some lugs.

Then eat ramen and drink beer. 

 

Edited June 5, 2016 by Tiyal

[StormTooper4]

Great pick up on what must be a really good stopover 

[Tiyal]

All opened up and buffed out. Not happy with the lug holes. They need some sweet loving camfer and its just not there. I refuse to even photograph them. Lol

[Dlf]

Tokyu hands, is there anything that place doesn't have  !

that n Don Quixote were such a giggle, couple of my favorite frequents 

nice watch thanks for sharing ..:)

[dbane883]

All opened up and buffed out. Not happy with the lug holes. They need some sweet loving camfer and its just not there. I refuse to even photograph them. Lol

Rolex never chamfered lugholes. The "chamfers" you see on gen cases are a result of poor over polishing.

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[Tiyal]

Next day, not to bad. Cleaning inside the lug holes helped bring out the luster. Little big at 1.3mm but the spring bar has the right look on the wrist. I think a case polish at some point soften up the lugs a little.

[netniet]

I will check them out, I am currently in Japan for two weeks.

[automatico]

"Little big at 1.3mm"

The tips of the spring bars are 1.2mm so 1.3mm holes make a good fit. I have had the tips of spring bars not fully extend when I went with 1.25mm holes because of misalignment of the bracelet mid link, hoods, and lug holes. Besides that, many aftmkt bracelets are not oem spec and the hoods need to be trimmed so the spring bar tips will go all the way through the lugs and not be in a bind. Things go south when the drill bit is allowed to wobble in the hole or is not started straight and the hole ends up too big or out of round. JMB calls it: 'wallered'. Cases need to be solidly mounted when drilling lug holes and I do that but still cringe every time I drill a lug hole because there is the potential for a lot of things to go wrong (broken bits, seized bits etc) and on top of it all, stainless steel is not easy to work with.

Chamfering holes on the outside of lugs will make the holes look too big and detracts from the smooth lines of the lugs. There will usually be small 'stress marks' and/or scratches from metal chips around the holes caused by drilling and you can smooth them out by sanding the lugs with 1000, 1500, and 2000 sandpaper being careful not to make flat spots around the holes or get into the bevels on top of the lugs. Finish up by polishing with Simichrome polish etc. It is a lot of work for little reward but makes the finished job look a lot better. Slightly chamfering the lug holes inside the lugs with an oversize drill bit makes it easier to install spring bars, especially when using hoods (end pieces) with tubes soldered in them.

Something else to think about is how much room will be left between the outer edge of the drilled hole and the top, bottom, or tip of the lug? Many replica cases have the holes close to an edge and drilling the holes out to a larger size results in the hole coming out to the edge of the lug making the lug look bad. On a few cases with this problem, I left the holes as/is and used spring bars with longer tips like used on rolex 1600/16000 and let it go at that.

[porschespeedster]

nice 5513! what are the specs?