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Closing out of Vintage Date wheels and Subsequent Projects


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We have had very good demand from all of the vintage fanatics on the recent date wheel offering. We have shipped out the entire first group we made and the second group will be shipped out over the weekend. Since most of the demand has been met, we're now focusing on the next project. We will stop accepting orders on the Vintage Date Wheels on Thursday night.

All who bought an overlay can say with a straight face that your watch is one of only 100 correct font versions on the planet. We want you to know that the membership has cooperated beautifully and so we have gone to the next step and invested all the excess proceeds (plus a little of our own dough) into machinery for subsequent projects. Big thanks to all.

On this project all of the cutting work was done either by a commercial print shop or by hand. The print shops (and we tried more than one) turned out to be expensive and left us with long lag times as the big shops are not very interested in tiny projects. In the end we had custom dies built to the exact size of the original overlay and stamped them out by hand. Because we felt tolerances to within .03mm or better were needed, it was both painstaking and left us with a lot of rejects.

So we are going to bring the cutting in-house and automate it. As we speak we are awaiting delivery this week of a high quality sizing and cutting machine which we bought from a print shop which was doing its own upgrading. We ended up getting it for a great price and it can be programmed to world-class cutting tolerances - within .005mm. The best part is that we can now cut inserts for any date wheel. It also reduces our turnaround time and costs and, best of all, reduces prices on subsequent projects.

Next Project - Inserts for Asian 7750 and Asian 21j

In truth we had planned to start offering the 7750's immediately as we do have a few working prototypes that we had printed and cut commercially. They do look great and have passed the muster of several knowledgeable folks. However we want the final product to be:

1) 100% accurate in every way

2) Substantially cheaper than the cost of new DW's.

3) Not subject to the potential difficulties of putting a new OEM date wheel into Asian movements.

Over the next week or two we will be learning how to program and run the cutting machine. At the same time the print shop is attempting to improve what we already have. The technical person at the print shop believes he can throw a little more ink on the numbers to improve them in terms of formation and height. He is convinced he can improve upon our current version. He's also willing to give us a better price for a larger number.

The Asian 21j will come out shortly thereafter. With the new cutting machine and based on our conversations with the print shop we should be able to (and I stress should ) be able to do the 21j's within a couple of weeks after the 7750

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Hey!

I PM'd Ubi today but his box if full! Anyway, he was going to check on a 1675 dial and the overlay for me. I have PayPAL ready to go, just have not heard back from him!

Help!!

If the 1675 is the roulette overlay it has been custom made for you and is on the way to ubi to make sure I got the red right.

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Sorry, I have a noob question, what will be the most common usage for these new 7750 and asian 21j? Are they going to be superior and more accurate than those offerd in existing reps? Thanks.

I am one of the guys that got in early for the datewheels too;-).

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Can't wait to book for several 21J (which I am a great fan of)! :thumbsupsmileyanim:

Really thanks to the meisters!

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