Tribal Posted March 20, 2007 Report Share Posted March 20, 2007 Blurry pics,but who cares Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freddy333 Posted March 20, 2007 Report Share Posted March 20, 2007 Looks perfect. When did your DW arrive (I am still waiting for mine)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tribal Posted March 20, 2007 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2007 Looks perfect. When did your DW arrive (I am still waiting for mine)? Today... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Star69 Posted March 20, 2007 Report Share Posted March 20, 2007 great !!! got my DWs also today - but no time at all ..... they have to wait till next week but after years of waiting for flat 3s ........ thanks watchmeisters !!!! Frank Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HauteHippie Posted March 20, 2007 Report Share Posted March 20, 2007 Good stuff Tribal. My wheel also arrived yesterday. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ubiquitous Posted March 20, 2007 Report Share Posted March 20, 2007 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Watchmeister Posted March 20, 2007 Report Share Posted March 20, 2007 Yeah, what he said. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tribal Posted March 20, 2007 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2007 Thank you all... But on the 1680,you must lift up the Dial a little bit,and put the sticker directly to the existant datewheel... randy told me to coat the sticker with a lttlebit of water,so there is more room to adjust the sticker... Thanks to all envoled in this project,that makes the vintag beautys perfect... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sherrington Posted March 20, 2007 Report Share Posted March 20, 2007 Well I think some members here won't like my reply but for what it's worth here it is:- I received 2 datewheels today, as ordered. As soon as I opened them I realised they are printed onto paper and not metal. I put one on an old Eta datewheel I had and installed it into my 1680. When I looked through the cyclops I was very disappointed. The edges of all the numbers were blurred and jagged due to ink bleeding into the paper. You just don't get this the same on a vintage genuine metal datewheel. The watch looks....well fake. I contacted one of the Watchmeisters only to be told they would only refund the unused one even though the only way to find out they were not good enough was to fit one into a watch. Maybe you can just about get away with installing one into a 1665 with no cyclops but not a 1680 Sub. So maybe I lose out on $30 but that's life, I suppose. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rag9fx Posted March 21, 2007 Report Share Posted March 21, 2007 Well I think some members here won't like my reply but for what it's worth here it is:- I received 2 datewheels today, as ordered. As soon as I opened them I realised they are printed onto paper and not metal. I put one on an old Eta datewheel I had and installed it into my 1680. When I looked through the cyclops I was very disappointed. The edges of all the numbers were blurred and jagged due to ink bleeding into the paper. You just don't get this the same on a vintage genuine metal datewheel. The watch looks....well fake. I contacted one of the Watchmeisters only to be told they would only refund the unused one even though the only way to find out they were not good enough was to fit one into a watch. Maybe you can just about get away with installing one into a 1665 with no cyclops but not a 1680 Sub. So maybe I lose out on $30 but that's life, I suppose. feel what you are saying sherrington i was expecting them to be on metal too and i felt dubious about how they would look under the 127 cyclops's magnification but i was quite impressed- i couldn't see any bleeding which i had expected to see (the print on my mine was pretty crisp) and the grain of the paper wasn't really visable. on the whole i feel like they are quite impressive... and will certainly bring my 1680 a step up in the right direction! Thank you watchmiesters Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
archibald Posted March 21, 2007 Report Share Posted March 21, 2007 Well I think some members here won't like my reply but for what it's worth here it is:- I received 2 datewheels today, as ordered. As soon as I opened them I realised they are printed onto paper and not metal. I put one on an old Eta datewheel I had and installed it into my 1680. When I looked through the cyclops I was very disappointed. The edges of all the numbers were blurred and jagged due to ink bleeding into the paper. You just don't get this the same on a vintage genuine metal datewheel. The watch looks....well fake. I contacted one of the Watchmeisters only to be told they would only refund the unused one even though the only way to find out they were not good enough was to fit one into a watch. Maybe you can just about get away with installing one into a 1665 with no cyclops but not a 1680 Sub. So maybe I lose out on $30 but that's life, I suppose. I'm sorry you're disappointed but a couple things need to be cleared up. The short version: The font is perfect. The printing blows away what was on your watch when you bought it, and it's printed to 1/2800 of an inch accuracy to originals. The material ain't paper. But is is water resistant, won't fade in the sun and is as close to anything you'll ever see without remaking an original wheel through the same process--and you'll never see one of those for 30 bucks. The long version: 1) As posted several times in the more than one thread the overlays are vinyl--incidentally, vinyl that was custom coated at great expense for reasons described previously in great detail. 2)You're not seeing bleed--you're seeing a 2800dpi copy of a DW printed in the late 60's and printing 2-3 times as crisp as as what MBW uses. We said many times we were duplicating the old-fashioned process w/o cleaning it up as we certainly could have. 2800dpi means accurate to 1/2800 of an inch. Not to sound rigid, but that's not opinion--it's technology. It's been empirically tested and every piece we tested "passed," thanks in part to the coating (which can't be used on paper or metal, BTW.) As far as a comparison w/ metal wheels: --Metal wheels are brushed, and look completely different in more ways than print resolution. There was a long discussion in a previous thread in which we said we weren't even going to attempt to copy those at this point, but that many original pieces use white DW's. --there is so much variation in the vintage wheels, your saying that there is a "difference" between our overlay and a vintage wheel makes me doubt you've ever seen more than one in person. There may be a difference. But having had several original wheels side by side on my desk at the same time, I know that there is a huge variation in print quality between originals. --Would there be some difference (mainly in the look of the substrate) between originals and 2800dpi copies in a 15X photo through a 2.5X cyclops? Maybe, but unless anyone's chief concern are fooling people in pictures on the Web for some reason, who cares? 3)Frankly, I'm at a loss to see how anyone thought these were going to be printed on metal. We excluded metal early in the process. We posted that. We did one prototype in Mylar as well as one on vinyl. We posted that too. Both looked great, but we decided on vinyl because it was thinner--a serious concern when we found out there were variation in space within vintage cases. I urge you do a project reproducing original DW's from start to finish, including manufacturing methods. I'll buy 100 @ 30 bucks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freddy333 Posted March 21, 2007 Report Share Posted March 21, 2007 I think I see both sides of this. Since I followed the entire posted history of the production process, I knew that you were not using metal, but I can see how and why people might have expected the final DWs to be metal based on some of the discussion and descriptions of them being so accurate to the originals. I think someone (Ubi?) also posted a comment about his recommending that you not get one of the DWs if you do not know how to deal with datewheels, which could be complicated. That is probably not exactly what he wrote, but that was the impression I was left with and this may have led some people to believe they would be receiving a metal datewheel which needed to be fitted in place of the original metal datewheel. When viewed by eye or through a SD crystal, the printing on the 2 DWs I received looks great. But when I look at them through a 2x loupe, which should be similar to the 2.5x cyclops of a Sub crystal, I can see what Sherrington is talking about. Some of the 1's (depending on where they are on the wheel) look a little pixelated, sort of like they were printed with an old dot matrix printer. I know, technically, the print should be very clear since the resolution was so high, but some of the numbers do not appear like a 2800dpi print. For instance, on one of my datewheels, the 1 in 31 looks like a good vintage print, but the 1s in the 11 look pixelated, like wobbly lines. So I think the issue relates more to the grain in the vinyl (and where in the vinyl sheet a particular DW was cut) than the printing quality, per se. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slickdick Posted March 21, 2007 Report Share Posted March 21, 2007 (edited) Iam still waiting for my DW's, however i am curious to to see a hi-res pic of the 'wobbly' parts. Can you post a pic? Regards, Job Edited March 21, 2007 by slickdick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tribal Posted March 22, 2007 Author Report Share Posted March 22, 2007 Well I think some members here won't like my reply but for what it's worth here it is:- I received 2 datewheels today, as ordered. As soon as I opened them I realised they are printed onto paper and not metal. I put one on an old Eta datewheel I had and installed it into my 1680. When I looked through the cyclops I was very disappointed. The edges of all the numbers were blurred and jagged due to ink bleeding into the paper. You just don't get this the same on a vintage genuine metal datewheel. The watch looks....well fake. I contacted one of the Watchmeisters only to be told they would only refund the unused one even though the only way to find out they were not good enough was to fit one into a watch. Maybe you can just about get away with installing one into a 1665 with no cyclops but not a 1680 Sub. So maybe I lose out on $30 but that's life, I suppose. You are right on the 1680,but in real it looks not much blurred... It doesn`t bother me.... On the Sd it looks perfect... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freddy333 Posted March 22, 2007 Report Share Posted March 22, 2007 Iam still waiting for my DW's, however i am curious to to see a hi-res pic of the 'wobbly' parts. Can you post a pic? The jaggedness is only noticeable under 2x or higher magnification. Here is a 48-bit 1200 dpi scan The '11' on my 2nd DW looks better, so I think there may be some variability from DW to DW since the problem seems to be in the vinyl material and not the printing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sherrington Posted March 22, 2007 Report Share Posted March 22, 2007 I'm sorry you're disappointed but a couple things need to be cleared up. The short version: The font is perfect. The printing blows away what was on your watch when you bought it, and it's printed to 1/2800 of an inch accuracy to originals. The material ain't paper. But is is water resistant, won't fade in the sun and is as close to anything you'll ever see without remaking an original wheel through the same process--and you'll never see one of those for 30 bucks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tribal Posted March 22, 2007 Author Report Share Posted March 22, 2007 You are missing the point. The datewheels are not perfect. Far from it. I have handled 4 genuine 1680's and have hundreds of detailed photographs of many more. The datewheels I received have jagged edges to all the dates. So much so it made my MBW 1680 look like a cheap New York rep. The datewheel I had previously was from Luenfat from Ebay and apart from no flat 3's looks a million times better, so I will be leaving that on. Now, either I received 2 faulty ones, or they are all like that and consequently not suitable for a 1680. You may get away with it on a 1665 but, personally, I would rather have the one that's on mine already, so I won't be installing one. I don't really care for the material, although a metal disc would be more durable, all I wanted was a product fit for purpose which these clearly are not. Sorry you don't like criticism but even Tribal says they are not too good for a 1680 but Ok for his 1665. I have higher standards and expectations. Lets see what other members think when they start installing theirs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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