A question that's bugged me for a while....

[mezzanine]

The MBW 1680/1665 dials are not that great. They're usable- but I believe the dials are one of the weaker aspects of the watch that is generally not correctable for a reasonable cost. Most of the other stuff that is incorrect can be dealt with through the use of gen parts, but the dials are too expensive to that with most projects.

I think that the 1680 red submariner might be the most popular MBW of all. And yet, the dial is weak and drives some of folks nuts (myself included).

Why hasn't there ever been an attempt to figure this out? Wouldn't it be possible to arrange a group buy, where a bunch of people could get refinished dials from some wholesale re-dialing place?

If it was possible to get a vintage dial that at least looked correct, and were printed on dials that would fit the MBW's without being shaved down, it would be a very big upgrade that might not be as expensive as people think.

[HauteHippie]

I have never approached the 1680 MBW with a gen dial because the case is wrong. It is a copy of a 5513 case hence the smaller dial cutout.

You would have to buy a Vietnam case for 1680 to get the thing rolling. And they give you a dial with it for an extra 100-200 bucks...

BTW you have Pm regarding an insert..

Hmm, I have a 1680 MBW with gen dial.... a little bit of a fuss, but it'll go in there.

[freddy333]

Why hasn't there ever been an attempt to figure this out? Wouldn't it be possible to arrange a group buy, where a bunch of people could get refinished dials from some wholesale re-dialing place?

If it was possible to get a vintage dial that at least looked correct, and were printed on dials that would fit the MBW's without being shaved down, it would be a very big upgrade that might not be as expensive as people think.

This question has been asked many times. The 1st problem is that you are trying to manufacture (or have manufactured) an aftermarket (unauthorized) item that is trademarked, which is illegal in most countries. China or Viet Nam tend to be the most lenient when it comes to enforcement of trademark laws, which is why so many reps & rep parts come from (or are funneled through) those 2 countries. If you can make the appropriate business contacts, you could probably have one of the factories there make dials to order. But that brings up the second and more difficult problem -- getting the factory to produce exactly what you want. I have twice attempted to get a dial vendor to correct some of the mistakes on their existing dials (which were good, but not quite good enough to satisfy a WIS), but after many email exchanges with very detailed pictures & clear, simple instructions, the pattern always seems to be 2 steps forward & 1 step backward - 2 things fixed (to varying degrees), 1 thing broken. Now things might be different if you were designing a dial from scratch or you could physically visit the factory to direct the design & manufacturing process. But the people who make these dials are either purposely missing the mark (which opens up a whole other kettle of fish speculation) or are just not interested in (or capable of, for whatever reason) producing high quality rep parts for serious watch collectors.

[By-Tor]

The most annoying problem with MBW 1680 dial is the red SUBMARINER font, which is completely wrong... and looks nothing like the gen.

I'd go for the white version myself. There's a lot of variation and it's much more difficult dial to "call out".

[mezzanine]

The most annoying problem with MBW 1680 dial is the red SUBMARINER font, which is completely wrong... and looks nothing like the gen.

I'd go for the white version myself. There's a lot of variation and it's much more difficult dial to "call out".

You're exactly right By-Tor, and when I first posted the thread, the original post even specifically referred to the red submariner as possibly both the most popular vintage piece as well as the most flawed, in terms of the dial. I mean, it depends on what you need...you may not need it to be 100%, but it's pretty damn off.

Part of what motivated this thread was not even my own need to resolve this problem, anymore, but just genuine curiosity about why it hadn't been attempted. Freddy, I hear what you're saying about the difficulty in obtaining a properly done dial.

What's interesting is that I saw a re-finished red sub dial go on Ebay recently- I just happened to miss the auction- but it looked pretty good (red font was 'cherry' and smaller) and went for a little over a hundred bucks. I was mad I missed it, but at the same time it made me wonder about how hard it would really be. I thought that places like classicwatchparts.com or Ken-something dials that do mass quantities of refinishes, and will even supply their own blanks?

Places like NDtrading are established sellers on ebay, as grey-market as they may be, and they're selling a lot of decently re-finished dials for around $350. You have to think that they're probably around $200 mark up over wholesale- from what little I've been able to gather about this market.

I've had to already solve the issue, but I can't help but wonder if there may have been a less expensive alternative for others. Both of my MBW pieces have different dials. What can be quite surprising if you haven't seen a genuine vintage dial in person is that the MBW dials are really sketchy. The difference in quality between the dial on my seadweller, and the one on the DRSD I have that is stock, is pretty big...and I'm not even sure if the good dial is gen or not.

Maybe I can further detail some of the differences later on...but one of them, just for starters, is the coronet. On my SD dial, the spikes in the coronet actually extend down all the way to the bottom of the crown where the tiny black oval marks the bottom of the emblem. Usually they just fade into white about a couple of millimeters or so before the black oval part. Problem is, I realize that there are genuine vintage SD's for which that is correct, I'm sure...

You may wonder why that would be at all significant. Well, the difficulty in preserving the individual outline of each of the 'spikes' while they're essentially blobbed together is pretty high-detail work...I tried to take a picture of this, but wasn't able to get a clear one.

Have you guys ever heard of "the drunken X" that some semi-knowledgable rolex people will talk about when identifying reps? Take a look at your standard MBW dial, the next time you have a chance. At least if it's like the DRSD. I sold the 1680 so I can't remember if that one was effected. But next to a good one, the rep 'X' looks like it's falling over to the right a bit...

The swiss t < 25 actually touches the white second markers on the DRSD. The font of the text at the bottom looks wrong to me, and too consistent line-by-line, but that's subjective and it's tough identifying this stuff vs. the gen pics....

Another thing is the datewheel cut-out on the MBW dials. They're supposed to be trapezoidal or whatever, which they are, but the depth, size and angle of the 'cut' of the of the datewheel are all smaller or less pronounced.

[kingkitesurf]

Striving for perfection... honestly hope we will never achieve... The hole forum would lose its value...

[fijikid]

Jeez Mezzanine, I was really loving my 1680 you sold me until you started picking the dial apart. I kid, I kid. But I do agree that a better dial would be a nice thing to have for this watch. I'm inferring from another post that a gen dial would have to be filed down a bit to fit? Gen 1680 dials are pretty expensive - probably in the 400 - 1000 dollar range depending on patina and quality (I'm guessing here). My beef with the dial is that the markers look a little plasticky and don't glow at all. I know that it's supposed to be an old watch, but gen 1680 markers are tritium, right?

[censored]. Let the modding begin. This hobby is hopeless. I'm going to CVS to by an Ironman.

[mezzanine]

Striving for perfection is one thing- I know that there's a law of diminishing returns when we're talking about modding these things. The curiosity I'd had was whether it could be possible to find a cheap way to deal with probably the most significant 'part' of a Rolex watch, in terms of the pecking order of what's used to determine authenticity.

Some of the dial work that is done here is incredible. Stephane's MM and his aged dials. The Zigmeister is the master, and is the person I would want applying vintage lume to any dial, and he's in canada as fortune would have it. What a unique skill set he's acquired working in this hobby, same with guys like RepAustria. I'm not going to go off on a tangent, though.

But the point is that the most popular genuine vintage piece- the 'red' submariner- is probably the most glaring example of the problem with the MBW stock dials. But what I'd like to generate more discussion about, is amongst those who have seen genuine or really good re-dial's of the vintages we're trying to approximate, in person.

I think there might be more creative ways to try to work with this. For example, I've got a genuine 5512 dial that is fits the MBW case perfectly at 26mm, but has been repainted at some point, and needs to be re-lumed. I'm going to take a couple of pics of it and put it up with the rest of the stuff I'm clearing out shortly, and if there's any interest in seeing it, I'll post a pic here, too.

Hey Oli, I haven't had a chance to thank you for the message you sent me about my own dial. I'm not sure that the gen white dials for the 1680's are quite that expensive. They can be, but I can find them for around $600 US in good condition, if given a little time. We'll have to stay in touch about this kinda stuff...

In terms of the fitting of these dials into MBW cases...

I have a SD with a dial that had to be adapted to fit, and damn if I can tell that it was altered in any visibly observable way- thanks to the expertise of the gentleman I am speaking with above. Also, I have a genuine 1680 white dial fitted in an MBW.

You want to hear something crazy? I recently a saw a genuine dial that "must've been fitted to something other than a genuine case" at some point because it had been altered a bit to fit a smaller case. This was a nice dial, too. Probably in the range of a few grand, if I remember correctly.

Here's the bottom line:

For a lot of these watches, everything else is modded. Even the dial work that is done costs quite a bit. People will spend close to one hundred bucks to do their crown/tube, over a hundred bucks to do their insert (easily), a hundred bucks for endlinks- unless you can get them cheaper than I can, which is quite possible...but the point being that there's a lot of money spent on these cosmetic mods, that while important, are not as important as an authentic looking dial.

I have heard it said here before that there are places that will do re-dialing for not that much money- like $100. I don't know much about the quality of these dials, but damn if that wouldn't be a lot of bang-for-the-buck if they could do a red sub dial reasonably well. There ARE re-dials out there that are good and pretty cheap as it is already in the market. I missed on a proper red 1680 sub dial that was refinished for around $100 that is driving me crazy still.

The motivation for this thread was when I compared the dial on my white SD to the MBW DRSD dial. I was shocked. I haven't seen a genuine 1665 and been able to handle it and get a feel for the dial quality, so my observation has to be qualified a bit. My perceptions were subjective, and were based on finishing and empirical observation.

[mezzanine]

Here's an older re-dial of a gen 5512 that has a chip in the paint around the 6 o'clock marker that measures 26mm and can therefore drop straight into an MBW 1680 case:

Woops...just realized I lied...you'd have to cut the feet off...