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A blast from the past: Some Palpatine's vintages


By-Tor

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I thought it'd be nice to repost some Palpatine's vintage Rolex posts. Older members remember him, he was one of the pioneers who started to vintagize the MBW's. He was a good forum friend of mine, and I really don't know what happened to him. Personal real-life reasons probably?

Let's start from this post #1. I'm not very familiar with the vintages, so I let you guys decide. Comments?

i love vintages....i just love them.... :lol:

-dial aged and relumed

-hands repainted and relumed

-generic crystal

-bezel and case polished

-drilled out lugholes and installed genuine springbars

-genuine tube

now we need a better crown....

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Repost #3: 5508 With Thin Case

it begun with that:

rol187-1.jpg

wrong shaped case which is too thick and with bulpy lugs (IMHO a modern DJ case or something like that), no lugholes, wrong bezel etc.

now it looks like that. not finished yet and it has not the demand to be accurate, still wrong crystal, wrong fat hand, insert and some other things i have to do, but i like it better than before. and it has a thin case, i tried to model it after the case of my 1675:

550812ei.jpg

reshaping the case (that was intense work and took around 10-12 hours incl. sanding back to

shine), drilled lugholes:

shape9yj.jpg

slowly sanding progresses :bangin: (that took the longest time, my fingers still hurt):

sanding5ia.jpg

then springbars, dial and hands aging. i like it looking old (where is nanuq? :D )...

550827gk.jpg

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Repost #4: 5513 with Explorer dial

the 5513 with the explorer dial has to have gold writings on the dial. the white rep ones are not correct so this shopuld be a bit more accurate ;)

its not finished, i will do some things on it...

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He was great asset and a pioneer in the modding of vintage Rolex reps. I still have his first Daytona seconds at 6 and it is beautiful and still working - a testament to his skills both mechanically and aesthetically. :thumbsupsmileyanim: I know that he left the forum in an emotionally distressed state (nothing to do with watches) and I do hope he has recovered.

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Vintage Rolex fans like myself know something: the subject will never die.

Everyday there is something more to learn about the vintage Rolies.

It would be great to see an artist like Palp come back one day.

In fact it would be great to see all "old members" come back of course.

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Palpatine - an incredible, amazing member.

I so enjoyed viewing his work, and the effort that went into it - breathtaking.

I hope he is doing well in his personal life.

Thank you very much, By-tor for bringing back this memory.

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has anyone heard from him? I would love to see more of his work!!!!

You can just stop loving these watches.. its not possible!

How can you quit and never come back? haha

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He built some great watches, including a WM based DRSD for me. It's a fantastic watch but I'm just not a Rollie fan and every time I think of posting it for sale I wear it 'just one more time' and then it goes back in the box. However it really should go to someone who will love it more than I do.

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i feel a little sentimental - so a bump for this thread :)

Tommy is missed 4 sure - i still remember all his topics ;-)

also when Oliver and Tommy had some "misunderstandings" -

good old times :)

what i really miss - is that some skilled young modders show us their amazing work :D

there still out there - but maybe the reps got better and the interest in mods smaller ? ;)

some watches from Tommy that i had (keep in mind this was 3 years ago)

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sd.jpg

cheers,

Frank

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