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IPKF Blaken Submariner "Jade" Date Yellow Gold YG & Green A2836 Review
THE STORY
I haven't seen anybody talking about this watch at all and I searched the forum looking for posts about this watch, but it seems to have flown under the radar of most of the community. IPKF is not a well known factory like e.g. Noob, VSF, VRF, ARF etc, so I thought that it would be helpful for the community if I made a review of this piece so that someone looking to do research on this watch can find this post using the search function and get a little more info about a relatively unknown watch.
The impetus for me buying this watch came way back in Jan of 2020, before Corona changed history and the direction of the world, when we were all niiave and happy and expecting fancy Rolex releases for the year at Baselworld. Jenni Elle put out a "predictions" YouTube video with mockups of hypothetical new Rolex models that could come out that year. The original video can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaIh63LUfag - and below I've posted a screenshot of the three watches she predicted. Of course, none of those stunning piece came to be, and instead we got a slightly bigger submariner and the heinously ugly crime against design that is the new Oyster Perpetuals with bizzare double batons at 3,6, and 9. But I digress.
In particular I fell in love with the idea of a green and gold hulk. Green and gold are colors that go really well together. Dolla dolla bill, yall. R factory puts out the gold daytona which is really attractive but lacks a date function (hard requirement for all my watches), and there's a gold and green GMT that is very handsome but it has a black bezel insert, not green. Plus, even with the new VRF GMT movements, GMT watches in reps are still kind of... sketchy and could break on you.
Enter this Blaken submariner, which I noticed on Trusty's site first a few months back. I guess Blaken recognized the fact that Rolex was leaving a gap in the market, since presumably they created this customized piece which IPKF has since repped. This is essentially the watch that Jenni predicted, but with Chinese/Japanese numerals on the dial instead of the traditional Triangle, Circle & Baton indicies. I personally think the Chinese numerals are pretty cool - you see the "Eastern Arabic Numeral" dials occasionally pop up, but I feel like chinese numeral dials are more rare. Anyways now I can roleplay as a yakuza or triad, perfect.
For those that don't know, Blaken is a high-end customization company that takes gen Rolexes and then mods them on behalf of their clients. There are quite a few reps of Blaken pieces floating around, but they mostly focus on their blacked-out PVD models of stainless steel sports Rolexes. I think the original/gen of this particular IPKF piece was limited to only 8 pieces (that's what it says on the caseback anyways), and I couldn't find any legit shots of the gen anywhere on the net (including on the Blaken website, it's not mentioned anywhere at all) so it's safe to say I don't expect to run into anyone else with the same watch. Since the gen is so rare and not well covered on the net, I will not include any discussion of 'rep vs gen' or 'how close is this to gen' in this review. That's not really the point. This watch gets to stand on its own merits alone.
My original idea with this watch was to replace the dial with a rep hulk dial and then end up with the fantasy "gold hulk" that Jenni had theorized about, but after owning this piece for a bit, I like the chinese numerals. It's different. I may not do the mod after all.
DIMENSIONS AND SPECIFICATIONS
All of the dimensions below come were taken by me, with a digital caliper tool here at home.
Case diameter: 41.2mm (just above the crownguards at 2pm to 8pm)
Lug tip to lug tip: 47.8mm
Lug width: 20mm
The bracelet tapers from 20mm down to 15.76mm just before the clasp, which is 18mm wide and 43.7mm long.
Case thickness from caseback to top of crystal (excluding cyclops): 11.93mm
For photo referencing, my wrist size is 6.75in or 17.145cm in godless communist units. I took out three full links and 1 half link, which put me solidly in the center of the glidelock.
Trusty's website claims that this piece has an Asia 2836 clone automatic movement 25J, 28800bph. I have not taken the caseback off to look at the movement but the second sweep is definitely 28800bph. The case and bracelet is claimed to be 18K yellow gold plated 904L stainless steel. It looks like gold to my eyes, I think the plating looks pretty good, certainly better than some. See the wristroll video below for lighting for the gold color.
The watch has been running at +4.63 seconds per day with me wearing it in the last 48 hours since I got it - it sits face up in a watch box overnight. I will update this thread with the SPD after a week, but thus far it is running well within spec for an ETA2836 / 2824 movement.
Trusty's site claims the crystal is sapphire with an etched crown at 6:00 position. I do not have access to a sapphire crystal tester like JOMW does, but I can confirm the etched crown is there - I checked with a flashlight.
The bezel insert is claimed to be ceramic. I have no idea how to check/prove that, but it appears ceramic to my naked eye - it's got a slightly flatter color to it than the sunburst green of the dial. I can confirm it's a 120 click unidirectional ratcheting dive time bezel. The bezel action is very crisp no backplay, no bounce. Frankly, the action is better than the bezel action on my Seiko tuna 600m diver which is an actual real dive watch.
PHOTOS
The packaging is quite nice, trusty shipped packaged in bubble wrap. I like the fake-pelican style box. Feels less useless than most dumb watch boxes.
I am glad the watch shipped with a bezel insert scratch protector, because the insides had fallen loose in transit as you can see pictured.
First look at the watch! very exciting!
Comes with a rubber strap. Note that the springbar openings on the bracelet are very thin - more on that later.
Back of the watch before I take off the protective plastic
Front of the bracelet. Looks pretty golden to me
Caseback shot. Nice caseback, IMO, engraving looks nice. The residue on the lug tips is residue from masking tape that was on there. I will clean it up later when I feel less lazy.
The very first wristshot I got of this watch. This is when I noticed the first flaw with this watch I found. There is a burr of golden plating on the first link, where it didn't adhese properly to the stainless steel. Unfortunately this link does not appear to be removable - there's no screw pin to take out that link, so I don't know if it's fixable at all. See the blown up next photo as well. This is a minor issue and you have to be looking for it to know it's there, but once you know it's there it's easy to find. I'm not too fussed about it and I love the watch as a whole.
The color of the gold looks good to my completely untrained eye. Here it is next to a gold bullion coin for reference on the tone of the gold coloring. See also the wristroll video for the gold tone in different lights.
Outside wristshot in some natural lighting
You'll have to imagine what it looks like on the rubber because - the springbar holes for the bracelet are tiny! Not sure if gens are like this too but the springbar holes are so thin that I couldn't fit my springbar tool in there to remove the bracelet. I will buy new, thinner sprinbar tips at some point to try on the rubber, but for now that means I can't put on the rubber
Lume shot. Lume is very adequate, as good as any lume I've seen on other sub-1k USD watches. Definitely doesn't last all the way til the next morning but then - neither does pretty much any other watch. Wear a gshock if you want to see the time after dark, IMO
So the above pitch black photo is what the watch lume looks like, but my phone had a camera mode where it tries to take long exposures, and I thought this photo looks cool.
Unfortunately, clickpix despite saying it supports webp and 25MB uploads, does not support animated webp, and the upload seems to fail if it's greater than 10MB. Thus I had to use mega to upload the wristroll video, which has been converted to webp for compression, but you should be able to view in your web browser, instead of hitting the big download button click on the photo itself and mega will show an image preview and if you wait a second for things to load it will start playing the video. Or you can download the video too I guess lol
https://mega.nz/file/Pk4E2ZgL#3Jf864f-oNm5ZlNaV_g2R2lJ8zKYLzngcsyf9OkcYPg
CLOSING REMARKS
Anyways that concludes my review of the Blaken yellow gold submariner jade. This is my first time with a modern Rolex, I've only ever gone for vintage pieces before. I still feel like the dial and watch are a bit big, and would have been better at 39mm, but the bracelet, and glidelock clasp is a GAME CHANGER compared to the vintage stuff. It honestly makes me hate my bracelet watches that don't have glidelock now, I wish every watch had glidelock. It is so easy to get a good fit with the glidelock and to be able to change the bracelet width on the fly for wrist swell is amazing. The gold tone on this watch looks good to my untrained eye, and I love the green colors. The chinese numerals are kind of cool and growing on me. I'm pretty satisfied with this watch, and look forward to beating the hell out of it over the coming months and years.
Thanks, don't forget to like and subscribe, join my patreon, and hit the bell icon so you don't miss any new videos
THE STORY
I haven't seen anybody talking about this watch at all and I searched the forum looking for posts about this watch, but it seems to have flown under the radar of most of the community. IPKF is not a well known factory like e.g. Noob, VSF, VRF, ARF etc, so I thought that it would be helpful for the community if I made a review of this piece so that someone looking to do research on this watch can find this post using the search function and get a little more info about a relatively unknown watch.
The impetus for me buying this watch came way back in Jan of 2020, before Corona changed history and the direction of the world, when we were all niiave and happy and expecting fancy Rolex releases for the year at Baselworld. Jenni Elle put out a "predictions" YouTube video with mockups of hypothetical new Rolex models that could come out that year. The original video can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaIh63LUfag - and below I've posted a screenshot of the three watches she predicted. Of course, none of those stunning piece came to be, and instead we got a slightly bigger submariner and the heinously ugly crime against design that is the new Oyster Perpetuals with bizzare double batons at 3,6, and 9. But I digress.
In particular I fell in love with the idea of a green and gold hulk. Green and gold are colors that go really well together. Dolla dolla bill, yall. R factory puts out the gold daytona which is really attractive but lacks a date function (hard requirement for all my watches), and there's a gold and green GMT that is very handsome but it has a black bezel insert, not green. Plus, even with the new VRF GMT movements, GMT watches in reps are still kind of... sketchy and could break on you.
Enter this Blaken submariner, which I noticed on Trusty's site first a few months back. I guess Blaken recognized the fact that Rolex was leaving a gap in the market, since presumably they created this customized piece which IPKF has since repped. This is essentially the watch that Jenni predicted, but with Chinese/Japanese numerals on the dial instead of the traditional Triangle, Circle & Baton indicies. I personally think the Chinese numerals are pretty cool - you see the "Eastern Arabic Numeral" dials occasionally pop up, but I feel like chinese numeral dials are more rare. Anyways now I can roleplay as a yakuza or triad, perfect.
For those that don't know, Blaken is a high-end customization company that takes gen Rolexes and then mods them on behalf of their clients. There are quite a few reps of Blaken pieces floating around, but they mostly focus on their blacked-out PVD models of stainless steel sports Rolexes. I think the original/gen of this particular IPKF piece was limited to only 8 pieces (that's what it says on the caseback anyways), and I couldn't find any legit shots of the gen anywhere on the net (including on the Blaken website, it's not mentioned anywhere at all) so it's safe to say I don't expect to run into anyone else with the same watch. Since the gen is so rare and not well covered on the net, I will not include any discussion of 'rep vs gen' or 'how close is this to gen' in this review. That's not really the point. This watch gets to stand on its own merits alone.
My original idea with this watch was to replace the dial with a rep hulk dial and then end up with the fantasy "gold hulk" that Jenni had theorized about, but after owning this piece for a bit, I like the chinese numerals. It's different. I may not do the mod after all.
DIMENSIONS AND SPECIFICATIONS
All of the dimensions below come were taken by me, with a digital caliper tool here at home.
Case diameter: 41.2mm (just above the crownguards at 2pm to 8pm)
Lug tip to lug tip: 47.8mm
Lug width: 20mm
The bracelet tapers from 20mm down to 15.76mm just before the clasp, which is 18mm wide and 43.7mm long.
Case thickness from caseback to top of crystal (excluding cyclops): 11.93mm
For photo referencing, my wrist size is 6.75in or 17.145cm in godless communist units. I took out three full links and 1 half link, which put me solidly in the center of the glidelock.
Trusty's website claims that this piece has an Asia 2836 clone automatic movement 25J, 28800bph. I have not taken the caseback off to look at the movement but the second sweep is definitely 28800bph. The case and bracelet is claimed to be 18K yellow gold plated 904L stainless steel. It looks like gold to my eyes, I think the plating looks pretty good, certainly better than some. See the wristroll video below for lighting for the gold color.
The watch has been running at +4.63 seconds per day with me wearing it in the last 48 hours since I got it - it sits face up in a watch box overnight. I will update this thread with the SPD after a week, but thus far it is running well within spec for an ETA2836 / 2824 movement.
Trusty's site claims the crystal is sapphire with an etched crown at 6:00 position. I do not have access to a sapphire crystal tester like JOMW does, but I can confirm the etched crown is there - I checked with a flashlight.
The bezel insert is claimed to be ceramic. I have no idea how to check/prove that, but it appears ceramic to my naked eye - it's got a slightly flatter color to it than the sunburst green of the dial. I can confirm it's a 120 click unidirectional ratcheting dive time bezel. The bezel action is very crisp no backplay, no bounce. Frankly, the action is better than the bezel action on my Seiko tuna 600m diver which is an actual real dive watch.
PHOTOS
The packaging is quite nice, trusty shipped packaged in bubble wrap. I like the fake-pelican style box. Feels less useless than most dumb watch boxes.
I am glad the watch shipped with a bezel insert scratch protector, because the insides had fallen loose in transit as you can see pictured.
First look at the watch! very exciting!
Comes with a rubber strap. Note that the springbar openings on the bracelet are very thin - more on that later.
Back of the watch before I take off the protective plastic
Front of the bracelet. Looks pretty golden to me
Caseback shot. Nice caseback, IMO, engraving looks nice. The residue on the lug tips is residue from masking tape that was on there. I will clean it up later when I feel less lazy.
The very first wristshot I got of this watch. This is when I noticed the first flaw with this watch I found. There is a burr of golden plating on the first link, where it didn't adhese properly to the stainless steel. Unfortunately this link does not appear to be removable - there's no screw pin to take out that link, so I don't know if it's fixable at all. See the blown up next photo as well. This is a minor issue and you have to be looking for it to know it's there, but once you know it's there it's easy to find. I'm not too fussed about it and I love the watch as a whole.
The color of the gold looks good to my completely untrained eye. Here it is next to a gold bullion coin for reference on the tone of the gold coloring. See also the wristroll video for the gold tone in different lights.
Outside wristshot in some natural lighting
You'll have to imagine what it looks like on the rubber because - the springbar holes for the bracelet are tiny! Not sure if gens are like this too but the springbar holes are so thin that I couldn't fit my springbar tool in there to remove the bracelet. I will buy new, thinner sprinbar tips at some point to try on the rubber, but for now that means I can't put on the rubber
Lume shot. Lume is very adequate, as good as any lume I've seen on other sub-1k USD watches. Definitely doesn't last all the way til the next morning but then - neither does pretty much any other watch. Wear a gshock if you want to see the time after dark, IMO
So the above pitch black photo is what the watch lume looks like, but my phone had a camera mode where it tries to take long exposures, and I thought this photo looks cool.
Unfortunately, clickpix despite saying it supports webp and 25MB uploads, does not support animated webp, and the upload seems to fail if it's greater than 10MB. Thus I had to use mega to upload the wristroll video, which has been converted to webp for compression, but you should be able to view in your web browser, instead of hitting the big download button click on the photo itself and mega will show an image preview and if you wait a second for things to load it will start playing the video. Or you can download the video too I guess lol
https://mega.nz/file/Pk4E2ZgL#3Jf864f-oNm5ZlNaV_g2R2lJ8zKYLzngcsyf9OkcYPg
CLOSING REMARKS
Anyways that concludes my review of the Blaken yellow gold submariner jade. This is my first time with a modern Rolex, I've only ever gone for vintage pieces before. I still feel like the dial and watch are a bit big, and would have been better at 39mm, but the bracelet, and glidelock clasp is a GAME CHANGER compared to the vintage stuff. It honestly makes me hate my bracelet watches that don't have glidelock now, I wish every watch had glidelock. It is so easy to get a good fit with the glidelock and to be able to change the bracelet width on the fly for wrist swell is amazing. The gold tone on this watch looks good to my untrained eye, and I love the green colors. The chinese numerals are kind of cool and growing on me. I'm pretty satisfied with this watch, and look forward to beating the hell out of it over the coming months and years.
Thanks, don't forget to like and subscribe, join my patreon, and hit the bell icon so you don't miss any new videos