TALE OF A CALI BUILD
It all started a few months ago with a friend asking me about the 3646 cali. We had a good talk, he showed me pics for inspiration, I did some research. We agreed on which parts would have made for a good build.
I found the DOW to be the dial I needed, but these dials were made a while ago in a small batch. Not easily available. I ended up posting a wtb without much hope and incredibly I was contacted in a very short time by a great member. I was lucky this time
The railway track had a minor imperfection at 2, but this really is no issue on a 70+ years old watch. Here's what I got:
I was really impressed when I receivedit. The golden railway was incredible and glossy dial surface was so different than anything I saw until then.
Stock lume was too white for my plans though so I had to mod it:
Of course I needed binbin hands for this build, as many of you know they are made of stainless steel instead of brass like normal vintage hands and they need to be broached, heat blued and then lumed.
I felt this was out of my reach and was afraid to mess it all up. Luckily Bigwaved came to the rescue!
Blued
Lumed. Perfect work. :thumbup:
What about the movement? I like to keep my builds as low on budget as I can but at the same time I wanted something a little special for this build so what could I use? Got one of these from Dellone:
I thought of something fancy for the movement as well, gold painted engravings
Unluckily the movement came with a weak balance staff that kept going out of place, I had to sacrifice another molly and install the engraved bridges on it. First time I did it and so far it's working fine :thumbup:
Finally I needed a case. Well, Nightwatch makes an awesome cali case imho. I had to wait a little but I was rewarded with the new updated case with thicker wire lugs.
It arrived with very sharp edges and noticeable machining marks.
Poor case, he has no idea what he will have to go through...
Ready to rock:
NW case sets need a fair amount of work before they can be used in a build.
First step is reshaping (a little), removing the machining marks (lots of work), I intentionally left a few marks on the case.
Next wire lugs need to be cut, fitted and soldered. For this build I used a River 7mm crown, the tube hole had to be drilled since NW's is too small.
For the first time I also soldered the crown tube. Here's the first soldering run, it has been redone since (and could be done a third time...
)
Nasty, huh?
Well, not that much after all
The final steps included:
- Hand polishing the case again to a low polished finish
- Aging, hand polishing and softening the bezel
- Aging crown
- Fitting a river molnija ring into NW case set. I had doubt it could work, but it fits perfectly. In any case I completely reshaped the inside of a NW cortebert mvmt ring, just in case...
- Hand polishing river's open CB and shaving down the CB plexi 1mm in order to achieve a thinner look on the wrist
- Hand polishing NW closed caseback's sides. I left the radil brushing, but I'm thinking to change it to straight brush.
- Using a real vintage plexi from a pocket watch I found in my parts drawer, gave it a good polish with capecod and it was good to go.
I might still tweak a couple of details, especially I'm considering re-doing the soldering as the solder came out a little fat on the lugs. Another thing I'm thinking of is straight brushing the closed CB that came from NW, I think it's more common in gen watches.
I will have to wait until my hands recover, they still hurt after a week! :lol:
As usual any comment or advice is welcome, I love to keep on learning. See you next time!
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