Panerai 082 C Amerigo Vespucci Limited Edition
My build with DSN dial and case back
My build with DSN dial and case back
After a long series of complex builds which required a lot of shaping, sanding, drilling, test fitting and so on I felt the need for a break and wanted to create a more simple build.
I went through my parts bin and found an old titanium H Factory case, most likely from a 61D. It was in good conditions, it had a nice crystal, a nice A-F crownguard and a round crown tube.
I started thinking about which watch could have been built with it and I remembered a post Hugop made a few months back about his new 082 dial, which looked rather interesting to me.
The plan was set then, I contacted Davidsen and asked him for a dial, a caseback and a set of hands, waited a few weeks for the parts to arrive and in no time I had a completed build.
Not having to deal with parts not fitting, stems not aligning, movement holders that need filing felt so refreshing and satisfactory, in a word: easy
When I finally strapped this watch on my wrist I was amazed. The Luminor case is so well balanced, it's just perfect in every shape. Alessandro Bettarini designed one of the best watch cases ever imho. Besides, the combination of titanium and this blue iridescent dial is just so wow that I can hardly find the words to describe it.
This is Davidsen's new 082 dial, released a few months ago. The ugly outlines of numbers and indices that were present in older batches are gone, and now the dial is very good imho. Ok, there are still issues like a little too big inscriptions and number shape to be perfected (especially 12). Also the lume structure is different from the gen, which has a sausage style application (numbers and indices engraved on the dial then filled with lume mix) while the rep seems to have a thin layer applied on the surface of the dial. The advantage of this choice is having a very flat application of the lume mix which gives a good gen-like impression, nonetheless it's missing the depth of a real sausage dial.
Anyway, the key feature of this dial is the brushed finish blue base which changes tone depending how the light hits it, and this has been replicated very very well.
I tried to capture its essence correctly in my pics, it is indeed one of the most amazing dials I have ever seen whose color turns from almost black to aqua in the blink of an eye. Truly stunning.
Here's a pic under direct light which shows the texure I'm talking about:
Lume is not very strong, but acceptable:
Davidsen's caseback is pretty good as well, nice finish and detailing. The only issue I see is the different placement of the engraved dots on the sides of TITANIUM. Of course the H-factory 061D ismissingthe engravings near the lugs.
GEN
REP
The strap I chose to match this build is one of the latest creations from Orloff, it is made of a vegetable tanned vacchetta hide with a special threatment called "colored crust" and an orange eel lining. This special process makes each strap essentially hand-painted so no one will look the same as another. 200% satisfaction as usual from Mario and a perfect match to this watch imho
More pics:
Hope you enjoyed
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