robinstyler
Renowned Member
- 4/7/16
- 658
- 31
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If you need any help with shipping costs, dont be afraid to ask. Im sure many including myself would have no problem donating for this cause. But then again it shouldnt be expensive to ship such a small piece [emoji1]Update: @robinstyler earlier suggested @andrei01 could test the "wrap" and satisfy our curiosity as to what it is exactly. I took his suggestion and have been PM'g andrei and he kindly agreed to test it, he is overseas and I am conus so it will take a bit for it to get there and get done but will post the results when we have them.
Reading all the replies some things come to mind, first the question as to why it is not all made out of whatever the "wrap" metal is, I am thinking likely because that was very light and brittle whatever it is, like tin....so maybe it would make the rep stupidly light and prone to breakage at the stress points like springbar holes, link joints etc.
Second the BP link or even the Patek possibly being gold of some degree- again I want to stress I just worked with a Noob link, there is a bare possibility other reps are different, but of course I know we are all thinking riiiiight....the whole of the rep industry is so entwined in Asia that that is not very likely.
Finally the BP link testing...you would not need to do a teardown as I did or sacrifice the link really- if anyone @Versaceboy54 ? was willing to take a link down to any local "gold buyer" jewlery business they could take it, scratch it on a testing stone and acid test the result for gold. At worst you would have a scratched link but it would be intact still, I know aaaaaaaughhh! but just to put it out there.
It boggles my mind that they would go to all the trouble of wrapping a link JUST to deceive us into thinking it is gold filled, they do not use remotely the same process, filled is bonded to the base metal as @tripdog posted earlier, the "wrap" is just that, it was barely adhering to the substrate metal. I think it MIGHT initially have just been a method to increase the thickness of the "gold" color on a watch so scratches/ wear are less of an issue than plated. And as a bonus being the devious industry they are- they figured out they could market it as thick "18k gold wrapped" and see who bought into it...the process itself has to be worth something more than just plating so I can see a somewhat higher price than plated.
If they were honest they would say: watch has "thick 18k toned gold metal wrapping" that resists wear and scratches to an extreme degree! But then again they would also say 1:92% copy! Gen clone Swiss! Water resistant to 3 feet (sometimes)! It is what it is.
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