Red, white and blue
three vintage submariners
three vintage submariners
I've been working a lot these days and did not have much time to post stuff so I'll have to catch up.
Here are a couple of "experimental" builds I completed recently, one of them has a reddish insert, one's bluish and one is a white sub so, being it the 4th of July while I'm writing, their names sound particularly appropriated
BLUE
First off is a cartel 1680 I acquired m2m a while ago, which turned out to be an older cartel version. Once I disassembled it I realized there were some differences in case construction, in general I think we can say the new versions are quite improved. The crownguards were really fat to begin with, and I mean FAT! :lol:
I had to sand down for well more than a while to get them to a reasonable shape, on a bright note they weem to be a little longer than the current version.
Second thing I discovered was that the crown tube was press fitted, not screwn in like in v2. I don't have the right tools to thread the hole for an Athaya crown tube so I decided to try and mod the cartel crown with, I'd say, half-decent result. The crown is still too thick and the chamfer I added on the back makes it look a little rounded but overall better than before.
Finally the bezel assembly. Everything was glued in, both glass and crystal retaining ring. I tried to install a sternkreuz plexi but no joy, it broke. Tried a WSO bezel assembly but it was loose, both bezels could be removed just using my fingers... So I had to go back to glue, not really my style but at least I don't risk loosing the crystal while wearing it :devil:
Bleaching the WSO fat font insert made a nice "stone washed jeans" color come out, I'm pretty pleased by it.
Dial and hands aged and lumed by me, I also added a leather strap from an italian maker I found on ebay, nice and comfortable.
Here a few more pics:
RED
Second build for today is a cartel based 5512.
This is from the newer batch, a recent improvement I'd like to point out is a nylon gasket that's been inserted on the inner part of the crystal retaining ring, I guess this is meant to improve water resistance. Good effort, although as a downside my sternkreuz plexi revealed to be a little too wide in diameter so I had to sand it down in order to make it fit.
The insert is a brown WSO which I lightly bleached and aged.
Dial and hands aged and lumed by me as usual.
As far as case shaping goes, I shaped the crown guards pointed and also worked on the lugs from the bottom and from the top.
The PCG was tweaked to try and trick the too low crown position with an acceptable result, while the lugs needed a lot of care and time especially to restore the brushed finish on the top. The shape is still not quite what I was after, but it's a step in the right direction.
Assembled everything and added a nice suede strap from the same ebay seller as above and BAM it was done
Here are a few pics:
WHITE
The last of the bunch is the white sub. The goal was a white sub with a strongly aged dial/hands/insert mounted on a NOS looking case.
This watch (just like the others above) is almost all stock cartel, with the exception of an Athaya pearl, a Clark 127 plexi and an Athaya crown+tube.
Dial has been relumed with white-ish lume, hands got a little rust treatment and have been relumed as well.
Bezel is almost ghost, heavily aged although as paint came out some of the scratches became maybe just a tad too evident.
I am quite happy with the result, especially on the CG's which came out as I envisioned.
Here are a few more pics:
That's all for today gents, I'll be back soon with more projects
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