Building a heritage Submarine

[matzemedia]

In the watch world, it is common for brands to build a heritage from their older models. Think of the Tudor Black Bay 58, which is inspired by a Tudor Submariner from the 1960s. I'm a total fan of the Project X, Tempus Machina watches and I really wanted to create my own watch. If you are interested, I will take you on my journey to build a heritage Submarine.





The watch is now finished and as I write these lines, I am wearing it on my arm. In the course of the build, I took some photos which I will share in this thread.

My idea of this heritage Submarine is to put a few special characteristics of the last 60 years of the Rolex Submariner into this watch. Coupled with a few gold tones, as the big brands have been doing in recent years, it becomes a vintage watch. By the way, that's also the reason why I'm posting it here in the vintage thread.

 

[matzemedia]

The basis for this construction are a few parts I had left over. Here, above all, is a 5-digit Ali Submariner case suitable for a 313x movement. The exact referenz is 16610LV - nice watch, I already have and the case was not that expensive and therefore suitable for this experiment. In contrast to the 6-digit reference, the 16610LV is a bit smaller. The diameter is only 40mm and the bars are a bit narrower.
The dial is also an Ali Submariner. It is a nodate replica for the reference 114060. For the bezel insert, I want to go a little more modern and choose a ceramic bezel. Here, I saved money and ordered it from Ali. For the crown, I fell in love with the 60's Big Crown (8mm). This crown is one of the first Submariners and for me a special era that made a Rolex Submariner very special.
So all in all, technically nothing fits. As you can see, this will not be a plug-and-play project.

 

[matzemedia]

Removing the magnifying glass

The crystal of the case does not match the dial. The magnifying glass for the calendar is no longer needed for this project. The crystal itself is perfect - even a sapphire crystal - and should be used. Somewhere I found a tutorial on how to remove the magnifying glass with heat. And that's exactly how I did it. I held the hot air blower on the crystal for 5 minutes and then pushed the magnifying glass away with a knife and a little pressure. If you ever have to do this, put an old tile underneath so that the table doesn't burn. There is still some glue left on the crystal, which you can easily remove with a cutter knife.

 

[matzemedia]

Removing the cron guard

The 8mm big crown and the crown guard on the case do not fit together, of course. So my idea from the beginning was to build a heritage Submariner without a cron guard. So now we come to a somewhat radical approach: the cron guard must come off!

But first remove the old tube. Since it was glued in place with threadlocker, heat is once again the solution.


When removing the cron guard, I proceeded in the classic way with a file. Just file off everything that is too much. It's fun and you really work up a sweat. In the end it looks like this. The surface is quite rough.

Bevor:


The process:


Final shape:

 

[chrome72]

Excited to see where this goes

 

[matzemedia]

A few years ago I already built a heritage. It was a GMT with a 5-digit case and pointed crown guard. At that time, I was not yet so deeply immersed in the terminology of RWI and would have liked to call the result Frankenstein. In my opinion, the term is very appropriate, but as you know, it is used differently here.


Have you ever designed a heritage? I am very curious about your results and would like to see them. Feel free to post them. Even if they don't turn out well.

 

[kilowattore]

Oh my, you did file all that metal away by hand? That's commitment!

 

[369mafia]

great progress so far. well done on shaving the CG Ive done that once for my 6542 project was one of my first builds it was scary at first but satisfying

 

[alligoat]

Cool deal, but I think the Oyster Perpetual Date on a no date dial will never fly- time to get a new dial!

 

[matzemedia]

Cool deal, but I think the Oyster Perpetual Date on a no date dial will never fly- time to get a new dial!

You are right! I never read the small print. I ask myself who print this dial. That is may be the reason it was so cheap! I will put it at my to do list.

 

[matzemedia]

Polish surface

Once the shape of the case was finished, it had to be polished. For this I used different sandpapers, which I put under a file. For a beautiful surface, I used grit sizes 280, 400, 800, 1000 and 3000. Finally, I used a buffing stand. But that was no really necessary any more.
I am quite happy with the result.

 

[matzemedia]

Revision of the Bezel Ring

If you take a closer look at the shape of the case now, it has similarities with the reference 6538 from the 60's. The typical Big Crown James Bond model. This is perfect for my heritage. If you now put the newer Submarine Bezel Ring from the 5-digit reference in, it suddenly becomes a completely different watch.



But of course it's not that simple. The crown and the bezel ring touch each other, because the bezel is too big with its 40mm. So the crown guard had the additional task of increasing the distance to the bezel.

Since I know how to use a lathe, both were lightly machined. The crown was given a different angle at the back and I added a larger phase to the bezel.

 

[matzemedia]

Adding the ceramic insert
From 2010, Rolex introduced a ceramic insert for its Submariner. As you know, this was to prevent scratching of the insert. I've always loved the material, it's shiny, hard and doesn't dent. As far as I know, Rolex only uses ceramic inserts now. So a ceramic insert should also go in this heritage.

For the right insert, I would like to use the small red triangle, e.g. from reference 5508. Obviously, this was also important to Project X, Tempus Machina in their models.


The insert I have found so far has an outer diameter of 38mm. However, my bezel is designed for inserts with a diameter of 37.6 mm.

I have no experience in machining ceramics, let alone how to fit a ceramic insert correctly. My first failed attempt was to machine the insert with a diamond grinder. The result was a disaster for the trash can. Thankfully, you can buy the inserts cheaply from Ali.


Plan B is to extend the insert in the bezel. To make it fit, I had to use the lathe as well. That was not so easy this time. A slanted chisel and hardly any wall thickness left. But in the end it worked out.

 

[Perpetual]

Revision of the Bezel Ring

If you take a closer look at the shape of the case now, it has similarities with the reference 6538 from the 60's. The typical Big Crown James Bond model. This is perfect for my heritage. If you now put the newer Submarine Bezel Ring from the 5-digit reference in, it suddenly becomes a completely different watch.



But of course it's not that simple. The crown and the bezel ring touch each other, because the bezel is too big with its 40mm. So the crown guard had the additional task of increasing the distance to the bezel.

Since I know how to use a lathe, both were lightly machined. The crown was given a different angle at the back and I added a larger phase to the bezel.

Pics of the lathe action or it didn't happen!!

sorry for this..lol I enjoy reshaping cases as well and got my eye on a lathe purchase!

Great job

 

[Perpetual]

Adding the ceramic insert
From 2010, Rolex introduced a ceramic insert for its Submariner. As you know, this was to prevent scratching of the insert. I've always loved the material, it's shiny, hard and doesn't dent. As far as I know, Rolex only uses ceramic inserts now. So a ceramic insert should also go in this heritage.

For the right insert, I would like to use the small red triangle, e.g. from reference 5508. Obviously, this was also important to Project X, Tempus Machina in their models.


The insert I have found so far has an outer diameter of 38mm. However, my bezel is designed for inserts with a diameter of 37.6 mm.

I have no experience in machining ceramics, let alone how to fit a ceramic insert correctly. My first failed attempt was to machine the insert with a diamond grinder. The result was a disaster for the trash can. Thankfully, you can buy the inserts cheaply from Ali.


Plan B is to extend the insert in the bezel. To make it fit, I had to use the lathe as well. That was not so easy this time. A slanted chisel and hardly any wall thickness left. But in the end it worked out.

Ah, there's the lathe action

 

[matzemedia]

got my eye on a lathe purchase!

Maybe we should create a thread in the "technic section" with the topic "Best practice on the lathe". I love working with the lathe and would like to learn more.

 

[matzemedia]

The first impression is usually of a watch's dial, its real face and at the same time a mirror of what the watch can do. Some dials are so well designed that they provide a high recognition value for the watch brand. This was no easy task when designing my heritage.

As already written, I wanted to use a modern dial of the 6-digit reference in my heritage. Personally, the small hour markers of the 5-digit are too small for me; they are even smaller than those of the 4-digit references. So it is a fact that I will use a dial of the reference 114060. Unfortunately, I seem to have bought an Easter Egg. As @alligoat has already pointed out, there is a printing error on the dial. Instead of "Oyster Perpetual", this non-date dial has "Oyster Perpetual Date" printed. OK, I'll have to do it again when the time comes.

I also decided to use the wide hands of the 6-digit reference. Anything else would look disproportionate. I only want to colour the second hand white. Here I'm using the colour of the Big Lollipop: 6538 and paint the second white.




To give the Heritage a vintage look, I use gold tones. This is what the big brands do when they release a heritage of their old models. For the hour and minute hands I use gold colours and the hour markers on the dial were exchanged for gold markers. So the whole dial with hands has a gold accent.




In the pictures you can see that I removed the gold markings from two other Ali dials. This was the easiest way for me to get all the markings. It worked easier than I thought. Just remove the glue at the back with a Dremel and push the little bars through from behind with a needle. The markings are not glued to the front of the dial.



On this pictures you can find a lot of fingertips. Sorry for the bad pictures.

 

[matzemedia]

As you can see from the pictures, the dial has not had an easy time. Unfortunately, a few scratches got into it. Most of the marks were left by my method of correcting the diameter. At a loss, I clamped the dial in a Dremel and held it on a file. This at least reduced the diameter quite easily from 29mm to 27.x mm and was necessary to make it fit into the case. If anyone here has a better method, I would be very interested.

 

[chrome72]

@matzemedia when you dremeled your dial what did you Dremel the dial against? I tried that against a file and it deformed my metal.

 

[matzemedia]

when you dremeled your dial what did you Dremel the dial against? I tried that against a file and it deformed my metal.

I just pressed the dial against a file as shown in the picture. While doing this, I moved the Dremel with the dial slightly back and forward. The speed was about 3000 revolutions per minute.