First off, I have nothing bad to say about the trusted dealer I bought this watch from. If I had contacted them, they would have done whatever they reasonably could for me. I have no doubt of that....
I placed an order and paid for an Oris Diver quartz rep a few weeks ago, but when the dealer sent me the QC pictures it was of a different watch (the watch I ordered is no longer manufactured). They were similar, so after a few rounds of emails I just decided I would take the watch pictured below. However, I failed to inspect the QC pictures carefully after I discovered the watches were different. When the watch arrived I gave it a cursory look to check it for function, crystal scratches, etc. and I thought it looked fine. The strap needed to be cut to fit, which I did that same night.
I then wore the watch for a few days and noticed there were some things I didn't like. First off, the dial marker at 1:00 is noticeably crooked. The large chrono seconds hand has about 1 second of free play. By that I mean it would move around as you moved the watch, and never seemed to be at exactly top center. The other thing I hated was the odd tangerine color of the markers and hands. It looked orange in the pictures, but it's not that color in person. Basically, I friggin hated my new watch. I figured it might be tough to return since the strap was cut, and selling the watch with all these problems was not really an option either. (Can you imagine a noob getting this thing even if it had been described accurately in the sales thread! No thanks!) So I figured I had nothing to lose my trying to fix some of this stuff.
Check out the marker at 1:00:
The caseback opened easily with this little tool I got from Watchbitz:
This quartz movement turned out to be very easy to remove. There is actually a hole on the back of the movement labeled "push". Just stick something in there and the stem pops right out. The movement holder and movement came out together very easily after that.
Here is another image of the crooked dial marker. I thought some adhesive might be required, but after a firm press the pins on the marker found their corresponding holes in the dial.
Here is the realigned marker:
The next thing I wanted to do was get rid of most of that tangerine color. I didn't mind a few accents, but the majority of it had to go away. I figured I would just relume the hands and dial while I was at it. The first thing I did was put a little white paint into the markers as a base coat of sorts. I didn't now whether the lume would adequately cover the tangerine without it. However, I learned two things very quickly: Sausage dials are much tougher to work with than sandwich dials, but excess paint on the markers could be scraped off with a toothpick after it had dried. With that knowledge, I pretty much just slopped the paint in there to cover the tangerine color. Here's a picture of the paint wet:
Here is another image after the excess has been scraped off:
Up next was the lume. I used some inexpensive stuff that I had leftover from a vintage project. It still works a hundred times better than the rep lume. I mixed roughly equal parts clear matte paint and lume for the hands. I added a few drops of thinner before I started on the dial since I was worried it might take a while and the stuff would begin drying.
Again, I used the "slop it in" method to lume the dial markers:
And here is a picture after the excess lume has been removed following drying time:
Here is the requisite lume shot. If the cheap stuff works this good, I would love to try the C3 or whatever some time.
Here is a picture of the watch back together. It has a few small scratches now, but I like it waaaaay better than before (but I'm sure some reading this won't
: ). I just decided to leave the chrono seconds hand off since I thought it might be the nature of this movement to have some play in it.
Anyway, thanks for reading along. I had some fun, learned some stuff, and ultimately ended up with a watch I can live with. I'll try to take some better wrist shots and post them up.
I placed an order and paid for an Oris Diver quartz rep a few weeks ago, but when the dealer sent me the QC pictures it was of a different watch (the watch I ordered is no longer manufactured). They were similar, so after a few rounds of emails I just decided I would take the watch pictured below. However, I failed to inspect the QC pictures carefully after I discovered the watches were different. When the watch arrived I gave it a cursory look to check it for function, crystal scratches, etc. and I thought it looked fine. The strap needed to be cut to fit, which I did that same night.
I then wore the watch for a few days and noticed there were some things I didn't like. First off, the dial marker at 1:00 is noticeably crooked. The large chrono seconds hand has about 1 second of free play. By that I mean it would move around as you moved the watch, and never seemed to be at exactly top center. The other thing I hated was the odd tangerine color of the markers and hands. It looked orange in the pictures, but it's not that color in person. Basically, I friggin hated my new watch. I figured it might be tough to return since the strap was cut, and selling the watch with all these problems was not really an option either. (Can you imagine a noob getting this thing even if it had been described accurately in the sales thread! No thanks!) So I figured I had nothing to lose my trying to fix some of this stuff.
Check out the marker at 1:00:
The caseback opened easily with this little tool I got from Watchbitz:
This quartz movement turned out to be very easy to remove. There is actually a hole on the back of the movement labeled "push". Just stick something in there and the stem pops right out. The movement holder and movement came out together very easily after that.
Here is another image of the crooked dial marker. I thought some adhesive might be required, but after a firm press the pins on the marker found their corresponding holes in the dial.
Here is the realigned marker:
The next thing I wanted to do was get rid of most of that tangerine color. I didn't mind a few accents, but the majority of it had to go away. I figured I would just relume the hands and dial while I was at it. The first thing I did was put a little white paint into the markers as a base coat of sorts. I didn't now whether the lume would adequately cover the tangerine without it. However, I learned two things very quickly: Sausage dials are much tougher to work with than sandwich dials, but excess paint on the markers could be scraped off with a toothpick after it had dried. With that knowledge, I pretty much just slopped the paint in there to cover the tangerine color. Here's a picture of the paint wet:
Here is another image after the excess has been scraped off:
Up next was the lume. I used some inexpensive stuff that I had leftover from a vintage project. It still works a hundred times better than the rep lume. I mixed roughly equal parts clear matte paint and lume for the hands. I added a few drops of thinner before I started on the dial since I was worried it might take a while and the stuff would begin drying.
Again, I used the "slop it in" method to lume the dial markers:
And here is a picture after the excess lume has been removed following drying time:
Here is the requisite lume shot. If the cheap stuff works this good, I would love to try the C3 or whatever some time.
Here is a picture of the watch back together. It has a few small scratches now, but I like it waaaaay better than before (but I'm sure some reading this won't
: ). I just decided to leave the chrono seconds hand off since I thought it might be the nature of this movement to have some play in it.
Anyway, thanks for reading along. I had some fun, learned some stuff, and ultimately ended up with a watch I can live with. I'll try to take some better wrist shots and post them up.
