- 12/3/18
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Greetings fellow watch bros!
This watch head came to me with a few other well used down and outers for me to tinker around with. It wasn’t in terrible shape but definitely needed some TLC. I bought a cheapie strap for it on AliExpress, along with a new DG2813 movement.
Here’s a pic of the gen
The stem was broken off at the crown plunger, so that had to be soaked in an Alum powder solution for about a week. Each day I would dig out the soft debris inside the plunger with a needle to help speed the process along. Each of those three “collections” of debris below represents one day’s worth of stem dissolving.
The movement was dead, the new one was only $12, wow. It’s amazing that a profit can still be made on it at that price. There was some rust on the inside of the case and on the movement holder. I cleaned all that out and polished and re-brushed the case and bezel.
The dial was in decent shape but the red AUTOMATIC letters were faded to almost invisibility. The lume was a much nastier shade of green than the pic shows and I knew I had to do something about that. I also dislike the DG datewheel fonts so that had to change.
In the following pics you will see I did some things which deviate from recreating this rep’s accuracy to gen, so sorry if that disappoints anyone but I made it look the best I could with what I had to work with.
First up, I had some leftover stickers from my Seiko modding spree so I dug them out and sure enough I had a black AUTOMATIC sticker that was really close to the right size. So I stuck that on in place - you’d be hard pressed to see any of the red underneath and it’s a little too bold but this restoration was not about making this piece flawless as much as making it not an eyesore.
Next up I re-lumed the markers but my first attempt wasn’t successful. The rep markers were completely flat, so no borders to contain the lume. The factory had to have done this by machine to get such perfect circles of lume. It looks like the injection nozzles didn’t lift away cleanly on several of the markers, leaving an unsightly cupcake-icing kind of dollop. So while I was looking for other markers to use, I found some Rolex ones that I had previously re-lumed with BGW-9 (blue-green Chromalight) that already had the underside posts shaved flat (Jackpot!) so I went with those. Ofc that meant reluming the hands but OK.
For the datewheel, it looks like the gen uses an ETA DW. I tried several as a DWO on the DG wheel but they all were too far right justified through the date window frame. I also tried some Rolex DJ41 DWOs but ran into the same issue. I was about settle for the stock DG DW from the new movement when I came across an old Noob DJ41 DWO that had all the numbers printed too far left. Holy crap, who remembers those!? Well it fit the window perfectly so off we go. SOOO much nicer than the DG stock wheel.
The datewheel takes almost 90 minutes to click over on this movement so something I did for the first time with this one is press the hour hand to midnight to coincide with the start of the date change. Since I go to bed around midnight I never have to see the sloooww walker date change display. Yay!
Next I did a paint mod on the bezel numbers. I have no idea which gens have this bezel with black numbers and which do not, but I see plenty with the paint fill in a general online search. I prefer it with the mod so I went with it.
The bezel was attached with a wire circlip. The bezel was loose and the click was badly worn so clicking was nearly non-existent. Rather than spending a lot of time trying to sort these issues on a feature I never use, I opted to adhere the bezel in place. I used E6000 glue, which has great adhesion qualities and also scrapes away easily if there is overspill. I used a syringe with a narrow tip added on and just filled up the channel in the case to overflowing. Then just press the bezel down and center it.
And Voila we have a pretty nice, newish-looking SuperO!
I really like the tall chapter ring on this model.
Thanks for looking!
This watch head came to me with a few other well used down and outers for me to tinker around with. It wasn’t in terrible shape but definitely needed some TLC. I bought a cheapie strap for it on AliExpress, along with a new DG2813 movement.

Here’s a pic of the gen
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The stem was broken off at the crown plunger, so that had to be soaked in an Alum powder solution for about a week. Each day I would dig out the soft debris inside the plunger with a needle to help speed the process along. Each of those three “collections” of debris below represents one day’s worth of stem dissolving.

The movement was dead, the new one was only $12, wow. It’s amazing that a profit can still be made on it at that price. There was some rust on the inside of the case and on the movement holder. I cleaned all that out and polished and re-brushed the case and bezel.
The dial was in decent shape but the red AUTOMATIC letters were faded to almost invisibility. The lume was a much nastier shade of green than the pic shows and I knew I had to do something about that. I also dislike the DG datewheel fonts so that had to change.
In the following pics you will see I did some things which deviate from recreating this rep’s accuracy to gen, so sorry if that disappoints anyone but I made it look the best I could with what I had to work with.
First up, I had some leftover stickers from my Seiko modding spree so I dug them out and sure enough I had a black AUTOMATIC sticker that was really close to the right size. So I stuck that on in place - you’d be hard pressed to see any of the red underneath and it’s a little too bold but this restoration was not about making this piece flawless as much as making it not an eyesore.

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Next up I re-lumed the markers but my first attempt wasn’t successful. The rep markers were completely flat, so no borders to contain the lume. The factory had to have done this by machine to get such perfect circles of lume. It looks like the injection nozzles didn’t lift away cleanly on several of the markers, leaving an unsightly cupcake-icing kind of dollop. So while I was looking for other markers to use, I found some Rolex ones that I had previously re-lumed with BGW-9 (blue-green Chromalight) that already had the underside posts shaved flat (Jackpot!) so I went with those. Ofc that meant reluming the hands but OK.

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For the datewheel, it looks like the gen uses an ETA DW. I tried several as a DWO on the DG wheel but they all were too far right justified through the date window frame. I also tried some Rolex DJ41 DWOs but ran into the same issue. I was about settle for the stock DG DW from the new movement when I came across an old Noob DJ41 DWO that had all the numbers printed too far left. Holy crap, who remembers those!? Well it fit the window perfectly so off we go. SOOO much nicer than the DG stock wheel.
The datewheel takes almost 90 minutes to click over on this movement so something I did for the first time with this one is press the hour hand to midnight to coincide with the start of the date change. Since I go to bed around midnight I never have to see the sloooww walker date change display. Yay!

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Next I did a paint mod on the bezel numbers. I have no idea which gens have this bezel with black numbers and which do not, but I see plenty with the paint fill in a general online search. I prefer it with the mod so I went with it.
The bezel was attached with a wire circlip. The bezel was loose and the click was badly worn so clicking was nearly non-existent. Rather than spending a lot of time trying to sort these issues on a feature I never use, I opted to adhere the bezel in place. I used E6000 glue, which has great adhesion qualities and also scrapes away easily if there is overspill. I used a syringe with a narrow tip added on and just filled up the channel in the case to overflowing. Then just press the bezel down and center it.

And Voila we have a pretty nice, newish-looking SuperO!
I really like the tall chapter ring on this model.
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Thanks for looking!
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