- 27/10/07
- 351
- 15
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Welcome in my section !
First, I wanted to thanks trailboss and all the staff here who allowed me to exist and to express myself through my creations here on this great place,
I wanted also to thanks members who have already entrusted work to me and for all kind comments for my posts here in the vintage watch forum,
If you appreciate vintage time pieces, this is the right place to simply discuss, share infos and knowledge, and start any
project about mod or complete build project on vintage watches,
Dream, Inspiration, Creativity,
These are the key words. Although I can fix broken movements, swap dials and all kind of usual watch servicing, I am not really a watchsmith/watchmaker, I don't want to get screwed doing classic watch repairs, life is short. So I will stay focused on vintage watch construction, restoration and design.
I am rather a kind of artist shapping and re-designing metal parts, carving and repolishing acrylic cristals and playing to be God with vintage lume chemical.
The target is to replicate vintage time pieces which are rare to source and also inaccessible in the world of genuine watches
I love vintage Rolex sport watches, also other brands, especially like Bréguet, Dodane, Ebel and much more rare pieces like Auricoste chronographs
Now I have good references near vintage collector shops and private collectors in France and in Germany and do repairs and restoration of gen vintage watches especially Rolex.
But the main interest for me is to mod rep watches. That's why I am here. Take a basic replica and work on to make it looks like a gen.
I consider this like an artistic activity, a very instructive hobby. This is also a game and a challenge to try to replicate a rare time piece. And I don't really appreciate these narrow brains using the word "counterfeit"... Replica is smart.
No one vintage replica is good out of the box : most of the time cases and crowns are out of specs and to thick, dials have poor printed text, lume on dots and hands looks like plastic etc.
My philosophy is not to invest a lot of money in gen parts, of course, gen parts are (could be) better and increase the value of the replica, in term of money in case on sale only (imho). But not necessary in term of cosmetic. Sometimes reps look better than gens
The goal is to try to get very close from the gen stuff using stock parts and spending a minimum of money for gen and/or aftermarket parts if needed.
However, the absolute need of gen/aftermarket components has to be taken into consideration when a rep is completely unwearable : like for the old Rolex GMT 6542 and 1675, the most difficult vintage watches to replicate. No one sold by dealers are good. Some 1675 are made using Sub cases, rep makers recycling...
In that kind of situation gen or aftermarket parts are necessary to get something believable, but this has a cost.
Since I observe and often handle gen watches I improve every days the sense of observation for the details, case design especially, generally all metal work and re-design. For exemple I can machine a 7mm triplock Sub crown with his tube and convert it into a 7mm twinlock visually like a gen.
For vintage watch buildings I use components from the following dealers and I know very well all their products :
Jewlery and watch
NDT trading
Ingod44
YukiWatch
Rafflestime
Gary Clark
Otto Frei
Feel free to contact me by pm or email me here :
[email protected] to get the regular jobs price list or for an estimate if you think about a building
Anyway, have a look in my topics in this section, it will give you ideas, probably you have a vintage Rolex which deserves
to be taken into consideration for mod
RolexAddict