chiman12, on 07 Nov 2010 - 12:49 AM, said:We discussed
here about how a Josh 1655 would be a good candidate for a 1675 project. In fact, a couple of members, including Star69 has already built a 1675 from the 1655.
Even though it isn't 100% complete, I thought that I would give an update on my 1655 conversion to a 1675 Cornino.
Of course, the most distinctive feature of the 1675 Cornino is the pointed crown guards. I could not find any references of how the crown guards would look underneath the bezel assembly and I thought that Rolex would just not file the crown guards to a point. I believe that the they had to be sculpted, in that the CG curves and blends with the case. So the case visited the chiman CG spa and here are the results...
While I was sculpting the CGs, I also softened the edges of the case
I purchased a bezel assembly from ewatchparts.com, afterall it was the cheapest. Needless to say, you get what you pay for, because the bezel insert sucked, it looked like paint didn't completely transfer onto the insert and the bezel didn't have a pronounced coin edge. Oh well, both can be fixed easily. The mag on the rep crystal was a bit weak, so I installed a Sterny 116
For the dial, I chose an NDT gilt chapter ring dial. I wanted to do something different to the dial and I really like the looks of my Tudor California dial, but I can't seem to find the original post discussing the dial. But in any case, here it is...
I want the same pebble effect as my California dial. I think it turned out really well, but Rolex purists would say otherwise. I accomplished the finish by spraying the dial with clear matte Kryon finish and I then proceed to get a folded up paper towel and dabbed at the dial to soak up the excess finish until I got the desired effect.
The only GMT movements that I see in reps are the gen, modified ETA, or Asian GMT movements. I did a lot of research on GMT movements and decided upon this for my project...
It is a Zodiac 75B and a pure GMT movement. In fact, the size of the GMT post on the 75B is the same size as the gen Rolex GMT hand, while the minute, hour, second hands are all ETA spec. In addition, the date flips exactly in the same direction as the 1575, so I used a gen-like date wheel from wholesaleoulett990 as an overlay for my project. But, once again, I strayed a little bit from the norm and installed a roulette wheel...
But there was a slight snag in my project that I had to overcome. When I applied the wholesaleoutlet overlay on top of the original date wheel, the combo was too thick and the date wheel was rubbing against the dial and didn't flip properly. The solution? I flipped the dial rest around and the problem went away! You can see the edge of the dial rest in the pic and the date wheel now flips without any problems. So why did this work? When you install a dial back onto a movement, you'll notice that the edge of the dial rest actually receeds a bit into the dial rest groove. By flipping the dial rest around, it no longer receeds into the groove and you get that additional bit of space for the date wheel to flip properly.
I'm currently aging the hands, in addition I broke my small GMT hand so I need to source another one, but here are a few pics with the watch put together without hands, but it does have the proper 5.3mm crown...
I would say that this project is 75% complete. I need to change out the bezel insert for a better one, most likely a faded gen and I'll fix the bezel so it has a more pronounced coin edge. I also discovered that the Sterny 116 cyclope was off to one side. I checked with CousinsUK and Sterny sells two different versions of 116's, so I'll grab the other one and see if it fixes the problem. I'll also touch up the insides of the CG's a bit and slap on a nice Yuki rivet bracelet on it
I'll post an update once I get the watch completed.
