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NCRich

What is a tropical dial? 5517 variant

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NCRich

Stolen from a website.

1) It has faded naturally to a different colour. Note that the fade is often from black to brown, but can be from any original colour so long as a material change in colour is evident. Also note that the change must be brought about “naturally”. This can be through exposure to the sun, natural ageing or indeed any other natural process. Baking it in an over most definitely does not count as natural.

2) A tropical dial needs to be almost uniform in its fading. Sometimes a watch dial gets only partial exposure to the sun and this results in a clear fade but only to some parts of the watch. To be a pure tropical dial, the fading should be uniformly and evenly spread across the whole dial.

3) The change in colour should NOT be due to water (or other) damage. This is not to say that various types of damage can create very unusual dial outcomes - indeed, often attractive - but this would not be considered a tropical effect.

These are simple rules and by no means cast in iron. However, by adopting such a simplified methodology, one gets a fairly clear picture of what is and what is not a good tropical dial.

End theft.

So what can you do if you break the "no bake in the oven" rule? :lol:

Well I thought I'd like to see and I had a sacrificial rolex dial. After some experimentation I figured out the time between not brown and burnt. Did it with both the hands and dial with my 5517. So it looked like this:

vpaoRvR.jpg?1

Got the dial right but the hands don't look right. Watercolors and lume time. Its harder to get the lume to look raggy old than it is to do it perfect on the hands. But I got some raggy look and after a couple tries I think I got the color about right. Did a pointy CG look to this one with 2mm springbars. Needs fixed bars but don't have the proper bits yet. So buttoned up it looks like it has been in the desert or forest on campaign.

T5L5RU0.jpg?1

Ma51E03.jpg?1

d8TcwO0.jpg?1

Neat project. Something different.

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GC

The one model I don't like and you still make it look awesome. That dial is spot on for a tropical, mmmm chocolatey

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scope

My hats off to you for that lume job.Great looking watch.

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Piccolo

I love how you turn these out so different but all so good every time... Great work Rich.

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fatarms

Love it. Rich, how long have you been modding vintages? I've been here for years, and it may be my fault here, but I've really only noticed your vintage jobs in the past year or so. I may have missed a ton of your other work, but you are now my "go to" guy to try to observe and learn new techniques for vintagizing watches. Great work, bud :D

 

I'm up with a sick daughter in the wee hours of the night and somehow only stumbled upon this thread now. Typing one-handed while holding her in my other arm takes forever :lol:

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NCRich

Love it. Rich, how long have you been modding vintages? I've been here for years, and it may be my fault here, but I've really only noticed your vintage jobs in the past year or so. I may have missed a ton of your other work, but you are now my "go to" guy to try to observe and learn new techniques for vintagizing watches. Great work, bud :D

 

I'm up with a sick daughter in the wee hours of the night and somehow only stumbled upon this thread now. Typing one-handed while holding her in my other arm takes forever :lol:

 

Thanks (and the rest of you as well). Take care of the little one! I started less than 2 years ago, though I'd been here since 2011 as well. I had a broken DRSD, no skills, and I'd gotten frustrated after being screwed by a couple of "trusted " repairers. I figured it couldn't be that hard to work on watches. I'd restored multiple vintage cars and built model ships. I had a lot of tools, a workshop, and some time. I found Bonesey's posts on RWI and soon read everything I could find. It's fun, you just have to have patience and you stop destroying things fairly quickly. Problem is I'm kind of running out of things I want to do. Gonna have to sell everything and start over??? :lol:

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sogeha

That turned out very nicely, not to mention the quarter Million you saved over a gen. what did you use please? Cartel base? HR hands?

 

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NCRich

That turned out very nicely, not to mention the quarter Million you saved over a gen. what did you use please? Cartel base? HR hands?

 

That is 100% JK factory with a LOT of reworking. Some use that interchangeably with Cartel but it really isn't as simple as that since stuff is always changing. I use some HR stuff but I didn't see the need here. I may break down and get a Athaya crown but I have 5 of these type subs and 5X$35 for something that just doesn't bother me is annoying. Funny how different things bother people.

 

Now putting fixed bars in this interests me a lot. I know how but the damn drill bit is $50 (and you know I will break it).

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sogeha

Thank you. I'm now going to look for a JK. Shame it doesn't come with fixed bars really. It would be have as difficult for the factory to make it that way as it is to drill the lugs afterwards. I did it once, but now I just pay a properly equipped guy to do it for me.

I heard these JK have better bezel assemblies the Cartel.

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NCRich

Just thought that I didn't have a before shot. Heckuva difference.

 

RZ2FKi7.jpg?1

 

 

 

T5L5RU0.jpg?1

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sogeha

Lots of work on the case and CG, but it's the dial and hands that make it look believable. I really have to learn to do this.

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Diver Dave

Nice work!

 

Just as an observation, having been around actual tropical faded Rolex watches: Any originally tropically faded watch is also beat to shit. The ones I most commonly saw in the 80's were on the wrists of oilfield workers in the Gulf of Mexico (where I was working as a diver) that had been worn by the riggers and workers who had previously spent years in Saudi Arabia, working outside in the sun 12 hours a day. The interior temperatures of the watches in the sun is what baked them grey (think car parked in the sun on your wrist) What goes along with that life of exposure is a case that's also been beaten up. The inserts get scratched to fuck too. I changed my insert out every five years, and reliably this is how it went: Within 6 months the pearl was gone (one time it was one week)... In a year there were several good scratches on it. In 5 years it had turned into swiss-cheese (from underwater electric arc welding electrolysis) and was replaced. I saw more than one Sub worn by working guys that had not had an insert on them in years. And the first watch that I thought was an Explorer was a Sub that had lost the entire bezel, and had been worn that way for a decade. My very first Sub, made in 1966, was bought used for $375 by me, cheap because the insert had been swiss-cheesed and the stainless steel cap on the end of the crown was half gone, with the threads on the crown tube mostly missing too. That was all from underwater welding damage. I wore it like that until I got my Sea Dweller, and then sent it out for a new tube, crown, and insert. But that was a typical working mans watch when I worked offshore.

 

 

There's no such thing as a real tropical dial on a watch with a case that's not been equally aged.....

 

 

So my advice, if you're gonna built a faded dial watch, is to start with the case first. I'm going to make a project soon of taking macro photos of the Sea Dweller that I've worn for 38 years now, to show the various "families" of scratches and marks that an honestly worn watch gets when someone who works with their hands wears one for decades. There are several different types of marks seen, and it'll take a lot of work to get them right (if you choose to). Fading the dials is kids stuff by comparison.

 

Still, the work shown looks great. Put it in a cloth bag of rocks and shake it for a few hours!

 

Last observation: On the original riveted bracelets, we ALL popped off a pin and slid the O-Ring for a scuba tank (the older fat ones) over the bracelet, and slid it over the clasp after closing it. This does the same job as the flip-lock that came out later. So if you're doing an honest 1960's type metal bracelet "working divers Sub", stick an O-Ring on it. Any of the old guys like me who wore them to work would approve. I never saw a olex worn on anything other than a metal bracelet then, noting that you could buy a new riveted bracelet at any Jewelry store in Louisiana then for about $40. We wore them out and threw them away without thinking about it.

 

The only exception was the ex-Navy guys, who proudly wore their Olongapo Bands. Google those. Classic 60's and 70's military choice.

Edited by Diver Dave

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NCRich

I build them for me. I don't like beat up watch cases, I like aged dials. I looked at literally thousands of pics of gen rolexes and I take away the things I like. They are all fakes anyway.

 

Tastes vary. That is why I have a two tone daydate. Rolex never made them, but they should have. :lol:

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Diver Dave

I build them for me. I don't like beat up watch cases, I like aged dials. I looked at literally thousands of pics of gen rolexes and I take away the things I like. They are all fakes anyway.

 

Tastes vary. That is why I have a two tone daydate. Rolex never made them, but they should have. :lol:

 

 

Enjoy!

 

Figured a little "been there, done that, seen that" observation might have some interest, since 99.9% of the people playing with these things have never seen the real thing, never mind participated in actually using them as tools before they were too valuable to knock around while changing the spark-plugs of a jeep. ;-)

 

 

 

The work looks good in any event. Nicely done.

 

Dave

 

.

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Undinist

*BUMP!*

 

How do you make a purple or violet tropical dial? Do you put a blue one in the oven? I want a purple nipple dial like this....

 

 

image.jpg

 

 

...on an all gold sub with a black bezel. I know that shouldn't be possible because a black dial wouldn't tropicalise to purple, but that's what I want. It would be the mutt's nuts!

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Genius
*BUMP!*

 

How do you make a purple or violet tropical dial? Do you put a blue one in the oven? I want a purple nipple dial like this....

 

 

image.jpg

 

 

...on an all gold sub with a black bezel. I know that shouldn't be possible because a black dial wouldn't tropicalise to purple, but that's what I want. It would be the mutt's nuts!

Some of the blue dial are purple anyway just cos the rep makers fucked up and made em like that.... Pretty easy to find. And swapping the blue insert for black is actually rather easy too

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Undinist

Easy to find? Could I just ask a TD to look out for one? If it wasn't on a watch I wanted would they be prepared to swap it over?

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n5jefe
On 1/8/2017 at 16:07, NCRich said:

 

So what can you do if you break the "no bake in the oven" rule? :lol:

Well I thought I'd like to see and I had a sacrificial rolex dial. After some experimentation I figured out the time between not brown and burnt. Did it with both the hands and dial with my 5517. So it looked like this:

Got the dial right but the hands don't look right. Watercolors and lume time. Its harder to get the lume to look raggy old than it is to do it perfect on the hands. But I got some raggy look and after a couple tries I think I got the color about right. 

 

Looks really damn good to me!

Question, the lume absorbs the watercolor load how easily? Where you dabbing it on and waiting for it to absorb? Or is it a quick wash over and wipe away excess?  Thanks!

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DrSchaffhausen

Looks awesome! :bananarider:

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