Bezel insert ‘mod’ experimentation

[Dr Fun Socks 76]

Bezel inserts!

If you have a rolex, chances are you’ve heard people complain, possibly even yourself at some point. Well luckily there are a few options these days to sort those crappy dull number finishes.

1. Buy a gen bezel. $$$$$$$
2. Send your watch to sponge bob, probably the best option (or equal to usd) by without going gen but its still $300. Times that by the 6 rollies I’ve accumulated and its not an option...
3. Usd plating. Much less expensive than sponge bob, probably not much difference in quality, but still €100 x6 = a new watch
4. The paint pen mod.... now as with a lot of people i have tried this. Is it a mod? No its colouring in your watch with a pen. Don’t fancify it! On day one after slaving away with your little scalpel blade it looks pretty good. Much more visible in low light. But then a month down the line it looks like shit again and needs re doing.
5. The KJ2020 method, spray paint. I get the ease of doing it with a pen. You dont need to remove the bezel, although good luck around the pip (if your doing a sub not a gmt). But kj knows his stuff and spray paint, at least some forms of it, is much longer lasting and hard wearing.

But which colour i hear you cry? Well I’ve spent a day and about £10 to find out which (of my small sample of colours) is the best! Bear in mind i painted these with two coats, scraped, acetoned and re did the process 4 times in a day just for the sake of science, so if any of the pics show silver smudges, its because i wasn’t exactly trying hard to make it pretty, its just to get an idea of what the colour looked like before i stripped it again. 

Despite being what i can only assume from experience is the least durable of the finishes, paint pen was far and away the hardest to remove. Im guessing its oil based, could be wrong, but acetone didn’t touch it. Even alcohol didn’t do much. I had to scrape a lot of it out with a 0.8mm screw driver in the end which was a real pain in the ass and ill still probably have to do some minute detailing before i do the final paint ill before i stick it back on the watch. 

The test piece

The noob v7 batman “speed bump” bezel insert. If there was no speed bump effect im sure no one would care. But there is. Im not sure on the construction of most inserts, but this one is metal (probably steel) coated with ceramic. How do they do that? Magic? I don’t know. Probably some form of sintering but ill leave that to people who know more about it. 











Plated rep inserts

I nicked these pics from USD plating, hopefully he doesn’t mind. This would be the benchmark I’m aiming for, but at 1/10th the cost or less, have your expectations set accordingly. 








The equipment

Not much needed to be honest. I used a straight razor blade as i find it easier to press flat on the insert but any scalpel blade will work. I used a load of acetone, you may not need it depending on if your insert has painted numbers, if you do wear gloves, its strong stuff. It wont damage your bezel unless its made from plastic and its great for getting the sticky shit off the back. If you choose to spray paint, a warm place with no dust is the best. There are various threads about removing bezel inserts so use the search bar. I used double sided sticky tape to attach it to a box for spraying. 








Numéro uno



https://www.sprayster.com/product/pa...y-paint-400ml/


Despite the tin looking slightly different to this picture this is what i ordered. Gloss enamel paint. 
















Numéro deux




https://www.sprayster.com/product/hy...c-spray-paint/

It had platinum in the name so i had to give it a go. It has much more of a rainbowy shimmer than the others under fake indoor lighting (leds). Hard to photograph but you can kind of see it on the 20 in the last picture. Acrylic paint. 




















Nummer drei



Lidl

Admittedly the only difference between this and number one is the finish, silk as opposed to gloss. There may be a difference in the flake size, ill leave that to your eyes. 














Numero quattro




https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pilot-Metal.../dp/B00PCKKUDA

Yeah i know its not a molotov. Im in the uk and i got it from smiths. Its a silver paint pen at the end of the day, its in here for comparative purposes. 






















Results

Sorry for the lack of sunlight pics, its pissing it down all week in the uk, hence i had nothing better to do than paint the same bezel repeatedly...












Which is the most gen like? Honestly probably the surface finish of the silk is the closest to usd’s pics. From what i can tell platinum isnt a super glossy finish, it’s not a polished surface. In terms of colour perhaps the platinum as it changes colour other than just silver. It does however have a sparkle to it, which im assuming platinum doesn’t. 

Which one do i like the most? The Renault platinum colour is pretty swish. Im going to do a final coat in that colour and see how i like it when i get some parts back from KJ2020. I hope you enjoyed reading and maybe even found this useful! Thanks to Kurt for the idea. 


Disclaimer: if you ruin your watch, not my fault!

[CollieWobbles 236]

Very detailed, thanks for posting.

[Dr Fun Socks 76]

6 minutes ago, CollieWobbles said:

Very detailed, thanks for posting.

All good man. Id be lying if i said it took longer to do the painting than trying to collage pictures but thats my complete lack of it competency!

[Nikosaldente 630]

Very detailed indeed!

Thanks for sharing!

[NCRich 13,798]

Nice!  Great to see the comparisons.

[Dr Fun Socks 76]

9 minutes ago, NCRich said:

Nice!  Great to see the comparisons.

I know i only look at the pictures in articles so i laid them on heavy

[deju 1,889]

Fun experiment  thanks for sharing.

FYI I found Pen paint's are tosh, certainly the brands availabe in the UK were. I had one for doing my EXP and it doesn't last long between needing redone.   

Platinum and silk seem to do the best job. I don't know if the rainbow effect would be close to gen with platinum but I really liked it  

[Dr Fun Socks 76]

14 minutes ago, deju said:

Fun experiment  thanks for sharing.

FYI I found Pen paint's are tosh, certainly the brands availabe in the UK were. I had one for doing my EXP and it doesn't last long between needing redone.   

Platinum and silk seem to do the best job. I don't know if the rainbow effect would be close to gen with platinum but I really liked it  

Yeah my thoughts exactly, paint pens suck! They wear off very quickly but its really hard to get the last little bits out chemically (im lazy, just throw chemicals at jobs to avoid manual labour...). Yeah there’s something really cool about the platinum sparkle. Its nice to see it and think well that definitely couldn’t be achieved with a pen. Ill post some pics up when i get my parts back

[Glaude 1,615]

Thanks for that nice review / comparison !

To my trained eyes for details, colors & shit like that, clearly the pen is the winner for how close it looks to the USD plating.

Why ? Because every paint used left a thick layer, where in the plating process, it's a very very thin layer, that allow you to see the tracks left by the fiber (galavanometer) laser used to "cut" the number into the bezel (those weird lines and shapes you see in the numbers)

The paint pen is the only one that left a thin layer, all the other paint, you can see the droplets of various size.

The color is out of the game for me if we compare it to the USD as it was not in the same lighting condition and we are talking very very little differences here, they all look way off the color of the USD one because of that

[Dr Fun Socks 76]

5 hours ago, Glaude said:

Thanks for that nice review / comparison !

To my trained eyes for details, colors & shit like that, clearly the pen is the winner for how close it looks to the USD plating.

Why ? Because every paint used left a thick layer, where in the plating process, it's a very very thin layer, that allow you to see the tracks left by the fiber (galavanometer) laser used to "cut" the number into the bezel (those weird lines and shapes you see in the numbers)

The paint pen is the only one that left a thin layer, all the other paint, you can see the droplets of various size.

The color is out of the game for me if we compare it to the USD as it was not in the same lighting condition and we are talking very very little differences here, they all look way off the color of the USD one because of that

I have to agree the colour/texture ratio on the pen is good, cant fault it. But i know from experience durability is terrible. A few weeks and it looks like shit again. Im going to try running the platinum for a while and see how it holds up. Maybe the acrylic or enamel spray will hold up better. Maybe i should be doing thinner coats, the final coat is normally fairly thick. 3-4 super thin coats could be the daddy!

[Glaude 1,615]

4 hours ago, Dr Fun Socks said:

I have to agree the colour/texture ratio on the pen is good, cant fault it. But i know from experience durability is terrible. A few weeks and it looks like shit again. Im going to try running the platinum for a while and see how it holds up. Maybe the acrylic or enamel spray will hold up better. Maybe i should be doing thinner coats, the final coat is normally fairly thick. 3-4 super thin coats could be the daddy!

Maybe working on the spray can paint application (doing it from further away to have less paint ? You could achieve better results that way maybe

[Dr Fun Socks 76]

5 hours ago, Glaude said:

Maybe working on the spray can paint application (doing it from further away to have less paint ? You could achieve better results that way maybe

Ill give it a go man, more coats from further away until 100% coverage is reached. I could always try flooding the numbers then just using some tissue to soak up the excess. Sound stupid but it works pretty well with the paint pen. 

[Theviking 197]

Excellent process Dr, thank you for sharing. I'm being a bit dumb, but how are you removing the paint that you don't want on the bezel?

[GingerApple 7,305]

1 hour ago, Theviking said:

Excellent process Dr, thank you for sharing. I'm being a bit dumb, but how are you removing the paint that you don't want on the bezel?

Scraping it of with a razor blade (I think). That's what KJ2020 does.

[Dr Fun Socks 76]

Yeah i used a flat razor blade and just scrape it against the flat face of the bezel to remove all the unwanted stuff. Ceramic is harder then steel so it wont scratch. 

[Theviking 197]

18 minutes ago, TheGingerFerret said:

Scraping it of with a razor blade (I think). That's what KJ2020 does.

Ah, very good, carry on

[Dazza78 3]

25 minutes ago, Dr Fun Socks said:

Yeah i used a flat razor blade and just scrape it against the flat face of the bezel to remove all the unwanted stuff. Ceramic is harder then steel so it wont scratch. 

So using this method doesn't scratch the ceramic at all?  

Can this be done without removing the bezel or insert?

[Dr Fun Socks 76]

2 hours ago, Dazza78 said:

So using this method doesn't scratch the ceramic at all?  

Can this be done without removing the bezel or insert?

Nah it doesn't touch it. Ill take some pics later of how to do it if it would help, its really pretty easy. All depends how good you are at masking up the parts you dont want to spray. Its not impossible but its not easy. 

[Dazza78 3]

1 hour ago, Dr Fun Socks said:

Nah it doesn't touch it. Ill take some pics later of how to do it if it would help, its really pretty easy. All depends how good you are at masking up the parts you dont want to spray. Its not impossible but its not easy. 

That would be greatly appreciated mate, thanks.  I'm thinking of just buying some acrylic platinum paint and trying my hand at it, but so far none of the Paint Mods have seen have been that impressive, you can always tell it's been painted as there's tell tale signs as mentioned before, to globby, paint is too shiny or too silvery etc..

But still willing to give it a go, might try and use some of the model paint that geeks use to paint there D&D figures or toy soldiers.

[GingerApple 7,305]

20 minutes ago, Dazza78 said:

I might try and use some of the model paint that geeks use to paint there D&D figures, pretend plastic cars or toy soldiers.

I see you've met @Junior88 

[BadApple 13,230]

Hi 

[deju 1,889]

24 minutes ago, Dazza78 said:

That would be greatly appreciated mate, thanks.  I'm thinking of just buying some acrylic platinum paint and trying my hand at it, but so far none of the Paint Mods have seen have been that impressive, you can always tell it's been painted as there's tell tale signs as mentioned before, to globby, paint is too shiny or too silvery etc..

But still willing to give it a go, might try and use some of the model paint that geeks use to paint there D&D figures or toy soldiers.

If you have the little pots of paint then you don’t need to remove or really mask off anything. 

you can use a jewellers screw driver/ cocktail stick / model paint brush to put the paint on.

over spill can come off easily. 

[Dr Fun Socks 76]

44 minutes ago, Dazza78 said:

That would be greatly appreciated mate, thanks.  I'm thinking of just buying some acrylic platinum paint and trying my hand at it, but so far none of the Paint Mods have seen have been that impressive, you can always tell it's been painted as there's tell tale signs as mentioned before, to globby, paint is too shiny or too silvery etc..

But still willing to give it a go, might try and use some of the model paint that geeks use to paint there D&D figures or toy soldiers.

Yeah i see no reason it wouldn't work using a pot of model paint, i just think it’s possibly easier to get an even coat with spray paint (that and i now have loads of it!). Heres what i use to get the excess off  just hold the blade parallel to the ceramic face and go round scraping 

[Dr Fun Socks 76]

Heres a few pics of my v6s, just done in the renault platinum. Pretty pleased with it! After an hour of trying to get the pearl out without cracking the insert i gave up and just put a tiny piece of rodico over it and scraped around the sides afterwards. 

[Dazza78 3]

1 hour ago, TheGingerFerret said:

I see you've met @Junior88 

Loool!

I haven't and I hope I haven't insulted anyone