Help assessing my new franken Portugesier 3714-45

[Glucany 1]

Hi everyone, I am in bit of a dead end and if you don’t mind I would like to ask for the forum’s help.

It took me over 5 months to collects gen parts and patiently wait my watchmaker to assemble the watch, but few days back I finally my got nicely franken’d  IW3714-45.   

Watch specs are the following:  ZF v3 slim case base; gen new xtal, gen dial (used) and tachy ring (new), gen hands (new) except for the sec hand @ 6 and the blue one @  9 which don’t fit in  the rep.   I also put an Orloff croc strap (new) on.

I am very, very happy with the result;   I think you can agree the watch looks awesome.  
However, the more I look at it the bigger a doubt keeps growing inside my guts:   the hour and minute hands colors don’t seem to match the numerals color in the dial.  This is by a great deal, no matter the light I look at them under.

I normally don’t jump to conclusions and I always try to be rational; so,  in this case, the way I see it there are three possibilities:

1) I am not an IWC (or a watch expert for that matter) conoisseur in the least, and the dial+hand combo in the watch is as it should be and the color difference is all in my head only;

2) one or more of the parts I bought for gen, aren’t (although I a feel quite good of the vendors reputation);

3) the watchmaker who assembled the watch for me didn’t install the gen hands.   Instead, he could have disassembled the ZF rep, and when putting the watch back together somehow got mixed up and placed the rep hands (and sent me the gen ones back).

While 1) is absolutely true, when I look at the handset I have on hand - not on the watch - it seems to me that 3) is the most likely.   As I think you can see from a couple of the attached pics, the hands color I have seem a lot closer to the dials numerals than those on the watch.   Also their shape and finishing look a lot more gen-like.

Before I contact any of the people involved in the project, can anybody here help me clear my head? Is any of the three points above more likely than the others?

Sorry for the long text and thanks much in advance.

 

 

[tribefan 6,768]

Look at both sets of hands under magnification and you should be able to tell the difference between gen and rep straight away. Gen will be perfect, rep will not.

To me it looks like it has the rep hands on it from the pics, but pics can be deceiving. If I had to guess, I would say the watchmaker used the rep hands because they match the second hand at 6 and the gen hands don't, but you should be able to find that out with a phone call to your watchmaker. I'm no expert, I had a ZF 3714-46 and it was a great watch, thought about a franken but didn't know enough about the genuine movement so I left it alone.

[GenTLe 1,501]

I agree with tribefan, also the hands out aren't exactly the same colors of the dial numbers, at least it seems to me.

Oh, the joy of frankens...

Considering the small gen hands don't fit, if I was in your situation I'd rather take the rep hands out and self plate them in yellow 24k gold, doing some preliminary test on something else to see if the colors will match. Even if you put the gen hr/min hands in there, and even if they match the rest, you'll still have the second hand that is a mismatch. See: https://www.goldn.co.uk/

Or (and it will be much cheaper), find someone (like a jeweler) that can do that for you.

[Aramis2288 6,253]

Speaking about the gold plating jeweler - I need to find somebody good in EU. I have some gold reps I would like to buy, and although they would not be a daily beater for me, I am a bit unsure how good the factory plating will hold up. 

I guess that the watches of simple enough construction should be easy to demount and plate (e.g. Rolex Cellini).

So @glucany, if you happen to discover some good plating service, please keep us posted!

 

Edited July 20, 2021 by Aramis2288

[GenTLe 1,501]

1 hour ago, Aramis2288 said:

although they would not be a daily beater for me, I am a bit unsure how good the factory plating will hold up. 

For non daily use it will hold up well  Don't worry before time of worries comes.

[Pesman 9,461]

Looks great to me….


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Glucany 1]

Thanks to everyone for their replies and suggestions, much appreciated! 

A little update:  the vendor who sent me the gen parts confirms the hands on the watch are gen, the ones off rep (he said gen hands are slimmer and more 3D-like;  however he did not say anything about difference in color with dial numerals).

Also, the watchmaker swears he mounted the hands I provided, and sent me back the rep ones.

 

[Rx4Time 1,472]

Can you get macro pictures of both hand sets to compare finish, and maybe another picture or two in different lighting?  My impression is the rep are installed as said above.  Perhaps the genuine minutes and hours wouldn't fit?

[V101 25]

On 19/07/2021 at 20:57, Glucany said:

 

 

 

To my (admittedly untrained) eye neither sets of hands match the numerals. Perhaps the batch your dial came from has a different (older) hue and may be difficult to match in a franken utilizing new hands (gen or rep).  Despite the subtle difference your watch is lovely and should be enjoyed for what it is. Wear in good health!

[jodam 0]

i am totaly new, but for me it looks awesome.