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jerkstore

My Last Project… Probably: 16610 Franken/TC case

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jerkstore

j925fY.jpg

I got into this hobby about ten years ago. Sort of by accident. I had no clue what rep watches were. I mean, I had seen fake watches before—but I didn’t know that there is a small community of producers and buyers of high-end replica versions of watches I liked. At the time I was searching for a watch to buy for my then-wife, and stumbled across RWG. (I ended up buying her a gen, and then me a rep, and got hooked). 

Though many of you here (myself included) find features and attributes to complain about, 99% of the people walking around on the street would have no idea about your SEL fitment, or whether your bracelet stamp is period correct. On the whole, these reps we wear are quite attractive time pieces. And the time keeping is generally pretty good—which seems like an important thing to point out. 

I’m sure my first question on RWG.bz was “who makes the best sub?” Which at the time meant a 16610, since that was the most current Submariner. By chance, the first rep that I ordered had a busted keyless works. At least that was my impression after reading the boards, since the crown only had a vague control over the watch hands. 

Because it was a rep, and nowhere near as expensive as my small collection of nice gen watches, I decided to open it up and try to fix it myself. I bought a bunch of tools, read up on it, and proceeded to try to teach myself how to fix the keyless works on a spare DG2813. Which was super dangerous with all the tiny little springs that would sky across the room. But I did it. And that gave me confidence to fix the rep, which I did. That pushed me into several years of modding. It fascinated me: all the tiny little gears and springs, how they fit together and keep time. 

I went through many phases: big crowns, datejusts, 5513s, GMTs, Seadwellers, Breitlings, and more. But it always came back to the 16610 for me. Over time I picked up genuine parts for one. A TC bracelet back when he was still into reps. And after he wasn’t I found several TC cases, a Wm9, with the idea that one would eventually take all these parts. Life happened and I got away from the hobby but hung onto all my stuff. 

Recently I decided to take a look at the forums again, and I noticed that the rep makers were selling watches with reliable 3135 clones. Those happen to fit a gen dial, and genuine hands. So I finally put my last project together. Here it is, alongside my other TC and that Wm9 case. 

Gen dial, gen hands, gen insert, TC case, TC v2 bracelet, VR3135 movement with blue spring (serviced). I only had two issues during assembly: (1)  the movement needed tabs to fit in the case, but I was able to mod some to fit easily enough—gen screws don’t work; (2) the gen hands are a tight fit on the VR3135 cannon pinions—so I bought some of those cheap flat hand presses on ebay and they worked perfectly.

Here it is:

j92w6p.jpg
j92k2b.jpg
j92XFi.jpg
j92TlX.jpg
j92pJI.jpg
j92ld4.jpg
j92QOj.jpg
j92Bj1.jpg
j92ruv.jpg
j9286K.jpg
j92628.jpg
j929fR.jpg

Alongside my TC :

j92yWQ.jpg
j92OxS.jpg
j92IdW.jpg
j92qIP.jpg


Movement tabs in place:

j92oZJ.jpg
j92iuo.jpg
j92ank.jpg
j92W2D.jpg

Very pleased with the outcome after all this time. I know it isn’t perfect—I never cared about that anyway. I am fortunate enough to be in a situation where I could afford a “perfect” gen if I wanted one. But I prefer my watch because it’s mine. I made it. Through grit, and perseverance, and teaching myself how these tiny little engines fit together and work. That’s what the one I carry around on my wrist represents. 

The 16610 is no longer the current Sub; multiple Rolex generations have passed. But that’s cool because I always liked vintage anyway. And I finally answered that old question, “who makes the best sub?” 

I do.

Thank you all for helping me along the way. 

Edited by jerkstore
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ChromosomeYX

Well done! Love the nato

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APjumbo

Amazing build. What a great story. It really wraps up why this hobby is so great. That one you built will always be better than something bought. 

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BravoDelta

“There’s more to life than making shallow, fairly obvious observations.”  ~ Seinfeld.  But this is a fantastic summary of your rep journey.  Very impressive, thanks for sharing  @jerkstore 

 

 

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jd1566

I have to concur wholeheartedly!  As I too have been on a similar journey, although my tortuous turns to build my own 16610 came out of necessity and incompetance of the watchmakers I approached.. as well as my own ham-handedness..  My journey starts in 2013. 

It all started with a TC 16610.. Back then sold without the bezel as he was not making his own just yet.  I sourced a gen bezel from Vip**B (not sure if on this forum or somewhere else).  However the damn bezel wouldn't fit, and so I ordered a cheap Clark's off the Bay and proceded to mangle that one. Then ordered a whole bezel ring and retainer from TC, hoping that would work.. which it finally did.. Tolerance on the first bezels wasn't great, and he acknowledged this in his blog.. So that was done.  But I really liked the red yachtmaster hand so ordered one of those and.. deep breath... proceded to open the watch and try and take the movement out.. and preceeeded to strip the head off the retaining screw!  Enter my friendly watchmaker, who managed to sort it out and install the red second hand, but not before breaking some of the red enamel off! ARGH!! Two steps forwards, THREE steps back!  I endured the watch with the little bit of red missing... until I dropped the watch and kaput my movement!  I do not baby my watches... maybe I should!  So back to the watchmaker again... except a minor snafu.. the old guy who worked for the Jeweller who owned the shop keeled over after having a heart attack and died..  He was in his fifties.. Quite sad.  He was pretty good, and had managed to sort out some of my other watches. 

I should at this point have looked for another watchmaker, but I decided to persevere..  I was living in Africa at the time, and quite frankly my options were quite limited!  The technical aspect of watch repair just seemed beyond my butterfinger hands, and so I asked the Jeweller to keep going.. BIG mistake.. But it was my mistake.. The watch came back, apparently working, but after a bike ride and a shower.. the watch fogged up!  I opened the back, and sure enough the seal in the back wasn't the right one!  I opened up one of the other watches I'd asked him to fix, and sure enough it had been swapped around..  Back to square one.. the ever-so-reliable TC2824 was no more.. and my watchmaker was dead.  What do you do?! Well, you have to take matters into your own hands! :-)

A thing has to be said for TC cases.. they do take gen parts, and while YUKI was selling 3135 clones, they were dirty, questionably reliable, and EXPENSIVE. About $300 IF you could find one in stock.. But time marches on, and after a few years eventually we started seeing the 3135's in pretty much everything, and availabe on the Bay for under a hundred bucks! Problem solved.. Well, except it gave rise to a whole different set of problems.. My TC parts all worked on a 2824.. so I'd need hands, a dial.. and the datewheel didn't look to decent on the clone 3135's, so possibly a datewheel.  Well, actually I just really liked the open 6 and 9 from the previous generation Subs (1680).. and when I saw that Rolex actually made some open 6 datewheels for 3135 movement,  I was hooked.  Extremely rare, and not even sure what Rolex model it would have appreared in, or if it was a service replacement for people who liked the older style?  Really unsure.  Knowledgeable members, please chime in!  Pretty certain that the last sub to have an open 6 was the 16800, but that used a 3035 with an incompatible datewheel (dates go in opposite direction to 3135, and the teeth are a different shape.. which I discovered after a member pointed out.. rather politely I have to admit.  Must have felt sorry for the Noob that I was)..

Anyway, over time I sourced all the parts and started assembling the watch, and I have to say the 3135 is a joy to use.  Such an easy date wheel change.  The timing on mine is spot on, as good as a gen, and the sound of the movement is not too bad, although the tell-tale singsong of a gen movement is sadly absent.   The hands I found are flat el-cheapo ones, but I didn't know at the time.. but the dial is a really tropical sub probably from a 16800 (the 168000 had an S in the shape of a Z for submariner), but suits the open 6 datewheel to perfection.   

Now, the TC case (and pretty much any 16610 rep out there, including the ARF 904L models) are all LATE model pre-rehault models, so up to about 2006.. which means they have no holes.  This is SO irritating.. because I'm CERTAIN that we lovers of rep would jump at holes case reps. But no matter.. I decided to drill my own.  As I've learnt with opening up reps (keyless works, anyone?!) your first job is always a mess.. so I practiced with an old Seadweller case I had lying around.. and proceeded to botch the location of the lug holes. It was really difficult in A) getting the location right and B) drilling through with a hand dremmel.  I actually bought a vertical drill press, but found the weight bent the drill-bit and it snapped frequently.  So my new technique involved placing the dremmel on a flat vertical surface, and the watch on a spacer, so the height was about right, and pretty much drilling by eye.. I didn't do a perfect job, but the external holes look good, and only one of the internal ones didn't quite go straight..  A minor minor issue, but still an issue for any OCD of you out there (me included).  This meant though that I could FINALLY put on an older 93150 bracelet with hollow endlinks sourced from an Italian maker.  The quality of the printing and the links on the oyster bracelet are superior to anything that I've seen from the east, and well worth the 250 paid for it. Just the oyster part, so adapted the 93250 clasp, which visually is the same as a 93150, with only the diver extension different.  I actually prefer the newer diver extension, as it rattles less, and stays in place on the clasp.

Having learnt not to trust dodgy watchmakers (like myself!) I purchased a pressure tester, and thank god I did, because when I put my watch to the test... the crown tube started bubbling like deepwater horzion!  I was majorly bummed... but a rep owner's journey is never over :-)  And so off to Ali and Bay I went to source my various parts, TC having long ago stopped supplying those wonderful crown kits!  The Ali tubes arrived and.. frankly were the wrong shape, leaving the crown jutting out like a pimple on a supermodel's face.. So out came the o-ring kit and I actually managed to make the old tube watertight.. Happy days!

So here you have the long tortuous journey.. 8 years in the making.  I got my TC Sub in 2013, and today, in 2021, I'm finally able to wear it in all it's glory.. Well, almost.. A set of gen hands should sort that out!  As I said, a Repper's journey is never over!  Anyway, here is my beauty!

jtKPWP.jpg

 

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jd1566

Oops, forgot to add a pic of the lug-holes.. the sexiest part of the watch IMHO!  Well that, and the open 6's...

jtKuOK.jpg

 

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PabloChacon

Never imagined those colors on the nato would compliment the 16610 as perfectly as it did. Class piece.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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kyle123

Beautiful

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dualspool

beauty! love the nato

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AcmeSix
On 14/11/2021 at 00:02, jerkstore said:

j925fY.jpg

I got into this hobby about ten years ago. Sort of by accident. I had no clue what rep watches were. I mean, I had seen fake watches before—but I didn’t know that there is a small community of producers and buyers of high-end replica versions of watches I liked. At the time I was searching for a watch to buy for my then-wife, and stumbled across RWG. (I ended up buying her a gen, and then me a rep, and got hooked). 

Though many of you here (myself included) find features and attributes to complain about, 99% of the people walking around on the street would have no idea about your SEL fitment, or whether your bracelet stamp is period correct. On the whole, these reps we wear are quite attractive time pieces. And the time keeping is generally pretty good—which seems like an important thing to point out. 

I’m sure my first question on RWG.bz was “who makes the best sub?” Which at the time meant a 16610, since that was the most current Submariner. By chance, the first rep that I ordered had a busted keyless works. At least that was my impression after reading the boards, since the crown only had a vague control over the watch hands. 

Because it was a rep, and nowhere near as expensive as my small collection of nice gen watches, I decided to open it up and try to fix it myself. I bought a bunch of tools, read up on it, and proceeded to try to teach myself how to fix the keyless works on a spare DG2813. Which was super dangerous with all the tiny little springs that would sky across the room. But I did it. And that gave me confidence to fix the rep, which I did. That pushed me into several years of modding. It fascinated me: all the tiny little gears and springs, how they fit together and keep time. 

I went through many phases: big crowns, datejusts, 5513s, GMTs, Seadwellers, Breitlings, and more. But it always came back to the 16610 for me. Over time I picked up genuine parts for one. A TC bracelet back when he was still into reps. And after he wasn’t I found several TC cases, a Wm9, with the idea that one would eventually take all these parts. Life happened and I got away from the hobby but hung onto all my stuff. 

Recently I decided to take a look at the forums again, and I noticed that the rep makers were selling watches with reliable 3135 clones. Those happen to fit a gen dial, and genuine hands. So I finally put my last project together. Here it is, alongside my other TC and that Wm9 case. 

Gen dial, gen hands, gen insert, TC case, TC v2 bracelet, VR3135 movement with blue spring (serviced). I only had two issues during assembly: (1)  the movement needed tabs to fit in the case, but I was able to mod some to fit easily enough—gen screws don’t work; (2) the gen hands are a tight fit on the VR3135 cannon pinions—so I bought some of those cheap flat hand presses on ebay and they worked perfectly.

Here it is:

j92w6p.jpg
j92k2b.jpg
j92XFi.jpg
j92TlX.jpg
j92pJI.jpg
j92ld4.jpg
j92QOj.jpg
j92Bj1.jpg
j92ruv.jpg
j9286K.jpg
j92628.jpg
j929fR.jpg

Alongside my TC :

j92yWQ.jpg
j92OxS.jpg
j92IdW.jpg
j92qIP.jpg


Movement tabs in place:

j92oZJ.jpg
j92iuo.jpg
j92ank.jpg
j92W2D.jpg

Very pleased with the outcome after all this time. I know it isn’t perfect—I never cared about that anyway. I am fortunate enough to be in a situation where I could afford a “perfect” gen if I wanted one. But I prefer my watch because it’s mine. I made it. Through grit, and perseverance, and teaching myself how these tiny little engines fit together and work. That’s what the one I carry around on my wrist represents. 

The 16610 is no longer the current Sub; multiple Rolex generations have passed. But that’s cool because I always liked vintage anyway. And I finally answered that old question, “who makes the best sub?” 

I do.

Thank you all for helping me along the way. 

I think sir that you have found the meaning to life.

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