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Building chronograph


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Hi all, I have a relatively small wrist and hate large watches. I am looking to build my own unique chronograph sourcing all parts from the eBay. Using something like a valjoux 7750. Now I don’t want the typical Rolex wannabe Daytona case but want something quite small and with side pushers also. 

I have scoured the internet for something along these lines but no luck. I hope someone can suggest...

can anyone suggest anything. I can enjoy a Rolex datejust size on my wrist, midsize. 

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Building a bigger 7750 watch is easy enough. Plenty of dials and hands out for bigger cases. Anything under 40 and it will make your search much harder. I refurbished a 7750 and I built one with a 39mm case and that took me like a year to collect the parts that I liked and fit right. I even had to shave the dial down a mil and clip off the tip off the seconds hand. Lume is often going to be garbage too. I elected to redo mine. Now it is a wannabe Daytona case but I'll drop some pics of it here anyway in case you want some inspiration. Everything I got was off ebay with exception of the chrono seconds hand which I got off sk-watch parts.

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2 hours ago, RyanGreerMcGilloway said:

Hi all, I have a relatively small wrist and hate large watches. I am looking to build my own unique chronograph sourcing all parts from the eBay. Using something like a valjoux 7750. Now I don’t want the typical Rolex wannabe Daytona case but want something quite small and with side pushers also. 

I have scoured the internet for something along these lines but no luck. I hope someone can suggest...

can anyone suggest anything. I can enjoy a Rolex datejust size on my wrist, midsize. 

There are several 1960's vintage Landeron based chronographs currently on eBay. Why not buy one of them and use it as a basis of a restoration? I've had this one for over 50 years, and by today's standards it's quite small. Used to be my everyday watch in the 1960's, early 1970's, now fully restored back to it's former glory.....B)

 

JD Chrono wrist2.jpg

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I believe cases are sometimes made but it's not common due to the cost of a one-off.. it's sometimes possible to get parts or incomplete watches to use.

There are a few vintage chronographs which are towards the smaller side of things - even the Seagull version of the Venus 175 may be smaller than a 7750 due to being manually wound (with some fairly small vintage cases for those), with the 150 a tiny bit smaller.

The smallest vintage chronographs which spring to my mind are the Eterna 702 at 10.5L.. and the Hanhart 120 & 122 of the same size.

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