Jump to content

Couple of recent projects - Gruen and Seikoak


Recommended Posts

Hi all, hope everyone is doing well.

Here are a couple watches I have finished up recently.

Before these I worked on an orient but that one is not quite done - I have my third crystal coming my way from the UK. The 1st from Perrin did not fit; I then found out I needed a specific crystal. A mishap with my crystal press put a big crack in the 1st shipment from Cousins, and hence the second order. Unfortunately I have now spent way more on the crystals/shipping than I did for the watch, but you have to pay to play, as they say. Learning experiences.

I don't believe I have anything specific to note from the Gruen, it was pleasant to work on.

Gruen.thumb.jpg.bfb27c9e9fe5e44d86e658cb5df897d0.jpgGruen1.thumb.jpg.c144984189becd66e9a0fd13b5f0d57c.jpg

I had been watching a lot of Roman Sharf's grey market on youtube. I was becoming numb to the values of the watches on there, every once in a while I would snap out of it and realize what they were dealing with cost more than my cars or my house. Inspired by the show though, I decided to put together my own 'Seikoak' homeage of an AP Royal Oak, using parts from ali express and ebay. There is an NH35a movement inside - my first time putting together a watch with this movement. It was running very well straight from ebay so just plopped it in. I have yet to service an automatic seiko, I am sure it will be a learning experience when I do.

I am very pleased with the final look. The Aliexpress parts overall are very nice, but hard a couple rough quirks. The seconds hand I found extremely difficult to fit. I am not sure this is just something to do with the NH35 movement or not. I eventually got it down a satisfactory amount. On the bracelet, I could not get one of the fastening pins/screws through as there was some slag inside the screw hole. I just ended up using a small drill bit on a hand vice to fix that issue to make it all work.

I see many of these Royal Oak Seiko's on etsy - it is amazing how much people are offering them for (expensive!). This one cost me about $49,900 (CDN) less than a real one.

I will find myself taking a break from watches for a bit now I think to get back to some other hobbies - I had planned on making myself a nice wooden watch box, so that is on the table. I also recently purchased a course on arduino/microcontrollers. I am hoping I can learn something here to improve my diy watch cleaning machine.

Take care all.

 

Seikoak1.thumb.jpg.c097261c41e5a61ee4939b6cd2aa81ae.jpgSeikoak3.thumb.jpg.de01c06f776d0a35f768b2061c3f8850.jpg

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.



×
×
  • Create New...