Post pics of your watches ***Please NO QUOTING PHOTOS***

firestarter51

two tags i am wearing at the moment

firestarter51

had this one for a while, but the strap annoyed the crap out of me

HDMI

New arrival today, a Seiko SRP637

Finally Seiko has taken notice of the modding community and released a more reasonable priced Seiko with a stainless steel shroud. Fitted with the 4R36 automatic movement with hack and handwind.

dr.fuzzenstein

^^^
Nice Focus! :P
Becoming a big fan of Seikos. Nice watches for a sensible price and mostly indestructible.

TedR

IMG_1884 by Eamonn Ryan, on Flickr

Attempting a state of the collection picture... amazingly hard to get a shot without reflections etc, I am now suitably impressed by most everyone else's photography skills. Maybe Ill try again later.

Anyway, from left
Maranez Layan
Raketa big zero
Rolex Datejust early 70s I think
Rolex Sub 16610LV
Pre Tag Heuer Carrera on nato
Tag Carrera Twin Time
Ocean 7 Ceramic
Omega Seamaster 1961
Omega Seamaster PO
Longines Flagship
Omega Speedmaster Sapphire sandwich bought from fellow boardsie fulladapipies)
Vostok Amphibia

Swiper the fox

Nice collection, I'd put a nice brown leather strap where you have the nato and I'd wear that watch every day for the rest of my life, I'm boring that way:o


Anyway, where's the IWC, there's usually one of them putting the rest to shame when there's a picture on here like that one.:pac:

Mredsnapper

TedR wrote: »

Attempting a state of the collection picture... amazingly hard to get a shot without reflections etc, I am now suitably impressed by most everyone else's photography skills. Maybe Ill try again later.

Anyway, from left
Maranez Layan
Raketa big zero
Rolex Datejust early 70s I think
Rolex Sub 16610LV
Pre Tag Heuer Carrera on nato
Tag Carrera Twin Time
Ocean 7 Ceramic
Omega Seamaster 1961
Omega Seamaster PO
Longines Flagship
Omega Speedmaster Sapphire sandwich bought from fellow boardsie fulladapipies)
Vostok Amphibia

Love that datejust. And the Sapphire sandwich of course.

TedR

I actually have the original Heuer (black) leather strap with signed buckle for that watch, but it was going to get worn out so I took it off for the time being. I was interested to try out something on NATO anyway.
Its pretty much my favourite watch, if they all had to go thats the one i would probably keep.

No IWC :-) I have other watch desires that trump IWC ownership! I want a Bremont MB11 when funds allow.. if ever..

fret_wimp2

TedR wrote: »

SNIP

Attempting a state of the collection picture... amazingly hard to get a shot without reflections etc, I am now suitably impressed by most everyone else's photography skills. Maybe Ill try again later.

Anyway, from left
Maranez Layan
Raketa big zero
Rolex Datejust early 70s I think
Rolex Sub 16610LV
Pre Tag Heuer Carrera on nato
Tag Carrera Twin Time
Ocean 7 Ceramic
Omega Seamaster 1961
Omega Seamaster PO
Longines Flagship
Omega Speedmaster Sapphire sandwich bought from fellow boardsie fulladapipies)
Vostok Amphibia

I think i recognise that Maranez Layan! Great to see it again, and in perfect condition.

Awesome collection. That Heuer is just the biz, i was very jealous on seeing it.

TedR

Yep the Maranez came courtesy of yourself, I forgot to credit you :-)
Its a big old lump isn't it
I do love California dials though

fret_wimp2

TedR wrote: »

Yep the Maranez came courtesy of yourself, I forgot to credit you :-)
Its a big old lump isn't it
I do love California dials though

Its big for sure, but supprisingly comfortable. I had large seiko's in the past and they never got worn due to being severly uncomfortable, but i never had that problem with the maranez. And I love the "living" feeling of the brass, it changes over time which just adds to the character. Damn, i miss that watch now!

I guess i just realized that im a relatively slight chap and 44 just looks massive on my wrist.

A nice cali dial in a 39mm case could be a winner for me though.

Ionised

Good to see more Maranez fans! Hoping to add to my pair soon

GEO147

Attempting a state of the collection picture... amazingly hard to get a shot without reflections etc, I am now suitably impressed by most everyone else's photography skills. Maybe Ill try again later.

Anyway, from left
Maranez Layan
Raketa big zero
Rolex Datejust early 70s I think
Rolex Sub 16610LV
Pre Tag Heuer Carrera on nato
Tag Carrera Twin Time
Ocean 7 Ceramic
Omega Seamaster 1961
Omega Seamaster PO
Longines Flagship
Omega Speedmaster Sapphire sandwich bought from fellow boardsie fulladapipies)
Vostok Amphibia

Green sub is awesome.

Wibbs

I really should do a what to look for, what to avoid, history and all that write up on these WW2 German issued pieces sometime soon.



From L-R, Alpina KM(navy), Doxa DH(army) Wagner RLM(air force/paratrooper), on contemporaneous* canvas "NATOs" before there was a NATO.

In the clammy weather of late the small watch size and canvas straps are soooo comfortable, so I've been wearing these a lot in the last fortnight. The straps were branded/advertised as "hygienique" and initially I was WTF does that mean and then realised that before nylon and rubber took hold, these could be washed. Leather can't really be cleaned beyond a certain point and metal bands… well if you have ever put a vintage metal band into an ultrasonic cleaner… Oh. My. God. The filth that comes out. :eek: Even a year after you clean one the water goes mucky near instantly. One of these goes rank? Jam it into your weekly wash with all your cottons and badabing new strap time.

IMHO they're great little watches, well built and solid performers(if you get a good un) and still for the most part mad cheap for issued military watches with a history like they have.

*I also have a contemporaneous 40's NOS leather "BUND" style strap for the RLM on the right. Stickler for accuracy I is(AKA fcukin nuts).

lizzyman

TedR wrote: »

Attempting a state of the collection picture... amazingly hard to get a shot without reflections etc, I am now suitably impressed by most everyone else's photography skills. Maybe Ill try again later.

Anyway, from left
Maranez Layan
Raketa big zero
Rolex Datejust early 70s I think
Rolex Sub 16610LV
Pre Tag Heuer Carrera on nato
Tag Carrera Twin Time
Ocean 7 Ceramic
Omega Seamaster 1961
Omega Seamaster PO
Longines Flagship
Omega Speedmaster Sapphire sandwich bought from fellow boardsie fulladapipies)
Vostok Amphibia

That Carrera is stunning. What do you mean by 'pre' Tag Heuer?

Wibbs

Basically LM it means any model released before the TAG company took over Heuer in the mid eighties(IIRC they're owned by LMVH now?). The vintage models, to many the "real" Heuers. Personally I don't buy that, or not nearly as much as the market seems to. IMH the TAG's are better built and they kept and keep far better records than Heuer ever did back in the day. Some of the vintage Heuers can be pretty flaky, even more than usual for vintage watches. Plus for most of their days they were more an assembler than a manufacturer, using majority bought in movements usually Valjoux. TAG were also more successful and reached a far wider market than Heuer.

TedR

To the best of my knowledge, the Heuer/pre TagH provenance of this watch is something of a fudge, in that it is the original 1964 Carrera model re issued as late as the 90s by....Tag Heuer. They just left the Tag part off the dial to preserve the roots and style of the original. I am pretty sure they also later released it again but with the full Tag Heuer name on, plus an extra date window which wasn't in keeping with the original.
As such the engine in this one is the Lemania 1873, same hand wind movement as powers the Omega Speedmaster, so it is pretty solid.
I love this watch, its actually my favourite one. I know its not a 1964 original, but I am ok with that. I searched long and hard for a clean one, it was my grail watch.
Maybe, as Wibbs says, the newer Tag watches are manufactured and engineered to a higher standard, as you might expect from the more modern processes, but they make some very ugly lumps. Like IWC, and probably Omega, I think Tag have lost themselves by designing big and frequently quite ugly versions of their original heritage pieces.
Most of the current range of Carreras are hefty graceless yokes (I think anyway)

mad muffin

Recently won this on eBay for £45

It comes on a silicone strap. The kind that attracts dust. Which was promptly changed for a leather flieger type.

Wibbs

Ages ago now I got this watch in a bits and bobs sale. The seller, who turned out to be a very sound lass, had no pics up, only a description, but one sentence was along the lines of "old watch, one piece with a coin edge, one hand, not working". Hmmm thinks I. Got the lot for a song. Turned out it was one of these babies.



Hallmarked 1916, silver cased black dialled 15 jewel Borgel Trench watch imported by A.G.R of London, 35mm(on a near contemporaneous* strap). Black Trenchies are the minority anyway and black Borgel cased examples rarer again. It was an early and quite successful attempt to make the new wristlets more impervious to dust and damp. One piece case that the entire movement and dial screws into. When I got it the mainspring was shot and it was missing the minute hand. Ages ago I jammed in a mainspring from another junker and off it ticked. Yay! Runs under a minute a day slow so an expert could make it better, amplitude is still low. Anyway ast week I won a Bay auction(15 quid all in) for more odds and sods and got a minute hand in the mix so yesterday decided OK lets have a fiddle about. Sometime in its history someone had removed the radium lume and painted the hands white, so I figured may as well do the same. I can always make it more "authentic" down the line.

Among the Trenchies I've had and have today, this example seems to have been in actual use by far the most. It has watchmakers marks in the case for most of the 20th century. Starting in 1924 all the way up to 1999, with marks from the 40's 50's and 70's. At some point a watchmaker even replaced the hairspring and I suspect one of the balance jewels. It seems to have been a well loved watch. That's pretty cool IMH and one reason why I decided to paint the hand, continue the tradition.


* I love that word. It never ceases to amaze me how people have clearly got larger of bone since back in the day. I run a below 6.5 inch wrist which is small and yet with pre say 1950's straps I've got two or three more buckle holes to go. On modern standard sized straps I'm either on the very last buckle hole or need to drill a new one. BTW if ya wanna revive an old leather strap, Oil of Ulay is a charm. I kid thee not. Found that out years back. You need to use quite a bit as the dry leather sucks it up. The girlfriend at the time wasn't best pleased when I nicked hers. Still good advert for the stuff, if it can take the wrinkles out of an 80 year old lump of leather.

Eoin

Wibbs wrote: »

The girlfriend at the time wasn't best pleased when I nicked hers. Still good advert for the stuff, if it can take the wrinkles out of an 80 year old lump of leather.

Jaysus, hope you didn't call her that to her face!

CarltonBrowne

A couple of incomings here; nothing too exciting. I took a punt on this but it didn't come off. No hard feelings as it didn't cost very much.


I was rather hoping that it would have a movement that looks like this:


But unfortunately it looks like this:


Oh bugger!

Secondly I got this for a tad below scrap value; I already have the correct buckle coming from the States. Just needs a service and an 8mm black lizard and I either have the next present for SWMBO or have a couple of friends who are looking for their wives at the moment.

challengemaster

I feel incredibly out of my depth even posting in here... but, here's my (very) humble offerings...!

Seiko - Has been my daily wear for over 6 years now, hence the scuffs! The only thing I'd like to get fixed is the gemstone fell out of the crown, apart from that it's been perfect.


Sekonda - present from the GF, only arrived very recently


And once I had a second watch, I had an excuse to start collecting Picked this up on ebay for £31. Arrived yesterday.

Andrew76

A few recent additions to the meagre collection. The Casio's are for the kids. Not sure if 5 and 6 year olds are old enough for a 'proper' watch but they were cheap enough. The Swatch Sistem51 I'd only read about recently, I like the simple face and the leather strap is nice enough. Have something a little tastier (imo anyway) incoming from Creation too, can't wait.








Edit: Kinda OT but when buying those Casio's for the lads I couldn't help but remember that Dave Allen sketch about teaching your kid how to tell the time. Very funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC8PjW5eEgE

Wibbs

At the weekend I decided that my trio of "nazi" watches needed a bit of fettling. One needed a new crystal, all needed the hands relumed so off to work I go. Hi ho and all that.

The crystal fitting was easy with one of those crystal clamp tool thingies.

Though the old crystal was the wrong size and had been glued in. :mad: so required a dremel and much profanity…

That job done I decided to attack the lume. Backs off, crowns out, movements on the table, hand puller applied. Handy tip; stick the movement into one of those ziplock bags and apply the hand puller from the outside. Protects the dial from scratches and prevents the hands flying off to be forever lost in the shag pile. Next some toothpicks jammed into the hand holes and stuck in foam.


Just after I had spread the new lume on the back of the hands. It's a very thin layer, held initially by surface tension, so the lume mix needs to be quite runny. A little thicker than chicken soup, but not by much.

Good tutorial on reluming hands here. One watch I'd already removed the nuclear lume, another the hour hand lume was original and good so I decided to match it, rather than scrape the old lume out(and I figured I've pushed my luck with radium too far already, so even left some in the minute hand). With the remaining watch the same someone who glued on the crystal also "lumed" it with what looked like bright white acrylic house paint. *facepalm* Grrr. So that required soaking in pure acetone and extremely careful poking with another toothpick as the metal in the hands is gossamer thin.

Then I had to come up with the right colour for each. I have a load of NOS radium hands from the 30's and 40's in my shed(where the rats now have lasers for eyes) and have used them as a guide. Original colours seem to range from off white, through a tan(with a hint of salmon) to of all things a bright pale green. Now the lume I have is the non radioactive super luminova stuff(pricey, but a bottle of it would do a hundred watches). Shines like a torch, but bright greeny white, so not vintage looking at all. To age it up I use tiny amounts of watercolour pigment, ochres mostly. You need very little to change the colour. To darken and get that gritty vibe I use of all things cigar ash. Yep. It's incredibly fine and adds that patina without darkening the whole thing. like adding black would. Results below;


The Doxa on the left I went with the tan Radium look, which seems to be one of the original colours(though original lume where it survives is very dark so it's hard to say).

Slightly darker than the middle Alpina KM where I was aiming for a match with the original lume. Oh and for those experts you read online that say if the hand lume doesn't match the dial it's a fake/replaced hands, nonsense I say. Hands are nearly always darker in hue.

The Wagner on the right was much whiter. After some research and looking at NOS examples they seem to have had much whiter lume from the start. I suspect because these were more "budget" items radium in the mix was much reduced. Indeed the original phosphors in these still glow weakly after exposure to sunlight, so there wasn't enough radium to kill it in the first place. By comparison the original lume in my other watches is dead as a dodo(still radioactive though). It might also be that they used a similar mix as cockpit instruments as they stay white regardless of radium content. The dial is very much like cockpit instrument printing rather than what you'd see on a watch of the time.

Pic of lit lume after a dash of sunlight.

Note the middle one where the original radium lume is dead. I know I should have scraped the minute hand of the old lume, but in the flesh it looks pretty good. Another note if anyone is looking for one of the RLM watches on the right, the original lume was applied to each number dot, but only applied to the 9/12/3 numerals themselves. The 6 was originally without lume. The Ukrainian fakers miss this detail. With the early Doxa each number was lumed but no way am I attempting that job.

Hachiko

my Citizen, unbelievable watch.

Best watch in the world in fact.!

As accurate as a Rolex - check
no need to adjust time - check
perpetual calendar - check
no battery - check
sapphire glass - check

seriously though, a very good watch.

* new pics guys.

Wibbs

Invisible - Check. Hachiko I think your google storage space requires viewers to be logged into google. I'm not and so can't see it. I dunno if others have a similar issue.

Menas

Wibbs wrote: »

At the weekend I decided that my trio of "nazi" watches needed a bit of fettling. One needed a new crystal, all needed the hands relumed so off to work I go. Hi ho and all that.

The crystal fitting was easy with one of those crystal clamp tool thingies.

Though the old crystal was the wrong size and had been glued in. :mad: so required a dremel and much profanity…

That job done I decided to attack the lume. Backs off, crowns out, movements on the table, hand puller applied. Handy tip; stick the movement into one of those ziplock bags and apply the hand puller from the outside. Protects the dial from scratches and prevents the hands flying off to be forever lost in the shag pile. Next some toothpicks jammed into the hand holes and stuck in foam.


Just after I had spread the new lume on the back of the hands. It's a very thin layer, held initially by surface tension, so the lume mix needs to be quite runny. A little thicker than chicken soup, but not by much.

Good tutorial on reluming hands here. One watch I'd already removed the nuclear lume, another the hour hand lume was original and good so I decided to match it, rather than scrape the old lume out(and I figured I've pushed my luck with radium too far already, so even left some in the minute hand). With the remaining watch the same someone who glued on the crystal also "lumed" it with what looked like bright white acrylic house paint. *facepalm* Grrr. So that required soaking in pure acetone and extremely careful poking with another toothpick as the metal in the hands is gossamer thin.

Then I had to come up with the right colour for each. I have a load of NOS radium hands from the 30's and 40's in my shed(where the rats now have lasers for eyes) and have used them as a guide. Original colours seem to range from off white, through a tan(with a hint of salmon) to of all things a bright pale green. Now the lume I have is the non radioactive super luminova stuff(pricey, but a bottle of it would do a hundred watches). Shines like a torch, but bright greeny white, so not vintage looking at all. To age it up I use tiny amounts of watercolour pigment, ochres mostly. You need very little to change the colour. To darken and get that gritty vibe I use of all things cigar ash. Yep. It's incredibly fine and adds that patina without darkening the whole thing. like adding black would. Results below;


The Doxa on the left I went with the tan Radium look, which seems to be one of the original colours(though original lume where it survives is very dark so it's hard to say).

Slightly darker than the middle Alpina KM where I was aiming for a match with the original lume. Oh and for those experts you read online that say if the hand lume doesn't match the dial it's a fake/replaced hands, nonsense I say. Hands are nearly always darker in hue.

The Wagner on the right was much whiter. After some research and looking at NOS examples they seem to have had much whiter lume from the start. I suspect because these were more "budget" items radium in the mix was much reduced. Indeed the original phosphors in these still glow weakly after exposure to sunlight, so there wasn't enough radium to kill it in the first place. By comparison the original lume in my other watches is dead as a dodo(still radioactive though). It might also be that they used a similar mix as cockpit instruments as they stay white regardless of radium content. The dial is very much like cockpit instrument printing rather than what you'd see on a watch of the time.

Pic of lit lume after a dash of sunlight.

Note the middle one where the original radium lume is dead. I know I should have scraped the minute hand of the old lume, but in the flesh it looks pretty good. Another note if anyone is looking for one of the RLM watches on the right, the original lume was applied to each number dot, but only applied to the 9/12/3 numerals themselves. The 6 was originally without lume. The Ukrainian fakers miss this detail. With the early Doxa each number was lumed but no way am I attempting that job.

They are absolutely lovely. But I really think you have too many watches and should sell some of them. To me!

mad muffin

What time is it?!

It's sub time! :pac:

Andrew76

Wibbs wrote: »

Invisible - Check. Hachiko I think your google storage space requires viewers to be logged into google. I'm not and so can't see it. I dunno if others have a similar issue.

Yeah same here, not able to see the pics.

ThebitterLemon

My mixed bag collection including the recent Steinhart addition.

Apologies for the terrible photo

TbL