For review and discussion. With shout out to @photo500

Case work can be amazing as this shows IF you have a skilled watchmaker

http://www.hodinkee.com/articles/the-inside-and-outside-restoration-of-a-doxa-300t-searambler

 

Sweet. I'm kind of surprised laser welding can match the color of the metal so well, but I have much to learn.......

 

I used to work with a shop that did laser welding as part of our tooling repair, we would give him the grade and hardness of the metal we were sending over and he would weld to those specifications. Stainless, P20, H13, high carbon, aluminum, beryllium.... didn't matter, and he could reliably lay down a 0.005" bead of weld so we could recover edges. Amazing stuff.

 

I have a couple pieces of Adam's work.....passes for factory stuff.

 

Thank you @JohnSteed and you too @Paedipod !

I have had a lot of positive messages through the various social media about the article and am pretty pleased with the write up as you can all probably imagine. I knew the story had been posted on Hodinkee because my Instagram account starting gaining followers at a very quick rate! The author Aaron is a very, very good watchmaker himself and it was a real pleasure being involved with the restoration.

 

Sweet!!!!! That is a true craft there!

 

Impressive....sent this article to my neighbor who is also a highly skilled metal worker, amazing what kind of talent these guys have.

 

Amazing skill, ...

 

Adam , has some wonderful laser skills .
Here are some pics of my 73 GMT 1675 that was run over by a car 25 years ago and repaired then.
Adam has made the watch back almost as new, he tells me there are a few dents still showing on the inside of the case .
The first image is obviously the damaged one .The following images are of his finished work.
Thank you Adam.

 

ADAM! Let's see the top of that bad boy..........errrrrrrrrrrrr................marco. sorry.

 

Here you are ,dial side image.

From memory the bezel + insert, bracelet, plexi, were replaced.
One tough watch , it was run over by more than one car, I was nearly hit again as I was crawling towards it to rescue it, fortunately a passer by grabbed me and dragged me to safety !
As you have probably noticed the dial survived as did the hands but the lume has gone from the 24h hand !

 

Adam ( @photo500 ) did an amazing job with my Ploprof. Not only did I get it back incredibly quick, I received regular updates from him.
The watch on top is mine prior to the case work. I had originally only wanted a service, but Adam shared with me some pics of mine (mine is on top) vs his so I could really compare what I case should look like. He sent me several pics, and we had dialogue, and then I decided to have him do it.




This is the finished version, tried to get the same angle from above.



Another before shot, mine on top.



After shot.




Yep, this one is a keeper.

 

This begs the question, how did you run over your GMT with a car?

 

I was a racing cyclist at that time and was riding back to work after lunch.

The first car was coming from the opposite direction ( lady driver) she pulled across me to enter the side road I was passing, she took my front wheel out ( she did not stop) the second lady driver who was sitting at the stop sign of the side road decided it must be clear as this first car had just gone past her. She proceeded to drive into me.

The watch ended up on the outer lane road a fast four lane road, I ended up the second lady drivers bonnet.
This was 1989, I can assure you it is much more dangerous these days.

I never wore my watch again on the bike.
Somehow the watch and I are still here , although the watch is in better condition than myself !

 

Wow this is truly impressive work! I love this site.