Just wanted to share a little custom project that I though a few people might enjoy. A while back, I bought a watch lot and in it was a Bulova 10AH chronograph that was in a clean and mostly-complete state dating from 1941/42. These are pretty rare, but cool little chornographs, and by little, I mean LITTLE. They are a 10.5 linge single button chrono. The entire cased watch is only 28.5mm. A neat novelty, but not super wearable for my 7" wrist. Well, I happened to have a bunch of A-11 parts and after a little playing around, it turns out the front loader 3-piece cases made by Star were a dead ringer for the front loader 10AH case. Same dial size, same stem height, same movement size, but a more wearable 32mm. As a side note - The 10AH chrono operates with a push button that runs over the stem though the case tube (like pocket watch crowns with the push button cover). This is a big deal because the A-11 case has a large crown tube, so I only needed to ream and shorten the tube to get the pusher to fit/operate right. Won't go too crazy into detail but the rest of the project involved modifying the aftermarket crown to have a longer "push", cutting a channel for the movement start/stop/reset arm, broaching the hands, doming the caseback to clear the chrono works and a few other little bits. The movement needed a couple parts but luckily I was able to find them. The Bulova Military dials from the 10AK and 10BM fit right onto the 10AH, no modification there. Started with the black dial, but wasn't a fan of the subdial layout: Nice little design bonus was the original vintage Bulova sweep second hand that I found. Same as the original Bulova MIL-SHIPS-W-2181 diver prototype and matches the sub second hand design spot on. Anyways.... Turned out like this. A nice "what-if" fantasy piece if there was ever a tiny military single button chrono from Bulova for WWII. Hope you enjoyed this rambling thread! P.S. Everything is reversible, I can just throw the old one back together if the need ever comes up.
Caseback is blank, I didn’t want to use a mil-spec back since it wasn’t technically and A-11 anymore.
Yeah, A-11's aren't known for their case plating durability unfortunately. This one is in decent shape compared to most. But matches the dial age I suppose.
