Let's see your current projects

S.H.

A pair of recents projects I just started:

The easy one, a 6306 with a cool patina, I'm waiting for it to start its trip from Japan. If I'm lucky it mostly a case of choosing a crystal, mineral or sapphire. Not too worried about servicing it. I tend to prefer faded blue bezels on those, and as those bezels were well made not many are ghosted like this. Scratched into oblivion sure, but faded not so much. It may look nice paired with the right strap...

The not so easy one. Also mostly a crystal problem as it works OK but in this case I am not aware of any aftermarket crystal...

I could probably put a standard flat mineral instead but I would lose the bevel and I think it won't look great. I'm putting together from scraps a H-link Citizen bracelet for it too.

Seaborg

My new project : 145.013 first generation

Seller's pics (look at that gubk !!)...

YYTIN

A few also on my side :

A seiko 6105_8110 in a very nice shape (case and dial, movement not needing a service, coming with original bracelet) from the son of the first owner but unfortunately with badly relumed hands (as confirmed by fellow OF members) so I had them relumed too with James Hyman in the UK and got a new crystal from Mr Klein in the US. All are sitting somewhere at my watchmaker for being put back together

Another simple one : this one coming from a fellow OF member, a Lemania calibre 3000 with a very nice dial / indexes. After checking (thanks @Northernman ) it seems the hands were not correct so I got some NOS ones from the bay, again at my watchmaker for being reassembled together.

Another one that should not be too complicated : a nice omega 30T2 with a dial I very much like but missing lume on the minute hands (and I've got the feeling - wrong ? - they have already been relumed too at some point). I'll send them over to James Hyman when it arrives. Yes I'm now a big fan of James.

And the last project is a more complicated ? one with a long story that I've started mentioning in one thread. I'm now very close to finalize this but...not yet. To keep it short, I realized I purchased (before I joined OF) this Croton CASD V23 from a professional seller in C24 with the wrong hands 😡 (baton instead of broad arrow, I realized this thanks to this forum, this being later confirmed by the authors of 'chronometer only book', a book I finally purchased - should I've done this first). In the meantime while the watch was in for a service with the previous local watchmaker during the first covid wave, it lost some lume from the indexes😲, when I got this back the watchmaker had retired 😲. The good thing is the V23 movement is in a nice shape.

So chronologically, here is what happened in my quest to put it back to its original glory :
- I luckily found a NOS dial - exact match - through C24 from CH, 😀
- got my WTB thread partly answered by a fellow OF member with the hour and minute broad arrow hands from US, 😀 but without any lume left.
- send those hands to the UK to... yes you've got it James Hyman, 😀 who did a great job reluming them and 'cleaning' them.
- worked with him to find some fitting subdial hands from eBay that he managed to 'un-blue' by nicely polishing them, 👍 (and there again I got some good advice here in OF)
- send all those to my watchmaker to finally realized that the hour hand was not fitting correctly and so I had to look and find a new hour column wheel 👎 which I did 👍. (Thanks internet as I'm really not an engineer type of guy but you find everything nowadays, unfortunately that was not my watchmaker who really helped me here but some fellow OFmember again pointed me in the right direction : thanks @Archer)
- and now that it was all for reassembly then again my watchmaker tell me the sweeping central chrono hand is too long... Having checked on the eBay seller ad, it is said that it should be easy to cut to the correct length... I'll see if this can be done properly.🙄
Those project looks like 'house' project when you know when you start but don't know when it will end 😉 I hope I will feel 'proud' of myself when this watch will be back to the look it had when it left the factory (BTW I'm still interested in original subdial and central second chrono hands in case someone has that...)

Anyway that's what is in for me right now.

Have a good day

tmw57

I sold off all my Mido MC chrono's a while back. Then found myself really wanting to wear one. So I went to the parts box and found a decent, slighty polished case with matching numbers. I also had several incomplete movements, pushers and a crown. Also a bunch of nos dials. Only thing missing were good hands that would match the nos dial in terms of condition. So I broke down and bought an expensive set from an online seller. Now, for the price of the hands and rebuild I've got a nice, new, regular wearer. Very happy with the way it turned out..