The idea to start this project came 2016 from a FS-ad by @Spacefruit, where he offered dial, hands and bezel of the Gemini IV 40th model. I bought these from him and started searching for the remainder of parts needed. Soon after, at the beginning of 2017, i bought a complete case, with crystal locally. The hardest part now was to aquire a movement at a reasonable price. The weeks went by without finding what i needed (by that time i would even have gone for a Lemania 1873). I then lost patience and returned the unused Gemini IV parts to William, who was very helpful in all proceedings. Big thanks to him for that from my side. But i lost patience too early. Not long after returning the parts, a Moonwatch became available at a local auction. Well, it had seen better days, but that kept the price down. All i needed now, were the parts to modify the watch. I found them in Switzerland and did not have to bother William once again. Having now everything i needed, further proceedings were dicussed with Rob the watchmaker, then all the stuff was sent to him. He prepared the watch for laser welding and sent the case out to Jorge from XXS Soldering (thanks again to @brunik for the recommendation). Rob then serviced the movement and built the watch. Now i do have my G-IV-2017-mod with me. It looks and feels like a new watch. BTW: The caseback is not a mistake, it is the way i wanted it. As it is a mod it needs to have a little twist. The pictures, please excuse dust:
Thank you all for your positive replies. The case really is in superb condition now. This is how it looked before:
Hi buddy great work have been done! I would not recommend to OF if I was not pretty sure that would be a great idea! Thanks for the mention! Use it in health! Regards
Looks stunning. I have seen these dials, hands and the caseback available on e-bay and it always amazes me that they are so openly available as well as the 35th anniversary Apollo XI panda. Could you ever image Rolex letting a Deepsea Deep Blue Dial out into the wild to be sold for a modification - thought not. I have seen a few people use a Tin Tin as the donor watch for these modifications and they always look great.
Thank you @kov (and all the others). To answer your questions: As it is a mod i wanted it to be different from the original reference. So i had to find a fitting solution to achieve that goal. There were other ideas, but they would not have been the right ones for me. The old-style caseback was the fitting solution for three reasons: 1. I really like the original watch face of this reference, so another caseback was a good way to go. 2. It's a bit like closing a circle. The Gemini IV 40th "celebrates" a watch that had a similar caseback. 3. Yes, the big seahorse caseback is very attractive to me. So my final decision to go that route was an easy one.
