u/AaronParke

Hi folks. Thought I'd share a couple of my most recent builds. I admire the work people put into vintage builds and thought I'd give them a go.

My first was a vintage 5508 no crown guard submariner built using solely Raffles parts.

Ken is a great guy to speak to and work out just what is required. More importantly, for a pain in the ass like me, he's very patient!

The second watch is something I thought I'd have a try at having seen similar work elsewhere and that's a vintage military submariner.

The case is from AliX and is a cheap (£20 I think) case I bought some time ago. It just happened to have a slightly smaller bezel than the raffles cases and was a near perfect fit for what I thought was a very good bezel insert copy bought via ebay. The font looks right to me. The inner diameter was a touch small and needed opening up and it was also thicker and stood proud of the bezel lip so I've sanded it down to fit flush. I then angled a bevel on the underside of the bezel.

The case took a lot of work. I referenced images of real milsubs and spent a few days working on and off with hand files and wet or dry sand paper. I drilled the lug holes to 2mm and used a stainless steel bicycle spoke that was a touch over 2mm. Holding the cut spoke 'strap bars' in my drill chuck with a piece of wet or dry I reduced the diameter a little then hammered them through. They are not welded but the fit is tight to say the least.

Dial and hands are raffles, I may have gone a bit overboard with the ageing! I like how nicely finished the case is so I'm potentially going to undo some of this fauxtina, maybe I'll get a fresh dial and handset...

Anyhow, thanks for reading this far. Hints, tips, opinions are welcome. Looking forward to more builds in the future.

Two builds