Fun idea! My favorite mod of the year turned into one of my most-worn watches of the year. I posted about this on WUS and will mostly copy and paste the text here.
Base watch: Seiko SNXA21
Mods: Brush case/remove scratches, replace dial, replace crystal, replace hands
Work done by: Me
Original:
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I won the watch in a contest held by a very generous WUS forum regular and wanted to make it something special, something that would fill a gap in my collection. I browsed 7s26 dials from Dagaz and Yobokies, but nothing looked really exciting. I’d been drooling over the Sinn 556 black mother of pearl dial for awhile, so I started searching for MoP dials. I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted and looked into making my own dials. After falling deep down the rabbit hole of MoP sheets, applied indices, and wondering if indices etched into the crystal would look good, I decided a DIY dial was way over my skill level and I should settle for ready made. Enter Dragon Shrouds & Mods with their MoP dials for Seiko divers.
By the time I finalized the design in Photoshop, the watch arrived. The dials and hands shipped ridiculously fast from Dragon Shrouds in the Philippines. I took out the movement and removed the crystal. Unfortunately, I accidentally removed the crystal in lots of little pieces. On my sofa. Oh well. At least there was a piece large enough to measure the thickness. The crystal is 30mm x 1mm for anyone who's curious. One quick vacuuming of the sofa and I was back in business, placing an order for a sapphire crystal, replacement gaskets, and new hand setting tool on Esslinger.
With the watch disassembled, I started on the case. First up, a Cape Cod polishing cloth. As expected, didn’t do much to remove the scratches. Next was wet sanding with 1500 and 1800 grit sanding pads. That mostly did the trick, giving me a nicely brushed case. I used a scratch remover pen to brush the lugs and bezel. To make sure all the metal dust was gone, I scrubbed the case with a soft toothbrush and dish soap.
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Pop in the new crystal, and realize the dies that came with my cheap crystal press aren't the right size for this job. The unevenness was fixed after new dies arrived.
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Now for the fun stuff - dial and hands. I lay out all my tools on my workstation and get to work. In my excitement to get a cool dial, I didn’t really think about 3 o’clock dials vs. 4 o’clock dials. This is a 4 o’clock dial. With the help of flush cut snips and dial dots, we’re back in business.
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The new hand press was a great buy. Made hand installation so much easier. Not one-shot perfect, but much faster than using a handheld tool. Faulty hand installation has been the downfall of previous mods, so I thoroughly checked the clearance of the hour and minute hands before declaring victory.
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And here it is, exactly as I imagined if not better. The mother of pearl is mesmerizing and the big, round indices give the watch a Unimatic-inspired vibe. I debated flat crystal vs. curved, but think the curve really makes it.
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