Thoughts About A Possible Next Pil-Mil Watch Project

[Janne]

Moderator Note:

This is an interesting discussion, and in order not to lose it in the thread about the Laco watches, I am copying the relevant posts into this separate thread

Janne, sorry it does not have the "toxic green" glow but it has its own personality
Bhanu

I think I can live with that! Who knows what lume it had in the beginning, 60 odd years ago!
I have not received mine yet, but from your pics, guys, it looks really, really nice!
And the dial, Frank-be's work really shows what a pro he is!
If I may say so, visually this watch is the best of them all. In some cases, for a fraction of the cost.
The movement is maybe not so elaborate, but the first indications show it is an accurate, very successful conversation!

Boys, what is the next project?

[Hary]

Quick and dirty pictures

[Crusader]

Boys, what is the next project?

One watch that has never been homaged, replicated or whatever you want to call it was the watch that was worn by the pilots who won the Second World War: the American A-11 (also delievered in quantities to the UK and the Soviet Union).

[JohnF]

Hi -


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Ok, you get the idea.

Resized to ca 40mm, with the same 2824--->2801 conversion.

And so people know the general kind of thing we're talking about (I don't have a really good shot of the A11...):



Bill would be *the* perfect guy to do it. But it's not like he's got any free time on his hands...

There are actually a number of possibles: how about this one:



or this:



Or something more exotic, such as watch based on this:



That's a 24-hour face, pure americana militaria...

Or keeping with the Germans:





JohnF

[JohnF]

Hi -



You got it.

Here's an A11:



And here's a larger dial picture of what I'd love to own as a wrist watch:



The latter could be done with a modified 7750 with the left-hand orientation and a conversion that used the date wheel to drive the subdial at 9..

JohnF

[TIMEangel]

Seconded. Count me in on the next homage project.

[JohnF]

Hi -

Well. we've got three: time to start a new thread????

JohnF

[ht8306]

Count me in...please. That's 4 :)

[Mescalito]

Boys, what is the next project?

because the working with laco has been such successful, i would definetly go for a laco replica with dial A!
the case, the engravings, the crown, the modified handwound eta-movement with hacking second and the straps can be the same, only a new dial has to be printed. therefore i would suggest to copy the dial of the original 55mm-laco and minimize it in vector-files like frank_b has done it in this project. blued hands for the new project could be a side project as well and i think the price might be the same (and i don't think that we'll find such a price for such a watch anywhere else).
we now have a lot of experience in making an outstanding hommage to the original laco watch and a dial A-version would perfectly complete a nice collection of b-watches.

so if we're heading towards such a project, i would definetly join in

[Mescalito]

because the working with laco has been such successful, i would definetly go for a laco replica with dial A!
the case, the engravings, the crown, the modified handwound eta-movement with hacking second and the straps can be the same, only a new dial has to be printed. therefore i would suggest to copy the dial of the original 55mm-laco and minimize it in vector-files like frank_b has done it in this project. blued hands for the new project could be a side project as well and i think the price might be the same (and i don't think that we'll find such a price for such a watch anywhere else).
we now have a lot of experience in making an outstanding hommage to the original laco watch and a dial A-version would perfectly complete a nice collection of b-watches.

so if we're heading towards such a project, i would definetly join in

i found on the internet that laco has already manufactured such a limited edition for another forum. it looks quite good, but as you can see, there would be a lot of improval opportunities for us (perfect dial, perfect lume, crown, handwinding movement instead of automatic one, side engravings, back,...)



although i really like our back engraving, maybe we could change this one, if we were going for a dial A-version? i really like the historic engravings, which for example is stowa using nowadays: