What could go wrong?

Now before starting, consider that I will appear quite dumb in this story. You are warned. Ok, I wanted to build a pilot watch with a green dial. When I ordered the pieces (from Aliexpress by the way to test the material), I was quite optimistic. Pieces seemed nice, I found everything I needed. Couple of weeks afterwards pieces arrived. Time to get building.

First of all a warning to everyone: never, NEVER, use metallic twizzers when working on the dial. I ordered two dials, my preferred one with the date dial and another one. I wanted to test applying a small sticker with an “M” on the dial, and I used metallic twizzers to remove the adhesive part. Bad idea: I scratched the first dial. Ok, no panic, deep breaths. I had a second one, without a date window, not as nice but I tought “it is still ok, after all a pure pilot watch should not have a date dial, right?”. So I fitted the dial on the movement, put the hands (had to remove them 3 times, but I managed) and then I turned my attention to the movement. Somehow the spacer (a nice metallic spacer) seemed to small for the movement. Here I should have stopped… But of course no!

For the smart ones reading, no I did not measure the spacer and compare it to the movement.

I thought that maybe I needed to fit it from above instead from behind. So I removed the hands, the dial and, guess what, realised it did not work. I put the dial back with the hands but somehow I could not figure out why it did not fit (are your curious?). Now a normal person would have checked the order, but not me! I thought (again without measuring) that maybe I had to remove the gray plastic ring around the NH35! Guess what? It did not fit. Now I was too much in panic mode to think straight. To put the gray ring back I broke the date wheel and realised I ordered the case for the wrong movement.

The broken date wheel

Oh well… you learn and live right? I learned how to remove the datewheel (that worked, and was interesting) and somehow saved the movement, since with a borken date wheel was not working very well.

Where am I now? I ordered the right pieces, and I am waiting for them now… Will post how it turns out as soon as the pieces arrive.

In the mean time I ordered wooden tweezers from Bergeon to work around the dial and hands. At least I think I learned this lesson…