| Re: Watch Dial and Hands [message #2879 is a reply to message #2877] |
Wed, 05 February 2014 17:55   |
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afire
Messages: 1345
Registered: May 2013
Location: Wisconsin
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Gruen Authority |
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Brian, I can tell you that the odds of finding that exact dial are extremely slim. I used to have that exact same watch, 14k engraved cal. 157. Not only are these fairly uncommon watches, for some unknown reason a lot of them were originally equipped with the "wrong" dial. My only guess would be some sort of supply problem that caused them to be short on cut-corner cal. 157 dials led to Gruen shipping many of these out with a rectangular dial. Here's a different version with the same issue:
What I ended up doing is as you suggest, take a different 157 dial and have it stripped and reprinted in this style. If possible, hunt down one of the other 157 cut-corner dials like Quad. 68-69 shown at the bottom of this catalog page:
You'll still have to get it stripped and reprinted (and possible sand it down a little to fit the case, but I don't recall for certain), but the bonus of starting with this dial is that the indentation under the sub-seconds will have a cut-corner shape. Of course, that's not really necessary and if I couldn't turn one up fairly quickly, I'd just go with any rectangular dial.
I had mine done by Kirk Rich and they did a perfect job with it.
I was eying that case up myself, but having just done the exact same project a few years ago, I couldn't quite bring myself to jump in a second time.
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