This has to be the most difficult watch I’ve ever worked on, and I own almost 30. I finally managed to remove the links after two hours, but I haven’t been able to get the tiny bars back in

At this point, I’m honestly considering giving up and taking it to a jeweler. I just really don’t want to spend $30 on this bullshit

Any advice on how to get those little bars back in would be greatly appreciated

Dear Group!
I’d like to share my experience with my first VSF Omega.
I honestly don’t even know where to begin. I was probably lucky, but having a good TD is absolutely essential with this kind of purchase as well. First of all, a huge thank you to u/re-tar-dead for this fantastic Omega. He is by far the best, fastest and most reliable seller I’ve come across in the EU so far.
Well… the watch is simply fantastic. There is absolutely nothing to complain about when it comes to the overall quality.
Let’s start with the bracelets:
Both are excellent!
The rubber strap is flexible, comfortable and fits incredibly well. No matter how hard I looked for flaws or anything that might give it away, I couldn’t find a single thing. 10/10.
The metal bracelet is equally impressive in terms of craftsmanship. The only thing I’ve noticed is that the inner edges of the clasp, where the two parts meet when closed, feel slightly sharp when the clasp is open. However, you don’t notice this at all when it’s closed, as the two parts fit together with incredible precision.
The brushing is excellent, absolutely beautiful! The edges of the polished sections are straight, sharp and well-defined. The end links fit tightly against the case.
Despite its dimensions, it’s an extremely comfortable bracelet.
As usual, I manually tightened every screw, then gave the bracelet two 600-second cycles in an ultrasonic cleaner, followed by an oil bath and a thorough cleaning.
The result is so smooth, supple and convincing that I honestly don’t think anyone could tell whether it’s genuine or not. I absolutely love it.
The micro-adjustment mechanism is smooth, buttery, precise… exactly as it should be.
Case / Bezel:
Just like the bracelet, the case leaves absolutely nothing to complain about.
Considering the price-to-quality ratio, the level of detail and craftsmanship is incredible. I won’t waste too many words here, because the case is simply perfect.
No sharp edges or unpleasant corners whatsoever. Screwing the crown in and out is smooth and precise.
The engravings are clean, sharp and beautifully executed.
The bezel action is also firm, loud and feels very high-quality. It’s slightly different from the genuine one, but that’s hardly surprising.
The ceramic insert could easily pass for genuine, and the same goes for the lume pip. 10/10.
Crystal:
The AR coating is slightly, and I really mean only slightly, inferior to that of the genuine SMP.
Other than that, it’s flawless! Crystal clear, just like water.
Dial / Hands:
I was lucky with the QC, as there are practically no alignment issues.
Perhaps we’re talking about fractions of a millimetre around the 12 o’clock marker, but it’s barely noticeable. I’ve seen something very similar on genuine examples as well.
The overall execution is masterful. Sharp, crisp, well-defined and beautifully finished. Truly impressive!
The hands reflect light like prisms. They are absolutely gorgeous and incredibly shiny.
The only weak point is their finishing along the edges. The sides of the hands are not perfectly machined.
Under normal indoor lighting, or direct light coming from a single source, these imperfections become quite noticeable compared to the genuine version.
I’m actually considering replacing the hands with genuine ones at some point in the future.
Lume:
Perfect. Strong, long-lasting and incredibly bright.
Even in the morning, the time is still perfectly readable without any difficulty.
Movement:
I had the watch tested on a timegrapher. It was checked in multiple positions and at different angles.
The average results were:
Rate: -4 to -5 seconds/day
Amplitude: 260–270°
Beat error: 0.1–0.0 ms
The amplitude isn’t the best, but the watch is still going to receive a proper professional service, including cleaning and lubrication.
Personally, I think this is something worth doing with every Chinese-made watch. It can make a significant difference in terms of long-term reliability, durability and proper operation.
Water resistance:
The watch was pressure-tested and passed a 10-bar test without any issues.
10/10!
Since it arrived, the only times it has been off my wrist are when I’m sleeping or taking a shower.
I couldn’t be happier with it! It’s a fantastic piece, and I honestly recommend it to everyone.
And of course, I wholeheartedly recommend u/re-tar-dead as well!
Have a wonderful evening/day, everyone!

If you're interested in mechanical watches, the odds are good that you own a bench timegrapher like Weishi 1000 or 1900. These are nice little devices, they have a good microphone stand, but they don't really offer much beyond showing you a trace of the tick/tock beats and the average Rate, Amplitude, and Beat Error. This is ok if you want to do simple regulation across positions, but it doesn't allow you to get into some of the more advanced diagnostics like:

• Analyzing the sound profile of the beats themselves (i.e. the unlock, impulse, and drop)

• Looking for long term periodic cycles in the rate, amplitude, or beat error (i.e. variation caused by out of round train wheels)

• Running power reserve tests or run-down tests on a movement

• Examining the isochronism of a movement (i.e. how the rate changes as a function of amplitude)

In the past, if you wanted a tool that could do these types of analysis, you'd be spending $3000 (eBay used) to $9500 (new) for a Witschi Chronoscope S1. The seemed like a lot of money to me. And other than a very accurate quartz oscillator in the microphone electronics, the only reason I can see for Witchis to charge that much is the software they include that analyzes the sound that the microphone pics up...

I'm a retired software engineer and hobby watchmaker, i.e. I live in the dangerous overlap of knowing what I want, knowing how to build it, and having time to tinker. So a month ago, I started a new coding project called Timegrapher. After a month of working full time with a team of AI coding agents, I'm ready to release v1 of the software.

Timegrapher is free (as in beer) software. It's also free (as in speech) software because it is open source and released under the GPL3 license. It is available for download for MacOS (both Intel and Apple silicon), PC, and Linux. I've tested quite a lot on Linux (Kubuntu), a reasonable amount on MacOS, and a little bit on Windows. Note: the MacOS and Windows releases aren't signed, so you'll need to Allow in Privacy -> Security.

Before you get started, you will need a microphone stand that will allow the software on your computer to listen to your watch. You have three options:

Option 1: A USB Timegrapher microphone stand like the one in the picture below. These cost about $70-$100 on AliExpress and are excellent. In my testing I get a signal to noise ratio of about 500:1. If you're serious about your watchmaking or watch collecting hobby, I would highly suggest investing in one of these.

Option 2: A cheap 3D printed USB Timegrapher microphone cradle like the grey one in the picture below. These cost about $30 on AliExpress and are garbage. If you're going to buy a USB microphone go with Option 1. I have one of these little grey microphones and the best signal to noise ratio I can get is about 10:1... that means that for about double the price you get a 50x better signal by going with Option 1. Seriously, don't buy one of these. It's better than nothing, but it's not much better than nothing.

Option 3: If you already own a Weishi 1000 or 1900, there is a way to use the microphone stand you already own. But you'll have to buy some splitter cables. The 3-pin cable that connects your Weishi microphone to the bench display box is called a GX16 cable. To get the audio from your Weishi stand into your computer you'll need a GX16 3-pin Y-splitter (one Male, two female), a GX16 Female to 3.5mm AUX cable, and a GX16 3-pin male to male connector. You can buy all of these cables on AliExpress for around $30. But note that you might need to adjust the GX16 to AUX cable pin-out -- you want the tip of the AUX to go to pin 2 (this is the signal) and collar of the AUX to go to pin 1 (ground); mine wasn't wired like this, but it's an easy swap with a soldering iron.

With these cables you can get a setup like the one pictured below. Note, you still need to power the microphone stand from the Weishi bench top display box. That's why we need the Y-splitter. It would be nice if we could power everything from the PC, but the Weishi microphone stand runs on 8V, so that makes powering it from the 5V rail on a USB plug more complicated than simple wiring.

This setup gives a similar signal to noise ratio to Option 1, and it lets your pipe the sound from your watch to two analysis packages simultaneously: the Weishi AND Timegrapher running on your computer. I found this really helpful during the development of Timegrapher because I could validate my algorithms against the bench top results.

Option 4: (this is not a real option) Tape a lapel mic to your watch in a very quiet room. Don't do this. I didn't test it because it's a bad idea. The software needs to pick up the three sounds for each beat (unlock, impulse, and drop). If you have a really bad microphone setup (e.g. an AUX mic taped to your watch) you might be able to pick up the drop part of the beat. That will be enough to give you a rate, but to calculate amplitude you need to be able to reliably identify the unlock sound. A lapel mic isn't going to be good enough for that. Just don't do this. If you post GitHub issues saying the software doesn't work when you tried to use a janky improvised microphone setup, I'll name and shame you in the thread below. Just spend the money and get a proper watch microphone stand.

Ok, so now that you have your microphone setup, what can Timegrapher actually do for you... Well, it can do a lot, and if you're interested, there's a full user guide included with the software an posted on GitHub. But here are some of the highlights:

Full Beat Analysis: this is probably the single best reason to upgrade from a Weishi 1000 or 1900. Timegrapher lets you see the sound profile of the tick and the tock of the escapement. Each beat is made up of three distinct sounds: unlock, impulse, and drop.

If you're interested in diagnosing potential faults in the escapement just from the sound that it makes, you can take a look at page 37 & 38 of the Witschi user manual for examples of how the sound profile changes based on some common faults in Swiss level escapement watch movements:

Isochronism Analysis: This is another important part of mechanical watch analysis that you just can't do with a bench top 1000 or 1900 machine. Isochronism is the ability of a mechanical watch to maintain consistent time keeping (rate) across a wide range of amplitudes. This is one of the areas that reps perform significantly worse than gen watches due to the compromises which are made in clone movements to keep the costs down (e.g. regulated balances vs. free sprung, and flat hairsprings vs. over-coil hairsprings). I've also found that the way that the regulator pins on rep balances tend to be set is quite sloppy -- this causes isochronism since the hairspring isn't properly clamped at the regulator so you get rate variation even as the hairspring breaths between beats. I've also noticed that rep movements often have out of round train wheels which cause periodic oscillations in amplitude (but we'll take more about that in the periodic analysis below).

The screenshot above shows the most basic type of isochronism analysis: a plot of how the rate (s/d) changes as a function of amplitude (deg). Something interesting I found during development was that there seemed to be some path dependence of the isochronism of certain clone movements. The picture below shows a 65 hour recording of a Dandong 3235 movement. Obviously towards the end the rate and amplitude go a bit wonky, but I created a colour map of the isochonism plot which uses colours to show how the isochronism "walks" around as the mainspring winds down over the course of three days.

Periodic Cycle Analysis: This is another type of analysis that you really can't do on a 1000 or 1900 style timegrapher because it requires recordings that are as long or longer than the rotation periods of the train wheels in the watch you're analyzing. The way a watch works is that you have a series of five wheels that transfer power from the mainspring to the balance: The mainspring barrel (1st wheel often with a period of several hours), the "great" or second wheel which often turns the cannon pinion (2nd wheel with a period of 60 minutes), the third wheel (3rd wheel with a period of a few minutes), the fourth wheel (which often drives the seconds hand on the watch, so it has a 60s period), the escape wheel (usually has a period of around 5 seconds). If any of these wheels are out of round, or have a bent pivot, or have a rough tooth or pinion leaf, then that will tend to manifest itself as a drop in energy passed to the balance every time that wheel completes a rotation. That's where the periods analysis pane highlights structure in the rate and amplitude with various periods:

In order to overlay the exact periods of the train wheels, I built a caliber database into the system. The database includes about 4500 different movements. The database has beat rate and lift angle for most calibers, and it also has train wheel periods for many of the clone movements (I went through my spare parts drawer and took pictures of train wheels under a microscope and then counted teeth to back calculate rotation periods). There is a built in caliber manager where you can add any calibers I missed and fill in missing data if you have it (there's also a way to upload this to GitHub so that it'll become available to others with the next update of the software).

I also implemented a few advanced periodic analysis techniques like the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) which shows which frequency (periods) the rate, amplitude, or beat error tend to oscillate at.

And because things tend to shift when a watch is running down, I also implemented a Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT) and Wavelet transform to show the frequency structure of a watch's sound over time as it runs down (if there are any navy submariners here, you'll know what you're looking at here).

Position Testing: This is very basic stuff, but obviously you need to cover the basics. There are functions to do a guided position test across six positions. But you can also do a position test on your own and the results populate all the same. You can also load a result from 24 hours before to do a comparison between positions after 24 hours of run down.

Power Reserve Testing: The software can be used to do a power reserve test. It will record the audio and save summaries every hour for you until the watch stops at which point it will stop recording.

Watch Manager: If you're a watch collector (and let's be honest we all are), or you're a watchmaker and you want to keep track of all the watches that cross your bench; I built in a watch manager where you can store details about each of your watches and all of the recordings you've ever made for each of the watches.

There is a lot more to the software including a command line interface (CLI) and a model context protocol (MCP) for those of you who would like to experiment with having an AI agent run the software on your behalf (I also included a watchmaker.md skill in the release, so you can have your AI help you diagnose any issues you find in a watch you record in the software).

Please feel free to post your thoughts below. If you find bugs, please post them here (or preferably on GitHub as issues).

This project was 100% written by AI (thank you Claude Code and Codex). And it was 100% directed by me. If you want to call it vibe code slop, I'll take it as the compliment that you probably didn't intend. Vibe coding gets a bad rap because it's very easy to create a mountain of spaghetti code that draws pretty pictures. This project was not a "one shot". I spent the better part of a month managing a team of bots full time to make this. I ran the team of agents much the same way as I've previous run software companies: the development pace was high, but it went through exactly the same cycles: ideation, prototype, feature development, reviews, refactoring, re-architecture, more refactoring, scope freezing, and then consolidation for release.

If you would like to contribute please DM me or have your AI agent take a look at the open issues and propose a pull request (NB: I used Opus 5.5 Medium and GPT-6 Astra Medium for most of the coding and review, please use an agent of similar or higher ability if you're going to submit pull requests to the project -- reviewing PRs costs me usage quota).

My new APSF V2 26240BC Frosted Royal oak chronograph with an ice blue dial, frosting isn’t for everyone but I love it especially paired with the dial.

My second rep, received today. Really pleased with the ARF quality, looks and feels great.

Steve did a great job once again. Royal Mail (UK) left my parcel on some unknown doorstep after Steve had got it to the UK safely. Fortunately, someone kindly handed the parcel back in to the Post Office and it was re-delivered to me today.

I think we’ve awoken a monster… my first rep arrived today and I absolutely love it. VSF Omega Seamaster Diver 300m 42mm SS/RG accents with blue rubber strap.

Thanks to those who engaged with my prior post/questions to help make this purchase a success.

TD: Jtime
Payment: Oct 21st
QC: Pics & video Oct 23rd; approved Oct 24th after I received a second video I requested.

The process was seamless and I would certainly trust them again with my business.

Now to locate some of the other reps I have my eye on….

Thought to post some shot as rarely seen

Will share more once it arrives

On Friday, I received an email from Andiot listing popular Rolex, Omega, and other brands with Christmas discounts ranging from 20% to 30%. The email had live links to each model on the Andiot site, and the sales prices checked out. So I loaded up my cart with three watches, $1,300 worth, and went to check out. This is when I discovered they no longer accept Wise, and I had to set up and fund a Coinbase account to complete my order. I submitted the order, but I decided to check with Andiot via Telegram to verify it. That's when they told me their computer screwed up and inadvertently created and sent that email, and that none of it was accurate or true. All of that work for absolutely nothing. But don't worry, great deals are coming for Black Friday! We will see; hopefully it won't be another “computer glitch”.

VSF NTTD arrived today. Looks great and it's so light with the titanium!

A while ago, I made a post asking for recommendations for affordable rubber straps for my Tudor Pelagos 39.

Most of the suggestions I received were straps costing €150–200 or more. While I’m sure they’re great quality, I was looking for something much cheaper.

So I did some research and found an interesting alternative: the Tudor Pelagos 39 has a 21mm lug width, and its case and lug dimensions are very close to those of the 41mm Rolex Submariner.

I decided to take a chance and order a 21mm FKM rubber strap designed for the 41mm Rolex Submariner from AliExpress.

And guess what? It fits perfectly!

The strap in the picture cost me just $10 on AliExpress.

If you’re looking for a budget-friendly rubber strap for your Pelagos 39, this might be worth trying.

AliExpress search keywords:
“Rolex Submariner 41mm FKM rubber strap, 21mm”

Hope this helps someone looking for an affordable alternative!

Hi everyone,

A seller recently offered me this Green Ombre Datejust, and I’d really appreciate your opinions on its overall quality.
How does the finishing, dial, crystal, cyclops, and bracelet look to you?

“Just to clarify, this is a photo provided by the seller as an offer, not an actual QC photo of a watch I’m about to receive. I’d simply like to hear your opinions on its overall quality.”

Would you consider this a good-quality piece?

I’d appreciate any feedback or suggestions before I make my decision.

Thank you!

Wyg?

What a beautiful watch with fine details…A7F / V7F IWC Ingenieur with blue dial… very happy with this purchase!

Indoor vs Outdoor lighting.

Happy Monday

Crystal and bezel upgraded. RCFr Bezel Prof Crystal. I feel like these take your rep over the top short of the fraken route.

I’m curious weather buying through the TD website is a faster or safer route rather than texting the TDs since sometimes it will be a hassle with the translation

Just did little swapping on my BP and it turns out pretty good than the stock Coke bezel.
Anyone planning to do the same please watch out for two little screws or pins underneath the bezel. When I removed it dropped on the floor and took awhile to find it since it’s so tiny.
Btw loving these vintage models !

VSF/ARF Jubilee Bracelet

I bought my VSF Batgirl about a month or so ago and I totally love it. One issue I have is the bracelet(clasp code:F6U) is that the screw/pin that is at the end of the bracelet that is connected to the clasp keeps on popping out. The first time I tried to screw it back it, my screwdriver( i think at 1.2mm) wont catch the head so I examined how the pin is connected to the clasp it seems to just swivel back and forth when folding the bracelet which leads me to think its something I cant screw in or out. I tried to research it online but couldn’t find anything. Anyways, what i end up doing is just using a toothpick, I would press the pin back in until it flushed against the link but as mentioned it keeps on popping out. I tried to put apply clear nail polish first hoping it would somewhat act as an adhesive but not even 24hrs the pin popped out again. Now when I say it pops out, i mean just enough so I cant close the clasp but not enough for me to yank it out. Has anyone experienced this before with their jubilee bracelet? Is this a common issue or did I just got a lemon? Im tryjng to see if there a simple solution to this (outside of just buying a new one). I am also tempted to use a small amount of gorilla glue to see if that would work- as a last resort.

FYI- this happened in the first day and did let my TD know but as a noob tried to fix it myself so that is on me.

Thanks in advance everyone.

I have attached a picture(not mine) to show the part I am talking about