Discussion
I'm getting a real itch that I'm having trouble shifting, I've never really been a Rolex lover and althought the Sub and Deepsea are both IMO design classics I've always thought the brand a little too main stream and in your face for my tastes, but now I just keep going back to a Pro Hunter Sea Dweller, I just think it looks so obviously different and exclusive that it becomes tastefull. However for what is in reality a customised non official watch I'm having real trouble getting my head round the price tab, I know the words exclusive and cheap never go hand in hand but are there any alternatives to the Pro Hunter? or is it practical to take a standard watch and go about getting the treatment done yourself? and really how hard wearing is PVD? "diamond hard" to me just seems a bit catch phrase and unrealistic. Oh and when I say "alternatives" I'm not talking about absolute bargin priced ones at $200 that seems to be covering the google search feature, infact maybe "exclusive" and cheap can hand in hand 
as these sites appear to have dozens of watches with a choice of movements from a manufactured run of sub 100, honest.
as these sites appear to have dozens of watches with a choice of movements from a manufactured run of sub 100, honest. Mel, I have a PVD Steinhart (But with a Vintage Red Face) Not quite the real thing admitadley but the build quality is great and represents real value for money. Well worth considering as an option.
http://www.steinhartwatches.de/index.php?id=67&...
http://www.steinhartwatches.de/index.php?id=67&...
Thanks Luke, after a bit of digging I've turned up Bry's website and he offers the service for clients, have mailed him for a quote on doing a pre owned Sub' or possibly even a Ti Seamaster Hmmmmmmmmmmm
http://www.satintime.com/index.php
http://www.satintime.com/index.php
I have just spoken to Bryan (Satin Time) on email and he seems like a nice guy and was very helpful. I am sure he would be willing to discuss coating whatever watch it might be, but he did say to me that it was easier doing the older Rolex Subs etc and that the new, ceramic bezel versions may not be easy.
I just responded to him in an email, but it has bounced back, twice, with a delivery failure, so if anyone knows him from the other forums, perhaps you could point him this way?
I just responded to him in an email, but it has bounced back, twice, with a delivery failure, so if anyone knows him from the other forums, perhaps you could point him this way?
Right I've got all my costs togeather now and I'm umming and arring. Much as it goes against the grain I really want to see what one looks like in the flesh so to that end I've gambled $140 and ordered a looky likey I know the whole replica thing is a bit of a hot potatoe on here but before I go ploughing over four grand into something I'd quite like to see some sort of better representation than a photoshop knock up. There's a time and a place for everything and I'm buying a rep not to help fund international terrorism, nor child abuse, heroin growing or prostitution but to have a look, it'll be a disposable watch so I really don't care what the movement is or how long it lasts but if the case and bracelet are "interchangable with the genuine watch" as they claim then it'll be interesting, guess i'll find out in a couple of weeks (or not as the case may be) If the quality isn't up to much then so be it, I know what a real one feels like I just don't know what it'll look like in the black. Anyway it'll be fun to pull it apart.
Edit; I'd love to add a link to the image of what I've ordered but it's such a sensative topic all I can say is the website is your trusty time and they show some pro hunters there of which I fancy the sub' (hopefully that hasn't crossed the rep' links rules)
I know the whole replica thing is a bit of a hot potatoe on here but before I go ploughing over four grand into something I'd quite like to see some sort of better representation than a photoshop knock up. There's a time and a place for everything and I'm buying a rep not to help fund international terrorism, nor child abuse, heroin growing or prostitution but to have a look, it'll be a disposable watch so I really don't care what the movement is or how long it lasts but if the case and bracelet are "interchangable with the genuine watch" as they claim then it'll be interesting, guess i'll find out in a couple of weeks (or not as the case may be) If the quality isn't up to much then so be it, I know what a real one feels like I just don't know what it'll look like in the black. Anyway it'll be fun to pull it apart.Edit; I'd love to add a link to the image of what I've ordered but it's such a sensative topic all I can say is the website is your trusty time and they show some pro hunters there of which I fancy the sub' (hopefully that hasn't crossed the rep' links rules)
Edited by mel on Wednesday 15th September 14:19
Heh. Can open, worms everywhere.
Away from 'Andrew' and trusty time and back to PVD… be careful regarding 'toughness' of the finish. I suppose things may have changed in the time since I bought a new one - a Porsche Design PAT (aluminium and titanium, PVD black everywhere except the caseback which was pure titanium).
Since it was my only quartz watch and I didn't fancy testing the movements of my other watches to a stag weekend in Scotland when 'canyoning' was on the menu (wasn't quite sure what it entailed, other than wetsuits and jumping into white-water rapids, or something like that), I chose the Porsche chrono, hoping its decent water depth rating and quartz movement would stand up to the knocks it'd inevitably receive.
What actually happened is that the watch worked admirably, but the PVD coating took an absolute kicking - and I wasn't expecting that. There wasn't *that* much obvious abrasion when whooshing down the rapids - I didn't notice the watch taking that much in the way of scrapes or knocks, and the low profile of the watch meant that the wetsuit itself was 'higher' off my skin than the watch.
Regardless, the PVD got trashed and the jeweller that sold me the watch told me they couldn't do anything about it - PD wouldn't take it back for re-PVD treatment, etc.
Maybe the techniques have got better - certainly the ones the replica guys in China offer are (AFAIK) exactly the same process used by the genuine aftermarket (e.g. the Bamford PVD Rolexes) so I'd imagine that the 'legit rep' types (e.g. Steinhart, Alpha, etc.) use exactly the same processes or factories to process their pieces.
In other words, getting a Steinhart to test the look / feel / durability of the PVD finish will be identical to getting one of Andrew's high-end (i.e. Sea-Gull or Liaoning ETA-clone movement) fakes. They're all made the same way and probably in the same factories, the only difference is final QA checking.
No point turning *this* thread into yet another rep vs 'homage' vs gen argument though. What *would* be interesting is if anyone's got any hard information on whether there's any real difference or 'grade' of black PVD coating - so far it appears that both the full-price genuine Pro Hunters, the full-price aftermarket jobs, AND the 'legit' Steinhart 'homages' and the high-end fakes from TT/PC etc. all use the same process and can be expected to have the same durability of PVD.
If the incremental cost between a 'cheap' PVD and a 'Pro Hunter' PVD finish is very small, then both the 'homage' guys and the 'replica' guys will sell *some* with the full-price PVD at a big markup, you can be sure of that. If not, and the PVD 'grade' is much like gold plating (where thicker gold costs a lot more, the material being the cost rather than just the process setup), then the genuine watches should have an easily noticeable 'better quality' feel to the coating, no?
That said, the Porsche Design watch cost me around £1500 IIRC and should have had a decent PVD coating...
Away from 'Andrew' and trusty time and back to PVD… be careful regarding 'toughness' of the finish. I suppose things may have changed in the time since I bought a new one - a Porsche Design PAT (aluminium and titanium, PVD black everywhere except the caseback which was pure titanium).
Since it was my only quartz watch and I didn't fancy testing the movements of my other watches to a stag weekend in Scotland when 'canyoning' was on the menu (wasn't quite sure what it entailed, other than wetsuits and jumping into white-water rapids, or something like that), I chose the Porsche chrono, hoping its decent water depth rating and quartz movement would stand up to the knocks it'd inevitably receive.
What actually happened is that the watch worked admirably, but the PVD coating took an absolute kicking - and I wasn't expecting that. There wasn't *that* much obvious abrasion when whooshing down the rapids - I didn't notice the watch taking that much in the way of scrapes or knocks, and the low profile of the watch meant that the wetsuit itself was 'higher' off my skin than the watch.
Regardless, the PVD got trashed and the jeweller that sold me the watch told me they couldn't do anything about it - PD wouldn't take it back for re-PVD treatment, etc.
Maybe the techniques have got better - certainly the ones the replica guys in China offer are (AFAIK) exactly the same process used by the genuine aftermarket (e.g. the Bamford PVD Rolexes) so I'd imagine that the 'legit rep' types (e.g. Steinhart, Alpha, etc.) use exactly the same processes or factories to process their pieces.
In other words, getting a Steinhart to test the look / feel / durability of the PVD finish will be identical to getting one of Andrew's high-end (i.e. Sea-Gull or Liaoning ETA-clone movement) fakes. They're all made the same way and probably in the same factories, the only difference is final QA checking.
No point turning *this* thread into yet another rep vs 'homage' vs gen argument though. What *would* be interesting is if anyone's got any hard information on whether there's any real difference or 'grade' of black PVD coating - so far it appears that both the full-price genuine Pro Hunters, the full-price aftermarket jobs, AND the 'legit' Steinhart 'homages' and the high-end fakes from TT/PC etc. all use the same process and can be expected to have the same durability of PVD.
If the incremental cost between a 'cheap' PVD and a 'Pro Hunter' PVD finish is very small, then both the 'homage' guys and the 'replica' guys will sell *some* with the full-price PVD at a big markup, you can be sure of that. If not, and the PVD 'grade' is much like gold plating (where thicker gold costs a lot more, the material being the cost rather than just the process setup), then the genuine watches should have an easily noticeable 'better quality' feel to the coating, no?
That said, the Porsche Design watch cost me around £1500 IIRC and should have had a decent PVD coating...
Dr JonboyG said:
I think the next batch of Steinharts are going to be DLC instead of PVD, which is supposed to be a lot more scratchproof.
DLC is a type of coating. PVD is a process used to apply a coating. Two different things. IIRC you use PVD to apply a DLC coating 
The question can probably only be properly answered by an engineer who works in the surface coatings field - as to whether PVD processes have got better or been replaced with something that results in a stronger / deeper coating.
All I know is that there are ion-bombardment processes (which go deeper into the host metal and make for a stronger coating, but at the expense of making the metal more brittle in the process) and traditional physical vapour deposition (PVD) processes where the metal is exposed to hot vapour (some carbon-based chemical), resulting in the molecule breaking down and dumping carbon (and other) atoms onto the surface of the metal. That's the limit of my knowledge, and I'm aware that this is *severely* limited!
However it suggests that the traditional PVD process can be 'graded' in terms of how long the metal is exposed to the vapour, and how thick the resulting coating may be - unless there's a natural limit (e.g. the deposited carbon atoms preferring to stick to metal, rather than on top of already deposited coating... though continue long enough and you're building diamond - which is probably the DLC process!).
Proceed long enough with carbon atom deposition until the metal is evenly coated in carbon atoms and you'll end up with a layer of diamond film over the metal part. This, theoretically, will NOT scratch off. But it'll be brittle as hell, and any metal part exposed to any flex at all will crack the diamond... And whilst 'diamond coating' is great for the marketing team, carbon is not the only possible atom you can use in coating metals, and may not be the most optimal...
Any surface coatings engineers here?
Cyber, you say your Porsche design number was a combination of aluminium and titanium, was the problem with the PVD scratching easily on ali' elements of the watch? It is a much much softer base material than either stainless or titanium think of it as standing on an ice covered road compared to an ice covered pond, I've never heard of anyone falling through a road.
mel said:
Cyber, you say your Porsche design number was a combination of aluminium and titanium, was the problem with the PVD scratching easily on ali' elements of the watch? It is a much much softer base material than either stainless or titanium think of it as standing on an ice covered road compared to an ice covered pond, I've never heard of anyone falling through a road.
As shown the scratching was worst on the bracelet, which was AFAIK meant to be titanium. Would have been cheap and nasty with the majority of the metal in the watch being plain old ally!That said, titanium *is* softer than the steels used in watches and is going to react to surface coatings differently due to its chemistry - that much seems obvious to me, but why anyone would market a watch that performs worse than a cheaper steel base seems odd.
And I've heard of plenty of people falling through roads, usually when the roads have holes in them, or the people have managed to alter Planck's constant, the mass of an electron *and* the speed of light - all at the same time accidentally - and ended up smaller than the atoms making up the road. It's usually a good idea to get back into empty space FAST when this happens - you never know when you'll spring back to normality and it's probably not a good idea to be inside the M25 when it does. Most watch geeks won't have this problem since it only appears to affect people who drink cocktails having names with too many 'r's in them (a ratio of 3:1 'r's is bad news for cocktail drinkers, according to recent research).
cyberface said:
And I've heard of plenty of people falling through roads, usually when the roads have holes in them, or the people have managed to alter Planck's constant, the mass of an electron *and* the speed of light - all at the same time accidentally - and ended up smaller than the atoms making up the road. It's usually a good idea to get back into empty space FAST when this happens - you never know when you'll spring back to normality and it's probably not a good idea to be inside the M25 when it does. Most watch geeks won't have this problem since it only appears to affect people who drink cocktails having names with too many 'r's in them (a ratio of 3:1 'r's is bad news for cocktail drinkers, according to recent research).
The diversity of PH posting knows no bounds!
Talking seriously for a moment, isn't there another bombardment process that is becoming more popular because it is supposedly impossible to remove under 'normal' use, or is that just some rubbish I've read about DLC coatings?
Or I guess it could just be a development of the current process(es).
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