OOTB these are pretty ugly, inaccurate watches, so one of the first things you could do is modify it - basically to make it less ugly.
This is what the case looks like when you get it from the TD:
As you may have noticed, there's lots of things that are wrong - wrong case height, wrong shaped lugs, wrong shaped crown guards, wrong shaped bezel ring, wrong shaped crystal etc. So you'll need to remove metal - lots and lots of metal from the top, the bottom and the sides. I use one of these:
Once you've corrected the lugs, case height, CGs and bezel ring dimensions and you've got the semblance of a 5513 case, you can polish it, brush it and add your chamfers:
7
Slimmed bezel ring next to a stock bezel ring:
You'll need a dial, a set of hands, a crystal and an insert. Gen dials are nice, but expensive at $1.5k - $2k, so a relumed, aged Viet' dial will do - the finished article with a Rolex service crystal, fat font insert and a Rolex crown:
I lied about there being 10 things you can do with a Cartel/JK 5513 - IMO the only thing to do with these fugly things is modify them.
This is what the case looks like when you get it from the TD:
As you may have noticed, there's lots of things that are wrong - wrong case height, wrong shaped lugs, wrong shaped crown guards, wrong shaped bezel ring, wrong shaped crystal etc. So you'll need to remove metal - lots and lots of metal from the top, the bottom and the sides. I use one of these:
Once you've corrected the lugs, case height, CGs and bezel ring dimensions and you've got the semblance of a 5513 case, you can polish it, brush it and add your chamfers:
Slimmed bezel ring next to a stock bezel ring:
You'll need a dial, a set of hands, a crystal and an insert. Gen dials are nice, but expensive at $1.5k - $2k, so a relumed, aged Viet' dial will do - the finished article with a Rolex service crystal, fat font insert and a Rolex crown:
I lied about there being 10 things you can do with a Cartel/JK 5513 - IMO the only thing to do with these fugly things is modify them.
