NWA....also having a little fun with my newly acquired, early 1970s Ellipse 3605/1, my phone camera and the Snapspeed app.
By: WatchFan1 : July 26th, 2025-20:00
I think I have mentioned in the past that my goal is to own a Patek Ellipse with a custom see-through case back.
Recently made references 3738 and 5738 have a more complicated caseback with integrated lugs. It would not be impossible, but unnecessary difficult to replicate the complete case back with lugs and integrate a sapphire into it. Therefore I was focusing on finding Ellipse models that had a simple and traditional Snap-on case backs.
Ellipse 3548, shown in the second picture, with manual wind caliber 23-300 was my original purchase for this project, but it was more difficult to find an off the shelf sapphire crystal in a such a small size....and one would have to be custom made.
This much large reference 3605/1 from early 1970s (i.e Jumbo) with the historical, ultra thin self-winding caliber 28-255 (also used in the original 1976 Nautilus 3700 Jumbo) will be a much better candidate, due to its much larger size and finding a pre-made sapphire crystal & gasket will not be any issue.
Because of my business, I have access to CAD/CAM & CNC Machining and I have already developed several custom see-through case backs for other quality watches with nice movements that did not have them.
Should be a fun project and I'm looking forward to it.....and I will be sharing the progress, of course.
It will be a fun puzzler for people to match the casebacks to their respective watches. The Rolex is kinda obvious but which model? You gave away the VC already...
Fantastic! ↓
[Because of my business, I have access to CAD/CAM & CNC Machining and I have already developed several custom see-through case backs for other quality watches with nice movements that did not have them.]