38.5mm Mosel DIY dress watch kit with complete flame bluing toolset
If you are looking for a more involved watchmaking experience gift for someone who appreciates vintage watches and traditional watch craft, look no further. We are quite confident that this could be the best at-home DIY experience you can give as a gift :)
There are two parts to this set: Flame bluing of steel watch hands and the assembly of the watch.
The 1st part, the flame bluing experience is an exotic craft reserved for luxury watches these days. Blue steel hands can command a premium; manually flame-blued hands are only for the ultra-luxury. But we have created a full tool set and step-by-step video so the owner of this kit will be able to manually flame blue some watch hands. This is some serious bragging rights among watch lovers :)
The 2nd part is to assemble a vintage mechanical dress watch. It is a minimalist vintage style dress watch, which is quite attractive on its own; now it can be decorated by manually blued watch hands, making this watch a truly unique timepiece (no two manually blued watch hands share the same exact color).
This DIY bundle includes:
- Complete DIY Watch Club Flame Bluing Kit
- Butane gas refill for butane torch not included in the kit. You can obtain it from your local hardware store or from Amazon.
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Complete components of one 38.5mm dress mechanical watch
Watch Case: 38.5mm DWC Mosel Vintage Dress Watch Case
- Material: SS316L Stainless Steel
- Crystal: Sapphire High-domed K1 crystal with Anti-Reflective coating / Acrylite 8N vintage high-domed crystal
- Case size: 38.5mm
- Lug size: 20mm
- Lug-to-lug: 45.5mm
- Thickness: ~12.5mm including crystal, around 7.5mm excluding crystal
- Water-resistant: 3ATM (assuming correct assembly)
Case Back: Stainless steel Exhibition case back with High-domed (Acrylite 8N / K1 glass) crystal Watch dial: 32.8mm DWC Mosel Roman Numeral Sunray Open Heart Dial (Silver)
Hands: Mosel series Silver Watch Hands (3 hands) - (Pack of 2)
Steel hands for bluing included in the Flame Bluing KitMovement: Silver Miyota 82S0 (Made in Japan) Strap: 20mm DWC Classic Leather Strap (Black) - Watchmaking tool options:
- DWC Essential tools for this experience
- DWC Professional watchmaker tools with Box upgrade
- Complete video instructions in (English, Cantonese & Mandarin)
Time required：
Watch hands bluing ~60 mins
Watch assembly ~120 mins (Simply enjoy the watchmaking process at your own pace)
Mod potential：★★★ (You can mod this watch with other DWC components, such as custom dial, custom rotors, hands and cases)
Difficulty Level: ★★★★
- Due to the thin and fine nature of a dress watch second hand, these second hands are slightly more difficult to install when compared to our other tool/sport watches powered by Seiko NH movements. Stainless steel hands are also harder, and therefore slightly harder to install.
- The bluing process, while not difficult, does require patience.
- Key challenge: second hand installation
How to heat-treat your watch hands and screws (or other steel components)
With the right setup, flame bluing is actually quite an enjoyable process. Check out our ~10-minute guide on how to create your very own heat treated blue hands.
K1 Hardened Glass vs Acrylite 8N:
Our Mosel case comes in 2 variants, one with K1 glass and the other with Acrylite 8N. Acrylite 8N is a high-quality acrylic that will give you the most authentic vintage look, while K1 glass will offer a balance between the vintage vibe and practicality as it is much harder than acrylic and offers a vastly improved anti-scratch capability (even better than other mineral crystal watches).
Our K1 glass Mosel case variant is also decorated with brushed/polished hybrid finishing for a more premium, sophisticated look.
DWC PRO WATCHMAKING TOOL KIT:
This is our Pro Tool Kit, a DWC in-house design from top to bottom. This is a lot more than a mere step up from standard Amazon watch-making tools; it is a collection of tools we designed and crafted to give you the best watchmaking experience possible.
And in watchmaking, just like many other crafts, the quality of the tools does affect the quality of the outcome.
Learn more about it here: What Makes a Good Watchmaking Tool
Modding suggestions:
A Miyota made original rotor customized by us. A perfect icing on the cake for the watch you assembled yourself. Best paired with an exhibition case back. Design your custom rotor with us