Pam homage history

[Mellons]

Someone spent a lot of money on a 6152/1 at a GTG. They took it apart to service it and the dial had a smell of A1 sauce about it. Theory at the time was they used it to age the dial/indices. If I remember rightly the jokes were daily for about three months at the time…

+1 joke never got old

[Nottingham]

Someone spent a lot of money on a 6152/1 at a GTG. They took it apart to service it and the dial had a smell of A1 sauce about it. Theory at the time was they used it to age the dial/indices. If I remember rightly the jokes were daily for about three months at the time…

Funny indeed, less for his bank account i guess

[Pondoro]

A brief history of the VDB brand.
The name VDB comes from professional cyclist Franck VAnDenBroucke, who died in 2009.
Why choose this name?
Stephan Obst is a former cyclist.
After selling Panerai tributes, he moved on to other types of watches under the VDB “Vintage Daily Beater” brand (instead of Vintage VDB). I remember that at the time, everyone on the old hf forum admired his work until the BBQ sauce incident.

I read the Wiki page on Franck Van Den Broucke ,man with a lot of problems died very young .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Van ... _(cyclist)

[Hypnogagia]

Thanks for the lore! I’ve tried a bunch of stuff for antiquing dials but never steak sauce!

Early in my watch building, one of my first was an Omega 960 (6497). Spent too much on it but it was perfect for the bronze San Martin case. It had an amazing scent to it.

You might be asking yourself, is Hypnogagia some kind of weirdo with a fetish for watch smells? Bro gets high on antique whale oil and radium dust? No, but I’m a gear head at heart and love the smell of motorcycle motors. I usually do my best not to breathe to much near watch movements until I’ve got them cleaned. Also, this wasn’t the usual industrial gear oil smell. It was the best cologne I’ve ever encountered. I looked up the history of the watch, from a seller in Italy and later the movement sold by a seller in Athens, Greece. I’m not sure if the Italian owner spilled cologne in it at some point or if the Athens seller used cologne to clean the parts on rebuild. It was in perfect running order and getting numbers on the timegrapher as though it was brand new (the movement itself was perfect in every way).

I have a friend who’s deep into colognes and perfumes, and he couldn’t place the scent, but agreed it was something really nice. Eventually the scent faded away but because of that I always add a drop of nice cologne to my watch builds. On the movement ring, out of the way and as not to interfere with anything. A weird ritual, but hopefully better than steak sauce.

[Nottingham]

Such a gentle way of treating builds!