I’ve always been fascinated by those fancy watches, especially the Patek Philippe Nautilus 5711. It’s like the holy grail of watches, right? But, man, that price tag is insane! So, I thought, “Why not try to remake one myself?” Yeah, I know, it sounds crazy, but I was determined to give it a shot.
First thing I did was to stare at a bunch of pictures of the 5711 online. I mean, I really looked at them. I wanted to get every little detail in my head. The way the dial looks, the shape of the case, that iconic bracelet—everything. It took a few days to be familiar with every detail. Then, I started to search the quotation of this watch. The median peak price was $131,504 in 2022, but today the watch is priced at $89,404. It’s a huge amount of money for me.
Next, I had to figure out what materials I needed. Obviously, I wasn’t going to use real gold or anything, but I wanted it to look as close to the real deal as possible. Some folks online were talking about using stainless steel, which seemed like a good, affordable option. So I start looking for the metal material for the watch.
- Case: Found a decent-looking white gold-plated case online. It wasn’t perfect, but it had the right shape and a good weight to it.
- Dial: This was tricky. I ended up printing out a high-res image of the 5711 dial and carefully sticking it onto a thin piece of metal.
- Hands: I bought some generic watch hands and filed them down to match the shape of the Nautilus hands. It took forever, but I got there in the end.
- Bracelet: I found a stainless steel bracelet that looked pretty similar to the 5711’s. It wasn’t an exact match, but it was close enough.
- Movement: Obviously, I wasn’t going to put a real Patek movement in there. I just used a cheap quartz movement I found online. And I learned that the thick of a real 5711 is really thin. I need to find a thinner movement.
Putting it all together was a real challenge. I had to be super careful not to scratch the case or mess up the dial. I used some basic tools I had lying around—tweezers, a small screwdriver, that sort of thing. Honestly, there were a few times when I thought I’d ruined the whole thing, but I kept at it.
The Result
After weeks of work, I finally had something that resembled a Patek Philippe Nautilus 5711. It wasn’t perfect, of course. The dial was a bit off, the hands weren’t quite right, and the bracelet felt a little cheap. But, you know what? I was proud of it. I had taken a bunch of parts and turned them into something that, at least from a distance, looked like a $100,000 watch.
Wearing it around felt pretty cool. A few people even asked me if it was real! I always told them the truth, though. I’m not trying to fool anyone. It’s just a fun project I did, and I learned a lot along the way. Maybe one day I’ll be able to afford the real thing, but until then, I’m happy with my homemade 5711. It’s a reminder that you don’t need a ton of money to enjoy the finer things in life. You just need a little creativity and a lot of patience. I wonder what will happen if I put “750” on the case back.
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