Okay, so I’ve been messing around with this watch thing, trying to make a knockoff of the Jaeger-LeCoultre JLC Master Grande Tradition Tourbillon Cylindrique. It’s a mouthful, I know. But man, those watches are slick. I saw they were based on some old-timey 19th-century timepieces. I figured, how hard could it be to make something that looks like it?
I started by looking around online, you know, just to see what these things actually go for. Found some for sale on some fancy watch website. Prices were, uh, a bit out of my range, to say the least. But it gave me a good look at what I was aiming for. I saw the words “Master Grande Tradition” and “Jaeger-LeCoultre Master” were really common tags used on these websites, so I knew I was on the right track.
Digging Deeper
I found some more details on another site – it had pictures and everything. It was a Master Grand Tradition Tourbillon, 43 mm, model reference 1662510, I think. Had this rose gold case and a brown leather strap, looked pretty fancy. I definitely couldn’t afford real rose gold, and real alligator leather? Forget about it. I found a supplier for some cheap metal that kind of looked like rose gold, and some fake leather that was brown-ish.
Faking the Look
The automatic movement thing, yeah, I had no clue how to do that. I ended up just buying a cheap quartz movement online. It tells time, right? That’s all that matters. I spent days trying to get the cheap metal to look like the pictures. Bending, polishing, cursing. It was a mess. The fake leather strap was a whole other story. It kept ripping, and the buckle wouldn’t stay on.
My Watch
- Case: Some cheap metal I bent and polished to make it look like rose gold, kind of.
- Strap: Fake brown leather that kept falling apart.
- Movement: Cheap quartz movement.
- Overall Look: A mess. But it kind of, sort of, in a very squinty way, resembled the pictures I found online.
In the end, did I successfully imitate a Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Grande Tradition Tourbillon Cylindrique? Not even close. Did I learn a lot about watches, and how much work goes into making them? Absolutely. Would I do it again? Probably not. My watch is pretty janky, but hey, it tells time, and it’s a good conversation starter. “Yeah, I made that,” I say, conveniently leaving out the part about it looking nothing like the real thing. It was a fun experiment, and now it is on my hand, I think it is cool!
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