Another watch assembled. But it's not all good.

[zx10guy]

After some thinking, I decided it would be a cool Christmas gift to give my GF a watch I built which caters to her active lifestyle and importantly has her favorite color of green. I decided on another DIY Watch Club kit which is their 40mm vintage diver kit which came with three different straps and three different bezels. The movement I selected was the NH35 because the NH38 had just gone out of stock. But at the time of ordering the NH70 was available with the kit. Keep this in mind later about the movements.

The build wasn't all too bad except I guess with me getting older my hands are not as steady as they were when I was younger. It made installing the second hand more of a challenge than my previous build with their Expedition series that I had posted about here. The frustration with the second hand lead to other mistakes and ultimately, I ended up installing another minute and second hand. Here are the pics:





So here's where things went off the rails with DIY Watch Company. This is my third kit from them so I've been a repeat customer. The last build they sent the wrong movement and dial for what I ordered. Once I sent pics showing their mistake, they immediately corrected the problem and sent me the right parts. They also told me that I could just keep the parts that were sent in error. So great customer service and they've been pretty responsive. Now we come to this build. They sent the dial without the date window for the NH35 with the date complication. I sent an email to them bringing up this problem. Long story short, they said that's the dial that comes with the kit. Essentially, I was told to pound sand despite just sending me a dial with the date window would have resolved things and kept a customer. I challenged them on this as they were not explicit about there being only one dial to be shipped with the kit regardless of movement. I also challenged them on their inclusion of the NH70 movement which is meant to be used in a skeletonized watch setup with a see through dial with this kit. So someone is going to pay more for a NH70 movement when they'll not receive a dial that would show off the mechanicals from the front. The fortunate thing for me was that the parts that were sent in error with my last build had the dial I needed to for the NH35 with the date window.



There appears to be more companies that have watch kits for one to build/customize their own watches such as The Mod Watches and Rotate. I may just start sourcing individual parts to build something out of the NH35 movement I have sitting around.