About The Watch Build

Welcome to The Watch Build. It follows the journey into watch building. After purchasing a real vintage Rolex Datejust 16220 blue dial in 2018 it took me on a journey into the watch world. Since the strange times of 2020 I have had more time on my hands and wanted to pick up a hobby to learn new skills — I started spending time on a watch forum a lot more, getting into the world of franken and homage watches.

Here I will share my story from noob watch collector to hopefully some interesting watch builds and information as I learn along the way. I will share the tools I start with and new ones as they come. I will provide the resources and knowledge I learn and also provide links on where I am picking up watch parts.

About Ollie

I'm Ollie, a hobbyist watch builder. The builds and movement reviews here are all my own hands-on work.

• Watch collector since 2018, starting with a vintage Rolex Datejust 16220 blue dial, and building watches since 2020.
• Builds so far include a Submariner 5513, a Datejust 16234, an Explorer 1016, a coffee-aged Explorer and a franken Datejust 16013 on a genuine dial.
• Hands-on with the Asian 2813, 2824 and 2836 clone movements and the Japanese Miyota 8215 — see the 2813 vs 2836 comparison.