u/ThisLifeSuckss

A dear friend of mine recently complimented me on my Vostok Ampfibia 120811 so I thought I would gift him a nice Vostok. He is a large dude and likes his watches on bracelets. Unfortunately I don't really have the money to give him a new Amfibia so I thought I would restore one for him.

I found this pretty nice looking late 90's/early 2000's Amfibia which supposedly ran. It was in a pretty battered condition but ended up costing me just 30 bucks inc. shipping. It was my first restoration, and after reading a couple of guides online I started by removing the bracelet and the bezel. Those went into my ultrasonic cleaner with a bunch of detergent. While the cleaner was doing its thing I went about polishing the badly scratched up crystal. 1000 - 1500 - 2000 - 2500 grit wet sanding and then polishing with toothpaste. It came out looking like new. I adjusted the mechanism, which according to my phone timegrapher app runs well enough. After getting it within the spec -20/+60s in all positions I took out the parts from the ultrasonic cleaner only to see that nearly all the black paint has fallen out of the legends on the bezel. I think 1 hour in 60c in an ultrasonic cleaner might have been a slight overkill XDD. I finished the job of removing the legends with acetone and a toothpick. I think it low key looks better without them.

Anyway I'm really happy with the result and I hope my friend will also appreciate his russian watch. You can see all the photos as well as a before and after in the post.

Here is my little collection. My mother gifted me this little box for watches and I thought that it would be nice to fill it up. Today one last watch joined my box. I intend to limit myself to 6 watches so if anything new scratches my itch I will have to sell one of them to make room. I'm really happy with the state of it as is tho.

Below is a list of my watches:
- Edifice EFB-730D-1AVUEF
- Vostok Amphibian Classic 120811 Automatic
- Vostok Komandirskie USSR 341892
- Raketa Red 12 USSR
- Chinese Shanghai Tongji
- Casio G-Shock DW-5600E

If you have any opinions, suggestion or questions feel free to share the below. I will happily answer :D

After a solid 4 years of wearing a G-Shock and blissfully not caring about watches, I found myself wanting something more interesting. A week ago I purchased a lovely vintage USSR Komandirsky. Not long after, I noticed a very well priced listing for this beauty. A watch which I have been eyeballing even before the whole G-Shock affair. A lovely Amphibian Classic 120811. I was thinking about buying it back in the day, but it was a bit pricy for me, and nowadays, I don't want to support the Russian economy for obvious reasons. I was so stoked to find it used for just 75usd. It has a couple of small scratches on the crystal which will buff right out. I think it's stunning and surely will stay with me for a good while.

Finally finished my long awaited build. An IBM Battleship Model F122 from 1986. It was by far the most demanding board I've ever worked on. Closing the assembly was as much a nightmare as I was told and took about 2 hours of clamping with 6 heavy duty 2" wood clamps, hammering and then more clamping and hammering, and resulted in two badly bruised thumbs and a terrible headache.

As for what was done to the board:

• Full cleanup and polishing of the case
• Plastic welding cracks in the case
• Punching out a new 2mm EVA foam for the assembly
• Building an internal USB active converter
• Full disassembly and cleaning or the assembly
• Ultrasonic cleaning of the keycaps and barrels in demineralized water
• Sanding the barrel plate
• Painting the barrel plate
• Installation of the new foam
• Full ANSI mod and Wheelwriter keycaps as well as some colorful Unicomp M5-2 caps

Attached are some of the photos of the whole process. The keyboard feels and looks like new, is fully reprogrammable and works lovely. The amount of work it took was quite susubstantial but I'm extremely happy with the result.

Just finished setting up my first ever pond and I'm really happy with it. It's a 150L plastic form with a bunch of rocks and some slate to cover it up nicely. A tiny little 4w pump sits at the bottom and pumps the water through my diy work in progress bog filter and finally flows back in the form of a little waterfall.

In the pond I've planted some plants and duckweed from the marshes and creeks around my house. As far as wildlife goes, there is some tadpoles, one water stick insect, a bunch of water snails and a couple random bugs/larvae.

I'm really happy with how it turns out.