u/blue-eel-0

I recently decided to upgrade from my blue dial Laco Augsburg 39 to a blue dial Mark XX, and wanted to share some pics and thoughts while I still happen to have both in hand. Obviously nobody is seriously cross-shopping these two, and maybe a fairer comparison would be to one of Laco's higher end models like the Stuttgart Pro, but maybe this will inspire others who are interested in a similar upgrade!

The first thing I noticed when I tried on the Mark XX, and the main reason I bought it, is how it fits so flush to the wrist. Combined with how thin the midcase is, the watch head ends up with an incredibly low profile and the bracelet seamlessly wraps around the wrist. After wearing this thing for a day, the Laco (and all my other watches, to be fair) feels like a big hockey puck strapped to my wrist by comparison.

I'll gloss over the bracelet since obviously there isn't much to compare here as the Laco is on a strap, but suffice to say it's superbly comfortable and the micro-adjust clasp, link adjustment mechanism, and eas-x-change features are all extremely nice to have. Definitely a case where the bracelet might be the most interesting part of the entire watch.

In terms of dial, the edges of the numerals and indices do look noticeably sharper on the IWC, although this could partially be due to the Laco having fully lumed numerals and indices. They're also a perfect white on the IWC, while having a slight greenish tinge on the Laco. I prefer the more traditional numeral font of the Laco over IWC's more stylized rounded numerals, but I do appreciate the stubbier hour indices that create more white space between the minute track and the numerals - in my opinion it tidies up the overall design. The text above 6 also adds some balance to the dial that the Laco lacks, but I do personally appreciate the Laco's lack of a date window. As for the hands, the Laco's hour and minute hands are in my opinion a nicer shape, as they come to a sharp point whereas IWC blocks theirs off. The Laco's second hand also perfectly reaches the outer edge of the minute track, almost flush with the edge of the case, which feels nice and precise.

However the AR coating on the Laco really lets down the dial quality - in a lot of lighting the dial looks far more washed out than the IWC, which looks sharp in any lighting. The IWC's AR coating on the other hand has a strong bluish tint which I'd probably find annoying on other dial variants, but on the blue dial it doesn't bother me personally.

The IWC case looks significantly more upscale due to the polished chamfer on the lugs and polished bezel, and I like how the bezel is stepped in from the edge of the case, visually making the dial a little smaller. The Laco's case to its credit is still incredibly well made for its price point, with the edges feeling appropriately sharp. As mentioned above though, the biggest difference here for me is the thickness of the case. The Laco's midcase is noticeably thicker, and it isn't helped by the bezel continuing that vertical height further before sloping in towards the dial.

Hopefully all this is helpful to somebody out there! I've always really liked pilots watches, but never enough to consider spending like 6 grand on one - especially when the Laco is certainly far more faithful to its Flieger origins than the IWC is to its RAF ancestry. But trying the IWC on in store changed my mind instantly, I really do recommend checking it out in person.

I recently decided to upgrade from my blue dial Laco Augsburg 39 to a blue dial Mark XX, and wanted to share some pics and thoughts while I still happen to have both in hand. Obviously nobody is seriously cross-shopping these two, and maybe a fairer comparison would be to one of Laco's higher end models like the Stuttgart Pro, but maybe this will inspire others who are interested in a similar upgrade!

The first thing I noticed when I tried on the Mark XX, and the main reason I bought it, is how it fits so flush to the wrist. Combined with how thin the midcase is, the watch head ends up with an incredibly low profile and the bracelet seamlessly wraps around the wrist. After wearing this thing for a day, the Laco (and all my other watches, to be fair) feels like a big hockey puck strapped to my wrist by comparison.

I'll gloss over the bracelet since obviously there isn't much to compare here as the Laco is on a strap, but suffice to say it's superbly comfortable and the micro-adjust clasp, link adjustment mechanism, and eas-x-change features are all extremely nice to have. Definitely a case where the bracelet might be the most interesting part of the entire watch.

In terms of dial, the edges of the numerals and indices do look noticeably sharper on the IWC, although this could partially be due to the Laco having fully lumed numerals and indices. They're also a perfect white on the IWC, while having a slight greenish tinge on the Laco. I prefer the more traditional numeral font of the Laco over IWC's more stylized rounded numerals, but I do appreciate the stubbier hour indices that create more white space between the minute track and the numerals - in my opinion it tidies up the overall design. The text above 6 also adds some balance to the dial that the Laco lacks, but I do personally appreciate the Laco's lack of a date window. As for the hands, the Laco's hour and minute hands are in my opinion a nicer shape, as they come to a sharp point whereas IWC blocks theirs off. The Laco's second hand also perfectly reaches the outer edge of the minute track, almost flush with the edge of the case, which feels nice and precise.

However the AR coating on the Laco really lets down the dial quality - in a lot of lighting the dial looks far more washed out than the IWC, which looks sharp in any lighting. The IWC's AR coating on the other hand has a strong bluish tint which I'd probably find annoying on other dial variants, but on the blue dial it doesn't bother me personally.

The IWC case looks significantly more upscale due to the polished chamfer on the lugs and polished bezel, and I like how the bezel is stepped in from the edge of the case, visually making the dial a little smaller. The Laco's case to its credit is still incredibly well made for its price point, with the edges feeling appropriately sharp. As mentioned above though, the biggest difference here for me is the thickness of the case. The Laco's midcase is noticeably thicker, and it isn't helped by the bezel continuing that vertical height further before sloping in towards the dial.

Hopefully all this is helpful to somebody out there! I've always really liked pilots watches, but never enough to consider spending like 6 grand on one - especially when the Laco is certainly far more faithful to its Flieger origins than the IWC is to its RAF ancestry. But trying the IWC on in store changed my mind instantly, I really do recommend checking it out in person.

Please enjoy these photos of my hyperdrive ring MOC, now built in person! Boy was this an exciting one to build - I was really curious if my docking solution would actually work outside of Studio, since, yaknow, we have something called gravity in real life. Lo and behold there were some balancing issues which took a couple iterations to sort out, but the finished result can proudly stand on its own and is surprisingly resistant to being knocked over :). Another childhood dream checked off the list for me!

(also included at the end are some color variants of the Eta-2 that I'm also working on)

Trying to determine what color to use for Anakin's Eta-2... The modern sets all use light gray for his Eta-2 while using dark gray for his Delta-7B, despite the two looking pretty much the same color in-universe. To further complicate things, the most recent Obi-Wan Eta-2 is also light gray, despite being noticeably lighter than Anakin's in ROTS - it definitely looks like it was painted white at some point. Do folks think Obi-Wan's should be white and Anakin's should be light gray? Or Obi-Wan light gray, Anakin dark gray? Or perhaps it's correct to have them both be light gray since that's the closest color for both of them? Interested to hear what people think!

Finally got to test build my Plo Koon Jedi Starfighter MOC, and wanted to share the photoshoot! Please enjoy my best efforts at mimicking Lego's "lifestyle" product images with all of their random props, haha. Just like with my gunship, I'm thrilled with how this one turned out. It's been a tremendously rewarding process going from designing these models in the computer to actually building in person and holding them in my hand - it's seriously got me hooked, much to the detriment of my bank account :'). It's also been a great excuse to break out my old photography equipment as well. Now if you'll excuse me, I have many more stud.io projects to get back to!

Just wanted to share the results from an afternoon spent tinkering around with my Plo Koon Delta-7 MOC! I managed to recolor it into Obi-Wan's version from AOTC while using ~45% of the parts from the 75333 set. For me that ends up being only ~$30 in extra parts, making me very tempted to double dip and have multiple Delta-7s in my collection, despite already exhausting my extremely limited small-apartment display space...

As a kid my dream (and probably many others') was to own the Republic Dropship, Republic Gunship, and AT-TE from the '08-'09 Clone Wars waves. Now with ForgedInLego's amazing Dropship MOC I was finally able to make that dream come true! This thing is truly massive and dwarfs my gunship MOC (as it should), and the mechanism to pick up and drop the walker is ingenious. I did some customization, replacing the nose, tail, and sensor array assemblies to better match my gunship and increasing the length and width by a couple studs, and am thrilled with how they look next to each other. I know this MOC is posted pretty regularly but it's definitely for a good reason, this thing is a gem.