Modding a Vostok – Amphibia with new dial, hands & manual movement

Vostok modding!

As mentioned elsewhere I have progressed beyond simple bezel and crown changes so thought I would share the following.

As regards Amphibia’s the 420 case is my favourite however I have always felt that in relation to the case width the case height makes it feel slightly unbalanced and clumsy. The height is of course essential to house the automatic movement.

The manual wind Kommandskie’s (which have become my favourite Vostok) are much slimmer due to their manual movement. From a modding perspective the really good thing about Vostoks is the high degree of interchangeability of parts. This means that manual movements fit very easily into Amphibias. This is such a popular thing that Meranom sell low profile replacement case backs designed specifically for Amphibias with manual movements fitted.

Whilst the difference in height looks quite small on paper – it makes a huge difference regarding how the watch feels when worn.

Ive completed a few of these movement transplants recently and am very pleased with the results. Not only do I like the slimmer profile but I much prefer a manual wind in any event.

When it came time to do this one I though that I would also change the dial and hands. This is new territory for me. I wasnt worried about changing the dial as that looks quite straightforward but after reading a number of accounts and watching some on line videos I was rather anxious about fitting the hands.

Ive posted a few photos taken during the general process below. None specific to the hand fitting though as I was so focused on what I was doing there was no extra capacity for taking photos!

I took my time and with the aid of an illuminated magnifier, precision tweezers and setting tool I managed to install all three hands so that they worked OK. It took me quite some time and I had to take a breather more than once (especially when I dropped the second hand half a dozen times in a row!) but I got there in the end. I needed to do some fiddling to stop the hands touching each other but that wasnt too difficult.