Wristwatch Chat

[Gipsy]

I've had mine for about twenty years and seen many others. Those are as good as any I've seen and I'd not be able to say one way or another if someone just showed me one.

There's a blue Chanel handbag going if anyone fancies one?

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Its one I got for wifey that she has never used. £120 plus delivery.

That would suit MS down to the ground...

[NS1]

I've had mine for about twenty years and seen many others. Those are as good as any I've seen and I'd not be able to say one way or another if someone just showed me one.

There's a blue Chanel handbag going if anyone fancies one?

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Its one I got for wifey that she has never used. £120 plus delivery.

That would suit MS down to the ground...

Yes but it would  be a donation as Manny would never get the money LOL

[NS1]

Andrew on the watches, you might be right, but based on the production they made I suspect he was average at is job,
It is a jewelry store, with a very small section with hand fully of expenscive watches including Rolex.
My guess would be not that well trained.

Where I took my watch ( small private jewelry ) Didn't say anything, but he might have known.

I agree with Manny, although fake, quality is very good. I bought mine more as a joke
I rarely where any Jewelry, not my thing. Wife has to remind me when going out lol.
But she is quite happy, so all is good

[Texan77]

Gee you not have to do any of that. Just have a nice personality and seem normal. Possibly some kind of normal income and maybe not live with your mother. You be surprise how rare that is. 

[andrewfi]

This thread dropped me into a rabbit hole, you buggers!

I am just about to place a deposit on a new watch from Germany. These are handbuilt, the company makes around 150-180 watches per year and the waiting list is a year from payment of the deposit.

The company is called Dornblueth. Everything is handmade using old equipment, no CNC is used here. I love the look of this style. Kind of bauhouse 'lite'.

https://www.dornblueth.com/

The watch I have ordered has a movement built in-house. It is called a regulator. The style has a 24-hour sub-dial used to show a second time zone and a power reserve meter. The case will be made of solid bronze - not shown on the pages.

The order I have placed is to reserve a manufacturing slot and I will be adding some modifications to the piece. I would like a polished ceramic dial in a custom colour and a few other changes.

These things are a tremendous value for the work and quality. The pictured watch is about €7,000 the bronze case adds €400. I have ordered this one because I am not sure at the moment if they can make the style with the in-house designed movement. If it is possible I will have that one, but it will cost a couple of thousand euros more.



Here's a video on Dornblueth:

[Lord of the Dance]

That's going to be a handsome (and presumably well-built) timepiece Andrew. I know quite a few (wealthy as well as not-so-wealthy) people who would baulk at the premise of spending over £7000 on a wristwatch, but those same folks are not the ones who can appreciate a fluid design, a well-manufactured item or a striking appearance.

I just spent quite a pretty penny on a handmade English Briarwood tobacco pipe from a fellow in Middlewich. I don't smoke, but that pipe was too gorgeous to pass up! Rather like a piece of artwork that can also serve a practical purpose if one desires. Silly to buy it? I don't think so.

[andrewfi]

I'll be honest, buying a pipe that you'll never use seems kinda odd.

Smoke it, give it the patina of smoke that infiltrates the pores of the wood. Things like that are made to be used!

But yes, we'll made things with a function can be beautiful, but they're a pleasure to use.

The watches this company makes are unusual. Almost nobody hand makes a watch in this way and customising them on a one-off basis is unheard of at anything like this price.

I'm going to go visit the workshop so I can sort out the customisation.

One can do it by remote control, but I prefer to see the options in real life before I whack out what to me is a fortune for a watch.

[Lord of the Dance]

I'll be honest, buying a pipe that you'll never use seems kinda odd.

Smoke it, give it the patina of smoke that infiltrates the pores of the wood. Things like that are made to be used!

I don't smoke. Not ever.

[andrewfi]

Look, I'm not knocking it. We buy things because they appeal to something inside of us. A print or painting, 35mm cameras, sculpture, even cars.

But it seems a bit of a waste to buy something that will never be put to use or even given the chance to be what it is.

I may not need a watch, but I'll wear it. My pictures give pleasure by their presence on a wall, my cameras may now spend their time in retirement on a display unit - but I've used them all. They have marks and scratches that proclaim years of use.

I understand the not smoking, but I don't understand buying something that will never give you the sensual pleasure that was designed and crafted into it.

[Lord of the Dance]

Look, I'm not knocking it. We buy things because they appeal to something inside of us. A print or painting, 35mm cameras, sculpture, even cars.

But it seems a bit of a waste to buy something that will never be put to use or even given the chance to be what it is.

I may not need a watch, but I'll wear it. My pictures give pleasure by their presence on a wall, my cameras may now spend their time in retirement on a display unit - but I've used them all. They have marks and scratches that proclaim years of use.

I understand the not smoking, but I don't understand buying something that will never give you the sensual pleasure that was designed and crafted into it.

I get your point. But then again, I actually have a lot of knives I'll never cut with or guns I'll never shoot. I suppose it actually IS silly in a way, but I like owning stuff. It's an incredible privilege that we can go out and buy these things when so many people are struggling just to live. For some, this fact makes the ownership of nice things rather shameful. But to me, it makes it all the sweeter... something to be cherished. Hopefully you'll post a photo of your watch when it comes in.

[andrewfi]

Well, my Dornbluth watch is about 10-12 months away and I have not yet chosen the final spec. The initial order was to reserve my manufacturing slot.

But rabbit holes are rabbit holes and I have more watches than wrists.

But I have just placed an order for another watch. A bit of an oddity and related to the Dornbluth order.

I have only ever owned one watch with an enamel face - it was an Omega pocket watch that sadly, was lost or stolen a few years ago during my last apartment move. I also lost a gold Leica camera claiming to be WW2 vintage. It was a fake, I always knew that because Leica never made such cameras, but a thing of beauty, actually made during the 1940's possibly even during WW2 in Russia or Germany that actually took pretty good pics.

So, I decided to have a look at watches with enamel faces. Unless you spend a fortune there's not many.
But I found a couple, both from China and I pulled the trigger on one of these:


The reason I like enamel is that the white colour (in this case) is so deep and the printing can be so sharp and contrasty, often with a slight 3-dimensional effect.

This watch has a spinny thingy visible at the bottom of the dial. That's a tourbillon. An absolutely pointless complication in a modern watch - except for one thing, they are fascinating to watch as they rotate within the watch mechanism. That piece has somewhere between 80 and 100 parts and weighs about a gram. They are very hard to make and so normally are seen in watches costing thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

And there's another rabbit hole...

Back in about 2012, the Chinese watchmaker Sea-Gull succeeded in making these tourbillon mechanisms and selling them in watches costing way, way less than the Swiss. The watch I have purchased claims to have a Sea-Gull tourbillon inside it. And there's another rabbit hole...

The changes are that this is not a genuine Sea-Gull movement. I have paid less than €700. There's no doubt it is a genuine tourbillon, but whatever the movement might say, chances are it ain't a Sea_Gull. Only a short while ago, after placing the order, I found that Sea_Gull stopped selling their movements to other Chinese or foreign manufacturers about 2 years ago.

They used to sell, 'graded' movements - not first quality, to other manufacturers who would then either tart them up or use them as the basis of a modified version they'd put their own Swiss or German brand on. Now that's not possible.

I watched some vids of the same watch I have ordered and, in comparison to the genuine Sea_gull movements, under macro, there is a clear difference in machining quality. Odd thing, at least one of the reviewers seems to have had no idea he was looking at a fake.

Anyhoo, I am interested to see what turns up in a few days time. It will undoubtedly be a very pretty and unusual timepiece. All I can say is, 'thank you Bitcoin'.

[andrewfi]

I had a little, and costly, problem with the watch I ordered.

I ordered through Amazon. When it reached Estonia it got stopped for duty payments and VAT. That was a surprise. There was no warning about this from Amazon. It ended up costing me €130 as the thing had been sent from Hong Kong.

Word to the wise, check where the item is being despatched from when buying from Amazon. I normally use Amazon to avoid this issue.

I found ut that Estonia routinely stops all items from outside the EU and sends out a request to complete a customs declaration form. In the UK, the customs only do so for less than 2% of packages.

I gave consideration to declaring the value that the vendor had put on the item - less than €20 but part of the process involves sending a copy of the invoice or purchase info so I chose to be honest.

To make matters worse, when I checked with Amazon about the declaration they told me that if a product is being supplied by more than one vendor that it is possible that even if one is expecting fulfilment from an EU supplier, it is possible that it ends up being fulfilled by a non-EU supplier. That did not happen to me as the watch I purchased had only a single supplier. It'd be a bit of a bugger to order an item thinking it was to be sent out by an EU based supplier and find the order fulfilled not by an EU based supplier but by a Chinese vendor!

Anyway, job's done so I should get it early next week. But it isn't quite the bargain I had expected.

[andrewfi]

Well, that turned up fast. It arrived a couple of hours ago.

I like this watch!

Firstly, the watch works perfectly. No ideas as to accuracy as yet.

This is a classic style watch of the type that were converted pocket watches. I used to have an Omega pocket watch from the early 20th century which is quite reminiscent of this one from the dial type, markings and even the hands - although the Omega ones were not exactly the same style and were black.
The blue hands are uniform in colour, I doubt they are heat blued, but they do look well finished to the naked eye.


The case is beautifully finished in a light rose gold, in fact, it might easily pass for yellow gold, or vice versa. Basically, the gold is a warm reddish tone that I like a lot. The brushing on the sides of the piece does not have any visible grain or direction, it looks lovely and is flawless.

The upper and lower surfaces are all high polished and, again, a perfect finish, however, I can't easily assess the reflectance - but it does look good.

The face is enamelled and has a shine that can be seen under the crystal of the watch. The minute track and markers seem to be glazed onto the surface giving a very sharp, slightly elevated finish with very high contrast. This was exactly what I was hoping to see. My only quibble would be that I'd prefer to have seen greater depth to the markings.

My watch has Roman numerals. I could've had the watch with Arabic numerals, but I didn't like the typography, even though it is almost identical to Breguet numerals that are seen on many, many watches. I just don't like 'em.

The tourbillon is, as expected, captivating, slightly hypnotic to watch. It spins around in the body of the watch, one revolution per minute. In the days of pocket watches these helped to keep the watch running accurately but these days, on a wristwatch, absolutely pointless. But they are entrancing to watch. They are not cheap to make consisting of around 80 parts and weighing, so I've read about 1 gram.

The back of the case is a crystal below which is the watch movement. As expected the backplate covers most of the workings apart from the hole behind which lives the tourbillon.

The backplate has geneva stripes which give visual appeal. To the naked eye, everything looks clean and well-finished.


The package contains two straps, a black conventional strap in alligator style black leather and a deployant strap in brown alligator style leather. The first strap seems quite stiff. I'll need to wear it in before reaching a conclusion about those.

Sorry, the pics are not great.