Why are watches all so Ugly/Baroque

http://www.skagen.co.uk/

Not to my taste.

Not available direct on line, but you can pick them up relatively cheaply on eBay

http://www.chronomaster.co.uk/B69_IWC_fc1.JPG

The Omega Speedmaster Professional (aka teh Moon Watch) is also a classic:

http://limos.hp.infoseek.co.jp/357050/357050_1.jpg

The simplest chrono face I know is the Sinn EZM1 - there is no second hand; the second/minute accumulators hang out at 12:00 when not in use.

http://www.fratellowatches.com/ezm1review/siezm1.jpg

After decades of not wearing a watch COVID boredom has broken me and I've gone down about a million rabbitholes on these shits

i'm looking at, like, individual sets of hands sourced from singapore

https://ajuicet.com/collections/hands/products/pilot-hand-set-v2

oh man. you're in deep.

i went through a lengthy internet watch phase, which culminated in me buying a nice watch, and to my shock and disbelief my watch phase ended abruptly and satisfactorily.

i have a dive watch given to me as a gift. a citizen, but on quick glance it looks like a rolex submariner.... sort of. i love it but sometimes i feel like it looks heavy and ostentatious.

the thing about watches is that 99.5% of people will never notice your watch

so wear nothing, or wear something that makes you happy. that's it.

always have been curious about watches and what people think are good watches, but have never worn one

i love the idea of automatic watches that “wind” themselves by leveraging the power of your arm swing - i had never realised that was a thing. less keen on the fact that they tend to stop overnight. but as you said, cad, i’m in deep, and the impracticality has almost become part of the point

if you consistently wear it for a solid portion of the day, a decent automatic shouldn't stop overnight. you can always wind it manually or get a watch winder (mixed reviews on these fwiw) as well.

if you're not sure how often you would wear it, my only advice would be do not buy something with a date function. setting a watch without a date takes seconds, with a date takes a lot longer.

that was my priority when buying a watch recently... don't want to have to mess with it every month.

well, every other month... whatever.

What you modding Tracer?

I too had a watch phase that passed. I came out with a few ok watches, without spending too much and with a fairly simple heuristic ('seiko') for any future purchases. It is a large and fascinating warren to explore & tbh some of the forums seemed saner and more self-aware than I expected, given watches' role as status fetish & anything beyond a Casio F91 being a slightly irrational expense.

And yes, automatics really shouldn't wind down overnight if they've been on your wrist all day. I think it's more like a day, day and a half of sitting idle.

oh yeah i’d wear it all the time. so that’s good to know. a seiko is what i’m going for. there’s a model that sells for about $80 that i want to trick out a little bit.

good advice about the date! i was already leaning towards a plain dial that would cover it up.

tracer did you ever sort this?

i have a new watch i like that would be almost impossible for me to justify but dammit i want to try.

i did! it does not stop overnight. i love it. i wear it every day. what’s the watch?

Way back in 2015 I bought a Seiko SKX007:
https://i.imgur.com/MjSw6ga.jpg

It's essentially the cheapest not-naff diver's watch. It's very limited - you can't manually wind it, or set the seconds accurately, and the day just counts up to 31 then cycles round - but it is apparently genuinely waterproof and reliable. There's very little chance I will ever descend 200 metres below sea level, but who knows. Perhaps one day I might visit the Dead Sea. That's 400 metres below sea level. Everybody else will be looking at their shattered, smashed watches, but I'll be looking at my SKX007 and I'll know the right time to within a few minutes so take that lamers.

It's also an automatic watch. I like the idea - free power! - and it works surprisingly well. If I take it off on Friday night, wear it for just a couple of hours on Saturday, and forget to wear it on Sunday it runs out of puff in the small hours of Monday morning. I wonder if the minuscule extra effort involved in moving the day/date mechanism finally stops it? It's really hard to talk about an automatic watch without making masturbation jokes. "Does it last longer if you use your right arm" etc. "Could wheels have evolved naturally" etc. That kind of thing.

As a practical thing it's on the borderline between "big chunky piece of arm jewellery" and "normal watch". The crystal window is really good, though. Even if you look at it from a sharp angle the glass isn't just see-through, it's invisible. I realise glass is supposed to be invisible, but there are usually ripples or scratches etc. The SKX007's glass is however completely undetectable. I've just found out that the SKX007 was discontinued in 2018. I wonder why.

I think there comes a time when every man debates whether he should buy a posh watch and concludes that it's a waste of time. I remember reading up about Omega Speedmasters. The NASA Apollo watch. They look nice, and they don't have the negative connotations that Rolexes have. Did you know that people have made counterfeit "dot over 90" bezels? And the real Apollo watches didn't have the "moonwatch" engraving because (logically enough) that only came after they had been used in space.

The thing is that I would never wear it, I don't know enough about the watch market to buy one as a speculative investment, as a hedge against inflation it would be very illiquid, and the only people who would recognise the watch would see right through me. It's one of those tempting things that drives some men to madness.

i have a new watch i like that would be almost impossible for me to justify but dammit i want to try.

― call all destroyer, Thursday, July 14, 2022 10:56 PM (eight months ago) bookmarkflaglink

i did! it does not stop overnight. i love it. i wear it every day. what’s the watch?

― Tracer Hand, Friday, July 15, 2022 4:14 AM (eight months ago) bookmarkflaglink

welllll i dove back in deep in the months following these posts, which were about the stainless/gold rolex explorer that i still think looks absolutely fantastic. i did eventually land on a stainless/gold watch much to my disbelief and now i'm trying to figure out if i want to have a collection and how that would work vs. being a one watch at a time person.

danger

danger

this is my modded seiko. did i mention how much i love this watch? it's a little fast. i have to put it back by a couple of minutes every week or so. every now and then i idly consider whether or not to bring it in somewhere and have them adjust it (which is possible). but eh whatever.

https://i.imgur.com/KFDowrN.jpg

i just realised that's slightly out of focus. i can't do my little guy that way. here.

https://i.imgur.com/1yV9d6V.jpg

Super clean design

you want to go down the seiko rabbit hole here's a place to start. he sells his own customised watches and also parts if you want to do it yourself, or you know somebody who can do it.

https://theyobokies.com

That's a nice watch! I have exactly that strap on a watch, I think.
I like a clean design, sans serif numbers.

I had a Mondaine Swiss Railways watch (mentioned way upthread) for many years; the mechanism failed and I took it to a local fella for a fix. After a few months working ok, it failed again - the hands just float around independently of the centre wheel. It's in a drawer, maybe I'll take it somewhere else one day. I've got a few cheap ones in the same drawer that just need a battery. It bothers me that I don't have a watch on.

For a while I wore a Chinese knock-off "smart" watch that my partner bought for about £30 a few years back. I couldn't really decide whether it was useful or irritating to have the first 20 characters of a text message flash up on the low-res display. If I was out and about on a Saturday afternoon and my phone vibrated but my watch didn't, I'd know that was Everton conceding a goal rather than a message. I'll always associate it with the Lampard era.

I think I'd be quite happy with a customisable digital display but without any of the smartwatch connectivity. Does such a thing exist? I don't want to know what my blood pressure is but I like the idea of dark green Eurostile digits one day, and something else the next.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71vpJfaFk8L._AC_UY741_.jpg

shout out Casio MQ24. recently invested about $20 in 5 spare sets of batteries and straps to keep this puppy going with me for the foreseeable.

Michel - I recently got a Fitbit Inspire 3 (mostly cuz I need to start walking a lot more and wanted to track steps) but I've found it kind of nice to have a watch again. I think you can customize the digital clock display but the standard one is fine for me.

I also didn't want a smart watch.

https://www.fitbit.com/global/us/products/trackers/inspire3

I wear a Seiko Samurai most of the time then a very plain pilot watch (a type A flieger basically) when I want something less chunky. Also have a couple of knock-offs of classic Seiko dive watches (Tuna, Willard) for variety. I haven't bought in years but I guess there's a little list of watches I'd like - square G-Shock, Smith's Expedition and god help me a Seiko Arnie.

i only wear one watch but i did end up with about a dozen watches. the one i wear is like a dumb apple watch (lets me know when i get a text or email and is also a pedometer) which unfortunately is more functionality than my other watches so i end up not wearing my other watches, which all in all is probably a good thing. my favorite watch of the ones i dont wear is probably my timecop watch

Even a baroquen watch tells the right time twice a day?

i cant go without a watch.
feels weird.
used to have crappy cheap watches for years.
but then 11 years ago after bh died i treated myself to a watch i really wanted.
2 things i required : solar power, and radio control.
i.e. every night it picks up a signal that means its very very accurate.
so, ended up with a casio edifice/waveceptor.
it was a LOT more than i would ever have spent on a watch (£350) before.
but my boys were : 'dad, just get it .. '

https://www.shadestation.co.uk/designer-watches/Casio/Edifice/EQW-M600DC-1AER

you want to go down the seiko rabbit hole here's a place to start. he sells his own customised watches and also parts if you want to do it yourself, or you know somebody who can do it.

https://theyobokies.com

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, April 13, 2023 5:16 AM (fifteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

love your extreme utilitarian field watch. this guy's stuff is interesting, i like the blanpain riffs (the FFF watches) a lot.

I have a Casio F-91W. The plastic clip on the strap broke so I replaced it with a nylon strap. Hope it lasts for many more years.

This thread makes me want to get my old ll bean field watch out of the drawer. I also have a fancy Oris which feels too big on my skinny wrist

I have a Swiss Army watch with one of those chunky, 70's Dirty Harry black leather bands.. I love it
Purchased by an ex-GF in the mid-90s, I don't think they make the model anymore

I just had it serviced with a fresh battery, it's fun to wear it again

xxp I wore a Casio Futurist A220 for over a decade but within a couple of weeks the strap finally gave out and the backlight button stopped working. So for the last year I've been wearing a Casio F-105 that I bought back in 2000. I had to replace the strap first but Casio still sell those (incidentally it's the same strap as the F-91W).

if any uk ilxors are tempted by the seiko modding rabbit hole, i can enthusiastically recommend this guy: https://www.tempusmods.co.uk

he is very reasonably priced, honest, and communicative.

i got him to put a domed sapphire crystal on mine and swapped out the dial for something identical except with a date window because i do find myself (in my old age) forgetting what the date is.

https://i.imgur.com/TcJVnwJ.jpg

cool! i think i can see the domed crystal vs. your earlier photos and it looks nice. did the underlying movement have a date wheel but the previous dial was just covering it up?

recently i tried on a fairly luxurious watch with a 4:30 date, for uh, research purposes. in reading online some people really hate them but i'm not sure why. most watch dials benefit from a little asymmetry.

did the underlying movement have a date wheel but the previous dial was just covering it up?

yep this. i would have liked a window big enough to show the day of the week, which is also in there, but i couldn't find one. i don't know about the 4:30 date position, i don't see why it would make a difference. i know some people hate having the date on there at all because when the watch winds down you have to set the date again, which i guess people find annoying. but this is my only watch so it never winds down! 😎

i suppose the domed crystal slightly contradicts the spartan-ness of everything else but i can't help wanting a little dash of sophistication in there

I've come to prefer no-date watches in general - aesthetically I'm not too fussed, but it's a minor annoyance to set a date and there's always the suspicion that it's wrong if I haven't checked and set it recently. So I largely ignore it - but it bothers me if it is off.

Ahhhhhh now i finally get why people are annoyed by the date. You have to reset it every time a month has 30 days, and February!! sheesh. ah well this is the bed I have made.

do you not have the option to just flip the date forward independently?

Yeah I can but it seems kind of naff to have to do that. Plus I think you have to do it in the a.m. otherwise it goes off by 12 hours.

I’m not a watch person like at all, mainly cos I’ve worn watches with metal backing before and it gives me a rash, but I got a swatch moon watch yesterday & it’s both light af and perfect for my needs, nice looking too.

xps
yup but unless you use & set the date regularly it just falls out of sync and it's annoying when you realise you're off somewhere in the first or second week of a month following a non-31 month. Also pulling the stem to the inbetween set-date position is a little bit fiddly. Also also if it's fully wound down you have to check whether the hands are in the pm or am rotation, otherwise the date will change again at midday (and I think I failed to do this when I last set, which is why, looking at my wrist(*), my watch now thinks its the 6th ffs)

These aren't major burdens but they mean I slightly prefer a no-date watch where you don't have to think at all about it.

*Currently wearing a Chinese Seiko 6105 knock-off.

idk it sounds to me like an opportunity for some quality time with your watch, just taking a couple minutes to wind it up and get everything set and appreciate all it does for you.

xp gyac moonswatch! very trendy. i love the variety of designs for the planets, it’s hard to pick a favorite.

oh I hadn't seen those moon swatches - nice

idk it sounds to me like an opportunity for some quality time with your watch, just taking a couple minutes to wind it up and get everything set and appreciate all it does for you.

i also noticed it was off by a minute so yes we've just had some intimate time aligning with the cosmos

Chose Uranus, liked the pale blue in person. I had to queue to get in which was surprising. Watch dads are swarming the black/neutral coloured ones, there was one Jupiter left which I thought about but in the end still preferred Uranus…will think about changing up the strap cos I’m not fond of the one that comes with it.

Honestly if you are someone who wants a decent looking watch and has problems wearing metal watches the bioceramic is great

if it's fully wound down you have to check whether the hands are in the pm or am rotation, otherwise the date will change again at midday

the way around this apparently is to set the date to the day before. you then pull the crown out to advance the hands until the date changes. now you know you're in a.m. Then you advance the hands to the correct time (and if it's currently p.m. where you are then you need to advance the hands all the way around once, then to the correct time).

I am going to try to have CAD's attitude about this. :)

ah yeah that's basically what I mean by 'check'

lol watch world, never stop the random collabs

oh no

how much mileage can one guy get out of building his own guitar 50 years ago

The Swatch Year of the Dragoncollection looks quite fun...

all my automatic watch wearers out there with a date window i see you

ah yes the big february date advance. of my current rotation of 3 only one has a date to fix.