Watches

[Voltan (Man of Steel)]

Rocking my 1961 stainless steel Omega this morning. Plain and functional, as am I (apart from the functional bit).

[a duncandisorderly]

Especially daft for one that's actually really good. And then the ridiculous thing is that they feel well-made too. Just a quality thing. Doesn't make sense.

I think the big issues are things like the water resistance not really being all that hot, but I'm not a believer in actually putting a watch in water on purpose anyway.

I used to take the backs off my collection of 5s to adjust them (I got one down to +/- five seconds a month!) & was very careful with the seals. if one fell in the washing up water, it'd be fine, but I wouldn't do scuba with one. I wouldn't do scuba anyway, but that's to do with my ears & the not being able to breathe thing, rather than worrying about a daft-cheap mechanical marvel.

[Mr Banlon]

I had a Gladiators watch

[ProvanFan]

If it had looked like that I might not have smashed it to bits

[QDRPHNC]

Looking at Sternglas today.

[Mr Banlon]

Changed the dial over to a 3-6-9-12 Explorer-style one to give it a 1950s 6538 look.

The original 6538 has a triangle in the '12' position, but I wanted an obvious difference.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Might get it on a nato leather strap like Twed advised.

[Twed]

V nice. Leather will be a massive upgrade.

[Mr Banlon]

Took the movement/dial out of the sub case and threw it into an Explorer style one :

Put a new dial, movement and hands into the modded sub case and added a 8mm Brevet crown :

[Mr Banlon]

It's a homage/ripoff of the Rolex from Goldfinger/Thunderball

[touchingcloth]

My watch ran out of battery a while back. I had a Timpson lifetime replacement card which I'd been toting around with me across multiple years and house moves, but I couldn't find it this time and I was fucked if I was going to shell out another £15 on a new one especially as the watch itself was in bad shape - the face was all dinged, and a drop onto a tiled floor had caused a lot of the paint on the dial to flake off and start floating around behind the glass.

I bought a cheap Seiko 5 off the back of this thread since I don't wear a watch for particularly accurate timekeeping and I like the idea of not needing to buy new batteries ever again. It was cheap enough as it was on Amazon, but the parcel never arrived and I ended up having to get a refund. While I was waiting for the refunded money to come through before I placed a second order, the parcel showed up so now I have a FREE watch. Everything's coming up cloth.

[Twed]

Everything's touching up clothhouse!

[Twed]

Have you got the time mate?
Yeah - time to get a second watch delivered for free!

[Blue Jam]

My purchases from five years ago, in the old Watches thread:

Posting this now because after five years my Breil has given up the ghost. Every morning when I go to put it on I find it's 1-2 hours slow, and a watch that loses time by a couple of hours a day is no use, is it? I love the design and had a lot of fun wearing it, so I guess I could get a new mechanism put in it, but that might cost more than I paid for the watch, so perhaps I should just get a new watch, and a proper one that isn't just a fashion watch this time. Plus it's my birthday this week, which is a good excuse for a frivolous purchase...

I might be in the market for a "Nerd's Rolex" then:







I like the green, and I like the idea of another 70's-style watch so I'm edging towards the first one. I'm tempted to get a classic Seiko 5 though... and yes, my taste in watches is on the lairy side but I feel like us women wearing men's watches can get away with it.

[NJ Uncut]

Are all watches generally a bit shit when it comes to glowing in the dark? Haven't had one for years but I do want one but all my mates' are, basically, only glowing when you shine your phone torch on em for a bit and it fades soon as.

v hah, well, good to know it's possible!

[Blue Jam]

My Breil glows really brightly in the dark, but that's no good when it doesn't display the correct time...

Incidentally, that red Adidas Santiago "children's watch" is still going strong- the silicone is a little worn and if anything it's aged better than the Breil, which is a bit scuffed up. I bought another Santiago in green when I spotted it in TK Maxx for £25, the one I posted a few pages back and that's fine too. They're a lot of fun to wear and I get compliments on them all the time- a few weeks back someone in a pub even asked if she could try on the green one and then went to search for one on eBay.


I'll be 38 on Wednesday but perhaps I should just stick to my juvenile tastes...

[imitationleather]

Yeah I think the Adidas watch looks cool.

I can't wear watches as I have the thinnest wrists in the world. Even watches f'babies just slide right off. :(

It does mean escaping from the police/S&M dungeons is pretty easy, though.

[a duncandisorderly]

Are all watches generally a bit shit when it comes to glowing in the dark? Haven't had one for years but I do want one but all my mates' are, basically, only glowing when you shine your phone torch on em for a bit and it fades soon as.

v hah, well, good to know it's possible!

I have a couple of big citizens with their own sort of luminous paint that actually holds charge for a few hours & glows faintly for several after that. but really, all of the 'paint' glow-in-the-dark stuff is a bit pants. tritium tubes (like in a luminox, some mondaines, bell & ross, smith & wesson, a couple of others) is the way to go for self-illumination, but generally the watches are around 50% thicker because of the tubes not being flat. failing that, even a moderately priced casio will have a small LED in it, & sometimes these are operated by a tilt-switch. today I have a g-shock on, solar-powered, radio-controlled, bulletproof & will operate in a thousand fathoms of seawater (so they say), & it was less than a hundred quids. it will probably outlast cockroaches.

anyway, here's a luminox in the dark:



& this is what my big citizens look like- I have a grey & a black. the hands & numbers are big to start with, & the luminous paint is very good, but they still fade after a few hours:

[Mrs Wogans lemon drizzle]

Olive, the face of that watch is great. You should toy with other straps, I think it would be similar to but a bit sharper than my 5 with a leather nato strap:

That's a really nice watch.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I had a Lorus (Seiko subsidiary aren't they?) years ago that glowed for ages.

I'm really tempted by one of these automatic Citizen's. I dunno if the face is official, there's a lot of Indian 'repaints' where they refurbished the movements and replaced the faces with unofficial designs. It's only 20 quid though so I'm not arsed.

[Blue Jam]

My second ever watch was a Lorus. My first was a Casio digital, the classic black one. I loved it, it felt dead futuristic- and then when I wore it to school I got ridiculed relentlessly for wearing a "boy's watch". I asked for a new watch for Christmas and got a dainty, feminine gold-toned Lorus. It was like this one but with a black mock-crock strap. It was ugly as fuck, but no-one made fun of me anymore... :(

I'm sure your Lorus was nicer though...

Yeah I think the Adidas watch looks cool.

I can't wear watches as I have the thinnest wrists in the world. Even watches f'babies just slide right off. :(

It does mean escaping from the police/S&M dungeons is pretty easy, though.

Cheers- and I like men's watches because my hands are quite big and I'm self-conscious about them and little dainty women's watches look ridiculous next to them. I also don't like having to squint at a tiny little watch face. Big watches also make your arms look thinner, that's a bit of a fashionista's trick.

[a duncandisorderly]

I had a Lorus (Seiko subsidiary aren't they?) years ago that glowed for ages.

I'm remembering now... a lot of those lorus/pulsar/seiko jobs that had fully-luminous dials were quite intense.... not sure I understand the mechanism of it, but the greater surface area meant they glowed for a lot longer. one I have here is a seiko 5 (automatic day-date, like the one above) with a pale yellowy green dial that glows if you so much as look at it. once I returned to my office after going outside to get a butty on a brightish day, & several people came up to tell me that my watch's "backlight" was stuck on. I had quite a few watched with the full dial luminousness, including the seiko mickey mouse chronograph, but one or two of them were loads brighter, & the pulsar variant was the brightest.
this sort of thing. I mean, unless they've stopped the thing, you can see this is quite a short exposure:



& this is the seiko disney watch that people wank themselves into a frenzy over. I bought two of these when they were at their lowest price (£100 each) & gave one to the mrs to wear to work (she's at disney, y'see), upset her boss- "where did you get that??"

https://www.collectorsweekly.com/stories/29332-the-seiko-mickey-mouse-chronograph-watch

[touchingcloth]

Have you got the time mate?
Yeah - time to get a second watch delivered for free!

Sold the second watch. They've literally paid me to have a watch.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Sold the second watch. They've literally paid me to have a watch.

You're a findom now touching.

[Ferris]

Every watch posted thus far has been bloody lovely. I'm too lazy to go back through and complement each one individually.

I dug out one of my older Swatches for the weekend, all nice and silicon and essentially indestructible. All black with white trim, nice. I find I'm usually wearing my Casio F91W (and the silly version with the bright orange strap which might be a different model?) more and more. Just so functional, they're hard to beat.

Watches are fun aren't they.

[touchingcloth]

In spite of myself earlier in the thread, I am enjoying the faint and furious ticking sound of my Seiko, mainly because I am tight and it reminds me how free it was, but that's still a form of fun.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Every watch posted thus far has been bloody lovely. I'm too lazy to go back through and complement each one individually.

I dug out one of my older Swatches for the weekend, all nice and silicon and essentially indestructible. All black with white trim, nice. I find I'm usually wearing my Casio F91W (and the silly version with the bright orange strap which might be a different model?) more and more. Just so functional, they're hard to beat.

Watches are fun aren't they.

My mate Bob used to work doing geology in Senegal and swore by the f91w as a disposable field watch. In Africa they actually make knockoff ones so he used to just give it to one of the natives they employed at the end of his tour.

[a duncandisorderly]

My mate Bob used to work doing geology in Senegal and swore by the f91w as a disposable field watch. In Africa they actually make knockoff ones so he used to just give it to one of the natives they employed at the end of his tour.

I have a few... black one (for when I make that bomb), orange one, genuine green one & three knockoff green ones (the insert- unbranded- in the face is green on the fake ones, black on the real one). the fake ones are very poor at keeping time- suggests to me that the guts are either factory rejects or else badly-made. otherwise, you'd never be able to tell. I keep looking at the gold re-issue of it, but I couldn't get away with that. today's watch, & actually for three weeks now, is the similar looking g-shock GW-5610 which, while it looks like a cheap thing, is radio-controlled & light-powered. it's one of these & they can be horribly expensive, though I'm sure my mrs didn't pay more than a ton for mine:

[Ferris]

My mate Bob used to work doing geology in Senegal and swore by the f91w as a disposable field watch. In Africa they actually make knockoff ones so he used to just give it to one of the natives they employed at the end of his tour.

I've heard that - they way to validate it is to hold the bottom right button down for 3 seconds until it displays "CASIo" [sic]. Happily mine do, so I wasn't conned by Amazon.

@Duncan - I have a black one and one of the orange ones and am sorely tempted by the cyan effort but am keeping that desire in check for now.

[NJ Uncut]

I have a couple of big citizens with their own sort of luminous paint that actually holds charge for a few hours & glows faintly for several after that. but really, all of the 'paint' glow-in-the-dark stuff is a bit pants. tritium tubes (like in a luminox, some mondaines, bell & ross, smith & wesson, a couple of others)

I have chosen my xmas present! a tritium watch!!  None of those brands but I closed the browser window oops

Ta Dunc and all. I'll post a pic if I do it (fuckin £300 or somethin)