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Watches

Started by Twed, September 01, 2018, 03:55:52 PM

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Clive Langham

I have this Chinese communist chronograph I got from a place called Long Island Watches for about two hundred quid. It's pretty cool - hand-wound, with a hammer and sickle on the stopwatch hand. I do actually use the stopwatch fairly frequently. Also it says "for the proletariat" on it in Chinese.

Replies From View

Who here absolutely loves absorbing radium through the medium of vintage watches?

studpuppet

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on September 02, 2018, 07:51:32 PM
Everyone going for minimalism. When are those massive ones with a million inputs that look like mini-transformers going to come back into style? I'm talking Casio G-shock Air Force calcula-tron with built in chronograph, range-finder and atmosphere-reentry resistant to 55 cubits per square nanometer. Just like Action Man would wear.

Ah, that's off into my 'funky stupid watches' collection. Here's my slide rule watch:




Quote from: Clive Langham on September 02, 2018, 08:52:03 PM
I have this Chinese communist chronograph I got from a place called Long Island Watches for about two hundred quid. It's pretty cool - hand-wound, with a hammer and sickle on the stopwatch hand. I do actually use the stopwatch fairly frequently. Also it says "for the proletariat" on it in Chinese.

I'm all about hammers and sickles:




And some others - jump hours:




LCD Digital-Analogue from Casio (display too faint to see these days):




And this baby - a seventies plastic fantastic, with a 'magic' pointer for the seconds which at 15 and 45 seconds shows the advertising, and at 30 and 60 seconds is black:


littlenell

I wear a fob watch pinned to my clothes, either my physio polo top or my trouser pocket (dangling down inside the pocket) I'm a fop with a fob, Ive always had to be a bit different.

JesusAndYourBush

Quote from: the on September 01, 2018, 07:13:08 PMFelt very old when someone I met in the pub genuinely asked 'why does your watch have buttons on it?'.

You should have made him feel old by saying "It's not a watch it's a phone."

batwings

Mine is a Seiko SKX007 on a nato strap like this:


Replies From View

Helps you blend in with all the shrubberies an that.

batwings

That, and my wrists are too fat for the bracelet.

seepage

Quote from: shiftwork2 on September 02, 2018, 12:41:08 PM
I've always wanted one of these



and inspired by the thread I've just dropped £7 on one.  To me at least this is utterly beautiful, clear and uncluttered.

I'm obsessively fussy about the clarity of dials and displays I'm amazed that it seems so hard to get right.  One of the reasons I still drive my decrepit clown car is that all newer vehicles present me with a load of fucking useless information on the dashboard - I only need to know speed, revs, outside temp, fuel and oil temp.  Everything else is a distraction.  The time is just about allowed but why would I need the date in front of me?

+1 for this. Better than the Swatch in the 1st post imo and silent too.

Twed

Quote from: Twed on September 01, 2018, 03:55:52 PMa Seiko 5 is now wending its way to me

Here she is, with a nato strap because of course.


a duncandisorderly

Quote from: Clive Langham on September 02, 2018, 08:52:03 PM
I have this Chinese communist chronograph I got from a place called Long Island Watches for about two hundred quid. It's pretty cool - hand-wound, with a hammer and sickle on the stopwatch hand. I do actually use the stopwatch fairly frequently. Also it says "for the proletariat" on it in Chinese.

that is gorgeous.

Replies From View

Anyone got an old radium watch ticking along on their wrist?

I know at least one verbwhore who has, actually.  But they would need to out themselves.

katzenjammer

Coincidentally I was just reading this article about radium in watches
https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/new-report-shows-radium-dials-might-pose-serious-danger

Some of the comments are interesting

QuoteI bough an old Junghans watch from the 50s from eBay and it turned out it had Radium dial - the information came as shock for me as I have opened and played with the dial and hands the night before. After a week of looking for who to contact with, I finally found the telephone nummber of the local representatives of the Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz here in Bavaria. The guys reacted fairly quickly and came to my house, checked everything with precize Geiger counter - told me it was safe - then took the watch with them as I did not want to have it anymore - they considered it safe only when stored in some closed box, but told me I can keep it if I want to but was not recommendable to throw it in the trash bin if I want to get rid of it. Then I had to have an urine test to check if I have inhaled some of the radium when the case was open. The test found some ammount of radium, but I was told it is not going to be harmful for my health and it was not a proof it came from the watch itself. This is how this horrorstory ended but I am not buying a radium dial watch ever again

I didn't realise these things were quite so dangerous

Cloud

Too lazy to do my own pics, so nabbed from the internet

Still got this Casio Hotbiz around, I rocked it quite a bit when I was young.  Google actually suggests it's relatively rare:

as well as other Casio databanks and at one time a watch that could operate the TV or the IR locking system on my dad's car.  Always been big Casio fanboys in this household.

But as for "Pride and Joy" kind of watches here's no.1, a gift from my parents on my 18th birthday, a Seiko Kinetic:

Mine has a few scratches on the glass after I was daft enough to wear it hiking and squeezing through one of those tight gaps with rock either side.  I think it's actually sapphire as well, but no match for jagged rock.  Might get it repaired one day, or maybe just leave it as it is as it's not obvious unless you're inspecting it (and I will never sell it, so who's going to inspect it?) and shows it's been enjoyed, tells a story and all that.

But basically I thought maybe I should be keeping my 18th birthday gift safe rather than wearing it everywhere (an opinion I've changed somewhat now - not much point in being gifted something like that then just chucking it in a drawer for the rest of your life) and so looked for some other "watch for life"

That took me in 2008 to the Oceanus (Casio) OCW-520T.   I splashed out £180 on it after being given a bonus (this was a heavy discount at the time), thought "stupid amount of money for a watch when I already have an expensive one" (this is just before Smartwatches costing £300 and only expected to last a few years became a thing) but the idea was that it'd be pretty much a 'watch for life' that I'd put on my wrist and with its titanium casing, radio control and solar power, "just forget about".  And that if ever I got a life and had kids would be another possibility to hand down to be enjoyed for many more years and all that.



I love that I can pick it up whenever and it never has to be set or the battery changed.  Worst case it has to sit on a windowsill for 5 minutes.

Not long after that the Pebble came out and the "watch for life" got put in a drawer.  Well actually, on a windowsill.  I still put it and the Seiko on from time to time, pun not intended, but unfortunately now I feel like one arm is cut off if I'm not using a smartwatch.

Also as an aside my wrist fluctuates a fair bit so I can't seem to deal with straps that aren't Milanese style any more.  One minute it's like a handcuff and the next it's flopping around my wrist.

Dunno if they're welcome in this thread or not but smartwatch wise, I went from Pebble to Pebble Time to Apple Watch 2, and just recently when I went back to Android a Huawei Watch 2.  In hindsight I think I might have preferred the Galaxy Watch but wouldn't put it past myself to get one of those too and sell the one I like less.

Must admit, I'm really digging the way Google's Wear OS watches can be made to look real, after the very 'artificial looking' Pebble and Apple watches, and of course the vast selection of watch faces rather than the meagre selection that  Apple graciously allow you to choose from.

I think this one looks pretty nice as a "pretend to be real" style (now I'm actually taking my own photos.  Yes these massive Google watches are a bit big for my wrist, so sue me):


Or something a bit more contemporary and smart-watch-y:


At the moment I'm letting them stay on using the "Always on display / ambient mode" in full colour, which will probably cause burn-in (well, technically burn out unevenness) on the OLED but it's just so nice to have it on all the time and actually looking like a watch and not a blank screen or a simplified "screen saving" mode.    Again it's getting back to that question of do you just basically preserve something and not enjoy it (in case you want to sell it one day for example), or do you just say fuck it and enjoy it properly and accept it won't last forever.
(Background as I was typing that: my dad's watching flash mob videos and "burn baby burn" came on)

Oh yeah I still have that old Microsoft watch that you held up to a PC monitor knocking around.

Also got a F-91W when everyone was going on about them a couple of years ago.

Replies From View

A lot of these watches are mammoths.  What are the thinnest / most discreet watches out there for people who don't want to break the bank?

a duncandisorderly

I dug out a few of my old swatches off the back of this thread, & discovered that the 1982 one has died. very sad about that. but I put a new battery in the day/date version of the same watch, with the day in satisfyingly lower case lettering, & off it went. quite loud, but the biggest surprise was how tiny it looks compared to the casios & citizens I've favoured in recent years. it's like having a ten bob bit sellotaped to your wrist.

this is the chap- it says '1998', so this was a replacement for both the 1982 (basic) & an 80s day/date which also still goes but the glass is cracked, presumably why I bought this one-



[edit]

this one, from 1983, is the one that's cracked. squiggly have this down at almost $600 if they can find one


Twed

That's gorgeous duncan, and maybe a good answer to RFV's question. I was going to suggest the Swatch Twice Again from my original post, or that similar Casio posted above.

a duncandisorderly

I can't find a picture of my 1982 one on squiggly; the earliest they have a picture of is this, the one my mate's ex-mrs had, with no second hand, & it's called GB001, so is also clearly one of the first. I remember her saying she'd got it in 1983. so... imagine this with a red second hand & the loudest tick you've ever heard. I got mine in november 1982 in argos in bromley... I'm positive on the date because we had a communal tv room at college & I was frequently asked to take the thing off in there. also, admiring looks from mates back home that christmas. doesn't square with the internet history of swatch, but then sometimes these things don't. may've been a sample batch or summat.


Replies From View

Quote from: a duncandisorderly on September 08, 2018, 01:26:18 PM
I dug out a few of my old swatches off the back of this thread, & discovered that the 1982 one has died. very sad about that.

If you're going to not wear a battery-powered analogue watch for a while, it's worth pulling the button out so the hands stop moving and the battery life is preserved for a bit longer.  May seem obvious, but for me it was a relatively late discovery.

Replies From View

Quote from: a duncandisorderly on September 08, 2018, 01:26:18 PM
the biggest surprise was how tiny it looks compared to the casios & citizens I've favoured in recent years. it's like having a ten bob bit sellotaped to your wrist.

Since you're talking about size could you be more specific please?  Which one:


a duncandisorderly

Quote from: Replies From View on September 08, 2018, 02:30:46 PM
Since you're talking about size could you be more specific please?  Which one:



it's a tiny bit wider than a 2-er, but weights a fraction less than a 20p.

Replies From View

Quote from: a duncandisorderly on September 08, 2018, 02:47:01 PM
it's a tiny bit wider than a 2-er, but weights a fraction less than a 20p.

What version of a ten bob bit is this??

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: Replies From View on September 08, 2018, 02:27:38 PM
If you're going to not wear a battery-powered analogue watch for a while, it's worth pulling the button out so the hands stop moving and the battery life is preserved for a bit longer.  May seem obvious, but for me it was a relatively late discovery.

good advice.
however, in the case of the swatch, the battery holder is usually the culprit. they're not 100% waterproof, & over a long period, the battery contacts get a bit corroded. eventually, the thinner of the two, which goes off into the inaccessible innards of the thing, either breaks completely or stops conducting sufficient current into the works. corrosion may've got elsewhere by this point too. at least three of my swatches have failed this way, & they're sealed so there's nothing I can do.

this is a different model but it's a good shot of the same battery compartment. the contact that fails or comes adrift is the one you can barely see. one of mine that's gone wrong has a translucent case, so the nature of the failure is clearly visible.


a duncandisorderly

Quote from: Replies From View on September 08, 2018, 02:51:25 PM
What version of a ten bob bit is this??

a two pound coin. I chance not to have any 50 pences with me today.

wosl

Haven't owned one of these, but for people who like the pared-back functionality of yer Brauns or basic military-style, these smashing, Max Bill-designed Junghans ones should also fit the - heh - bill:




Sebastian Cobb

Still don't get the point of these smart watches.

Some busybody bloke at work used to have one and he'd programmed it to go off if a high severity issue came in.

He never did realise the false alarms that made him jump out of his chair was the bloke next to him playing a youtube video of the alert noise.

Replies From View

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on September 08, 2018, 04:16:49 PM
Still don't get the point of these smart watches.

Same here.  To work they apparently need to be within bluetooth distance of your phone, so why not use your phone?

Cloud

Saves you getting your phone out of your pocket, useful if you're lazy (like me) or to discretely keep an eye out for a notification in a no visible phones permitted kind of situation.

Good for if you tend to miss calls/texts because your phone is on silent, vibrate not working very well, the alerts get lost among other alerts etc

Fitness tracking

Ability to piss about with different watch faces

The sheer geeky novelty of, say, turning your lights on with your watch

Also some of them do have 4G so can be used independently

Not that everything needs a utilitarian purpose anyway, I mean why wear a watch at all when you can just check the time on your phone.

Replies From View

Quote from: Cloud on September 08, 2018, 04:42:01 PM
The sheer geeky novelty of, say, turning your lights on with your watch

Do you honestly have the set-up for this?

Clive Langham

I've never used a Nato strap because I find that extra bit of material that's doubled over and tucked round the side hugely aesthetically displeasing. Do people who use them not find that?