Speed: Another fancy boat.

Just a pic of a boat and a bit of skyline in downtown Vancouver.

Time: My projects.

So, adventures in case-making. I just got an email indicating that some case castings I ordered from the USA have shipped. Now, why would I order castings instead of having them done locally? Well, I'm waiting for some bronze blanks that I was intending to mill and file by hand into cases, to be cast in Vancouver. I talked to the guy in person in mid-December, was told it was the busy time as local jewelers swamp him with rush work at that time. Fair enough, but it's nearing the end of January now with no sign or communication.

In the meantime I've designed a set of case, caseback, and bezel blanks in 3d (the pic), uploaded the 3 models to a service in NYC that has 3D-printed them in high-resolution 'digital wax', sent them to have molds made, lost-wax cast them in bronze, trim the sprues, polish them, package them, and ship them to Canada. I'm anticipating getting them and have them all evaluated and measured out for finish machining before the 6 identical bronze donuts I ordered from the local guy show up.

Sheesh.

Time: Part 2 of American Horology

Well some interesting things have come about in the American-Made circle of watchmaking.

First, is that the previously discussed Weiss has changed his description of what he previously claimed was an FTC compliant Made-In-America caliber 1003 movement.

His website now states: 'Caliber 1003 movements are manufactured and assembled from US and Swiss parts'. So with the qualifier involved, that would indicate that FTC requirements were not met. I continue to suspect that this is fundamentally just a complete Swiss 6497 movement internals (gear train, power, jewel, and timing assortment) sandwiched between just a USA-MADE plate, balance cock, and bridge. Possibly even just the more visible top 3/4 plate and balance cock.

But their description is now more appropriate, so good for them.

Which brings me to a new company:

Ginault.

Jesus Christ what a train wreck. Currently offering a tacky rebranded (barely legal) vintage Rolex knockoff, but the claims made... Again, Jesus Christ.

An American-Made 2824 clone. OK... With a self-developed copper-rhodium alloy for the plates and bridges. Right... And their own proprietary different alloy for the wheels. Um... All machined and hand finished in America, yet the edges show marks from shitty stamping. Err... And topped off by an admittedly Chinese anti-shock system that is a knockoff of not the superior Swiss Incabloc, but the cheaper Swiss Novodiac. What. The. Fuck?

Their website is full of retarded shit like this. And their claims of researching the best lume reads like some Lord of The Rings quest.

But we have the internet and can travel into the past with it, looking for a younger Charles Ginault. And we find him being introduced on counterfeit watch forums. Not a great start. Then we can search some of his very distinct, flowery description and find the same descriptions being used to pitch counterfeit Rolex watches a couple years ago on replica/counterfeit forums. Uh-oh...

But now this clown is sponsoring a major 'legitimate' watch forum, and said forum is using their 'no-fake' rule to remove and suppress discussion of the relationship of the company to past and possibly current illegal counterfeit production. As well as shut down talk about the dubious American Made claims.

This major forum is being sponsored by a (Former? Current?) manufacturer of counterfeit Rolex watches and defending them from criticism and reasonable investigation through aggressive censorship.

Jesus fucking Christ...

If a couple people get on the FTC's case about this Ginault clown, he will probably go down hard. For both the deceitful use of American-Made, and maybe catch him with his pants down with counterfeit Rolex inventory as well.

One can only hope...

Time: More Concepts

Ah, the attention span of a gnat...

Playing around with some designs for an ultra-thin case. Under 6.9mm as it stands. Will be for a Peseux 7001, once I can figure out hands. This was supposed to be for the Miyota, but it just looks better thin, and the 82xx are rather tall and ungainly as movements go. The idea is to allow different bezels to be pressed on. So different designs, materials, decorations such as stone setting, etc...

As an aside, I'm kind of a computer Luddite. You'll note the photographs of the screens rather than proper captured screenshots. The reasons being the aforementioned inability for me to figure out uploading pics not taken by the Camera App in Blogger. And I haven't figured out (even tried actually) screen capture in general.

And to make a nice trifecta of antiquitated technical skills, that 3D software is ancient modelling, animation, and rendering software. As in this is version 3.2 (abandonware) and back in the day I had a legit copy of version 2.0 on a Pentium 90MHz, when that was a badass processor. I had a demo version of 4.0 on a Pentium 266MHz MMX, when it was also badass. But in my defense it was, and still is a great animation and rendering suite. Microsoft bought them just to kill around the same time as they bought Softimage as it could actually compete with it at the 'introductory professional' level. And to double down on my defense I do use the 7.6 version (the one Microsoft killed, but was released as freeware a few years after as Softimage and competitors had finally built a big enough technical gap) for rendering, radiosity, and .STL file creation. Oh, by the way, the software is called Caligari Truespace.

And I am sloooowly trying to learn Blender and FreeCAD. Which are apparently incredible, and open source. I have them installed, but I'm so used to the Truespace UI that changing habits is tough. Parametric modelling is also crazy different than mesh-based modelling.

Time: Concepts

Well, banned from a well known watch forum has turned out to be a good thing. The ban was due to vindictive personal reasons on behalf of the Admin, but I can't say that my attitude didn't play a role. I was at a zero-fucks-given point with the site as it was and calling out more and more of the hypocrisy and echo-chamber regurgitation so prevalent.

So why is it a good thing? Well, the realization of how the echo-chamber works and the realization of the direction the site is going. And more time for myself by stopping wasted efforts on correcting the endless echos of incorrect information.

I'll throw some details on the groupthink ideas from time to time, but today I'll focus on what I'm doing now. The watches.

With my inconsistent focus, well demonstrated by posting irregularities, I've broadened the task of making a watch, into many watches. Why? Because my brain doesn't seem to operate well on the 'simplify tasks' model. I need multiple tasks on the go concurrently to jump around to as I get bored/frustrated with whatever is current.

So what are the watches?

By movement, I have 2 Unitas 6498 on the go. A Standard and a very nicely decorated Élaboré. Both with the same case, but different concepts. Several different hand sets to fit to whatever concepts. One dressy, and one more casual.

I have 2 ÉTA 2824 projects, but currently only one Top grade movement. One is a German case dive watch, the other a coin-edge watch intent to be a women's 'boyfriend' size watch. Both have case and hands ready, waiting for dials as well. I only have a single movement at the time as I'm toying with the idea of using a thin 2892 movement in a 2824 case to be able to use a thicker dial. Thicker dial for enamel reasons. In the interim I can swap the movement between projects with ordinary dial sizing.

I have a Miyota 824x, I want to say 8247 but can't remember exactly, with just the hour, minute, and ~4H-ish placed small seconds hand. The 'pretty' (it's Miyota, so less ugly really) decoration and open rotor. This will be for a custom, cast bronze case experiment. And to test laser-cut hands to see if that can work. It's a pure R&D project, as Miyotas don't carry enough movement cachet without 7Friday-levels of marketing to command decent pricing.

Last, I have a 7750 project en-route. There is no design work on my side at all. I'll be ordering an Élaboré grade movement shortly. This is inspired by my buddy's fake Rolex Daytona with the Chinese day-date-24h layout. He broke the crystal being stupid and I told him I would get it replaced. But I hate that piece of shit. So I'm going to make him a legit, sterile, real chronograph, pending he actually quits drinking (the contributor to breaking his fake). And by 'sterile', I don't mean a logo-less Daytona fake, but an assembly of NOS Swiss parts from ~1990s that have no branding, and it won't be a representative of my future brand vision. I'll post pics when the parts get here, but here's a description. The case is two-tone stainless and yellow gold, the case is stainless, the crown and pushers gold plated. The bezel is a Submariner-style diver, gold plated and gold numerals with blue background. The dial is blue, 7750-pattern 6-9-12 subdials, also blue with gold border. Applied gold indices at 1,2,4,5,7,8,10,11 with lume dots. Gold printing. Date only with gold surround. Hands are gold baton style with lume. It's going to be retro-bling badassery.

Anyways, that's it for today. I'll see what pics I decide to throw up with this, as I think I took the case photos off my phone recently, so the pics will probably be stock ones. (Okay, no relevant pics at the moment as I'm getting a publish error. Pics taken from the Camera app are OK, though. So here's the Longines I'm wearing at Canada Place.)

Time: Continuing.

Going to be working on my own prototypes now.

Probably going to post short general watch-related essays a couple times a week.

Stay tuned...

Speed: A hell of a Catamaran

Was down by the Coal Harbour marina on Sunday and saw this huge cat. Don't know much about it, but it looks awesome. Price probably falls in the 'if you have to ask...' category. Crazy.