MICRO MONDAYS: The FullGear Pioneer – a customisable pilot watch featuring tritium tubes, launching this week
We love classic pilot watches. Tough, no-nonsense brushed steel case tools that are a faithful reminder of the aviation glory days of yesteryear. What we want is a simple, clear dial and legibility on point, and monochromatic efficiency. But what if we had all this as a base, for a fully customisable watch not always wanting to be the demure quiet tool? Let’s introduce the FullGear Pioneer — it is all of the above and more, with a bright twist. FullGear is launching the Pioneer pilot’s watch on Kickstarter today, on October 12, designed by a team of veterans from the watch industry in Hong Kong. The Pioneer is, by all accounts, more than one watch if you want it to be, as this is fully customisable from the start. And not only that, we have the magic of tritium tubes included for what is night-time legibility on a different level. The tritium tubes used by FullGear are the pick of the crop, manufactured by mb-microtec AG in Switzerland, which, by virtue of their gas tube construction, do not need charging to light up your life. As an added bonus, the Nightmaster model dial also has applied Japanese LumiNova to its…
The post MICRO MONDAYS: The FullGear Pioneer – a customisable pilot watch featuring tritium tubes, launching this week appeared first on Time and Tide Watches.
Divers, the tough tool watches that become our best buddies on adventures, strapped on with a wetsuit as backup to a dive computer. All this sounds wonderful, though for those of you in lockdown they have an even more important task, which is to remind us of what will come, as well as adventures spent; keeping our spirits up. The Albany Watches AMA Diver is launching this week on Kickstarter, with the Albany name paying tribute to the WA city where the founder’s father grew up. This is a classic ’60s skindiver with an inspiration as beautiful as it is ancient. For more than 2000 years the Japanese female Ama pearl divers have kept their tradition alive, freediving off the coast. The numbers may be dwindling, but the oldest freediving Ama women are the toughest septuagenarians in the world, and an intrinsic part of Japanese history. The case is a simple, perfectly sized 40mm classic skindiver, with the all-important lug to lug being an ergonomic 48mm, depth tested during production and after assembly. The legible dial is classic diver chic, with the tempting choice of mother-of-pearl, blue or black, and the pleasant pop of a teal accent. This frames the…
After the success of the previous Swatch x 007 collaboration, another tough and colourful watch is back, now exclusively in time for the release of No Time To Die. In his infinite wisdom, Q has tinkered away in his basement and come up with the Swatch x 007 ²Q. Here we have a brash and colourful openworked sports watch in the SKIN Irony series, with a tough steel body, intensely Swatch, with a few tricks up its sleeve. In a world turned upside down, for 2020 Swatch and Q has done the same to the Swatch x 007 ²Q, with spectacular results, as the sporty vibe is just as cool in reverse, with added intricacy. The openworked calibre of the Swatch x 007 ²Q takes centre stage, framed by a wide silver sunray chapter ring, blue indices and lumed hands, cool characters to the brash red villainous colour of the rehaut, a bold move by the designer, Bond’s costume designer Suttirat Anne Larlarb. A superb mix of a sporty tool vibe with the smooth elegance of the lugless steel Irony case that works damn well. The inside-out vibe is underlined by the calm tartan print on the smooth brown leather…
Most of us probably haven’t tried to draw anything since high school, and those high school drawings are unlikely to be works of art. Even to the encouraging eyes of our parents. But don’t worry, because it’s never too late to learn a new skill, especially when you’ve got the best teachers, and you’re learning about a subject you’re passionate about – a subject like watches. Earlier this year, Andrew McUtchen had the pleasure of speaking with Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, the head watch designer at Bulgari and the man behind the Bulgari Octo Finissimo, and Fabrizio was generous enough to offer a quick lesson on how to sketch our own Bulgari Octo Finissimo drawing. That’s right, a five-minute lesson on how to draw one of the hottest up-and-coming sports watches of the last few decades, from the man who brought it to life. Like I said, when you’ve got the best teachers it’s easy to learn a new skill, and it’s safe to say that Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani is the best person for the job when it comes to sketching the Octo Finissimo. The Bulgari Octo Finissimo case shape in its current form was first released in 2014, housing a…
