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- Grand Seiko Shrinks Down 62GS, Adds Two Beautiful Cherry Blossom Dials, New Tornek-Rayville Has An Amazing Story, Formex Teams Up With Worn & Wound, New From Dan Henry And Urwerk
Grand Seiko Shrinks Down 62GS, Adds Two Beautiful Cherry Blossom Dials, New Tornek-Rayville Has An Amazing Story, Formex Teams Up With Worn & Wound, New From Dan Henry And Urwerk
Welcome to the latter part of Seiko week, I hope you enjoy it
It's About Time
February 08, 2024
Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Most watch brands decide to drop all of their new releases in a day or two. Seiko and Grand Seiko have different ideas - it’s better to release one watch per day. So, welcome to Seiko week, I guess, because there’s more coming tomorrow. I really hope you like Seiko. We’re back to our regular programming next week.
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In this issue:
Grand Seiko Gives The Titanium 62GS A New 38mm Case And Two Beautiful Cherry Blossom Inspired Dials
Tornek-Rayville Releases Type 7B "Blakjak", A Watch U.S. Soldiers Would Be Wearing In An Alternate Timeline
Formex Teams Up With Worn & Wound For A Limited Edition Essence Sector 39 Chronometer
Dan Henry Embraces The 1970s With The New 1972 Maverick Automatic
The New Urwerk UR-100V LightSpeed Is The Most Expensive Way Of Calculating The Speed Of Light
Today’s reading time: 10 minutes and 43 seconds
Number of dragon-themed watches this Year (so far, and including today): 19
👂What’s new
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OK, I give up. I was hoping that I could feature more brands in the top billing position this week, but Seiko and Grand Seiko just keep on coming with new releases. Unlike other brands that like to drop a bunch of watches on the same day or two, Seiko and Grand Seiko usually take up a whole week or two and do a release-a-day. So, today we have an update to one of the most popular collections from Grand Seiko, the 62GS, of which the SBGA413 Shunbun is part. The update comes as a smaller titanium case for the 62GS, something that fans have been clamouring for, and two beautiful dials - a light pink and a light green, both inspired by cherry blossoms.
The new Heritage 62GS Sakura-Kakushi SBGH341 and Sakura-Wakaba SBGH343, with Sakura meaning cherry blossom in Japanese, come in a brand new case. It still has the familiar 62GS shape, but shrinks down from 40mm to 38mm. What remains the same is the not-so-thin 12.9mm thickness and the high-intensity titanium material. The watch has strong facets on the sides, a combination of Zaratsu polished and brushed surfaces and a bezel-less architecture. On top is a box-shaped sapphire crystal and water resistance is rated to 100 meters.
Grand Seiko really makes beautiful dials. These two new ones get an almost linen finish, a rough-ish texture that looks more frosty than the flaky texture of the Shunbun. Being Grand Seiko, you know these watches are inspired by the most bizarrely specific natural occurances. For example the Sakura-Kakushi comes in a very light pink and “evokes early cherry blossoms being hidden by late winter snows” while the Sakura-Wakaba features a light green dial and is said to be inspired by “a precise moment, in early April, when flowers bloom and young leaves sprout all at once”. The hour markers and hands are silver and have razor-sharp finishing.
Inside is the in-house calibre 9S85. It’s a high frequency beater which operates at 36,000vph or 5Hz and has a claimed accuracy of +5 to -3 seconds/day. It also offers a 55-hour power reserve, features 37 jewels, and is resistant to magnetic fields of up to 4,800 A/m. As far as decoration is concerned, you get large stripes, perlage and polished steel components. The watch comes on a titanium bracelet with a folding clasp. Now that Grand Seiko has listened to fans and reduced the case size from 40mm to 38mm, maybe they will listen to fans and include a micro-adjustment system on the clasp.
Both the Sakura-Kakushi SBGH341 and Sakura-Wakaba SBGH343 go on sale at the beginning of March, globally and with no limitations. Both are priced at €7,900. See more on the Grand Seiko website.
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Back in the 1960s, as the Vietnam War was in full force, the Navy was looking to purchase watches for their new experimental divers and demolition teams. Everybody knew that one of the best choices for this team was the Fifty-Fathoms, but they Navy could not purchase a Swiss watch due to the “Buy American Act”. Luckily, a Blancpain distributor named Allen V. Tornek devised a plan to work around by rebadging Blancpains as Tornek-Rayville. But this was easier said than done. For the Blancpains to reach very strict military specs, especially those for non-magnetims, a lot of parts needed to be replaced. This proved to be both costly and time consuming, so only about 1,000 of these modified Blancpain Tornek-Rayville watches were ever made, now demanding a high premium on the vintage market, and the brand was shut down. But now we have Bill Yao, a military watch enthusiast, who has revived the brand and is making some amazing stuff that sells out as soon as it shows up for sale. Their latest release, the Type 7B "Blakjak", met the same fate and is already sold out, but it’s still worth a read as the story of the Blakjak is as interesting as that of the original Blancpain Tornek-Rayville.
The new Tornek-Raville carries the Type 7B moniker which is a hint at it’s roots, as Bill Yao imagined this wats as a modern successor of the MIL-W-46374F Type 6 SANDY 660 from the late 1990s. This is where Yao shows off his nerdiness. The MIL-W-46374F is the military watch specification that came into effect in 1991, a successor of the previous MIL-W-46374E. This being the Type 6 iteration, it called for a quartz-powered watch with a 12-hour bezel; a hacking movement; resistance to low-pressure environments for at least 60 minutes; high magnetic resistance over 125±1 gauss; and “salt fog” protection. The most successful of these watches was the P660 MIL-W-46374F Type 6 produced by Stocker and Yale, earning it the moniker SandY. The late 90s were a time of great investments into all parts of the military so the DoD purchased hundreds of thousands of watches per year. But as the decade waned and the U.S. was equipping its military with weapons instead of watches to meet the demands of the ensuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Stocker and Yale closed its wristwatch division altogether by 2000, and development of the SANDY 660 concept ended before it could really be refined and realize its full potential. Enter the modern version of Tornek Rayville who, instead of just making that 660 concept a reality, decided to imagine a world in which the U.S. army still ordered huge numbers of watches and created the Type 7, a watch that the modern soldier would wear.
The Tornek-Rayville Type 7B “BlakJak” comes in an cushion-style case profile, brushed finish and measuring 42.5mm wide, 12.3mm thick and with a lug-to-lug of 49mm. On top is a flat sapphire crystal, surrounded by a pronounced and very cool looking double-grooved uni-directional bezel that has a DLC-coated stainless steel insert. You can get it one of two setups on the bezel insert - a 60 minute countdown timer that’s more common on dive watches or a 12 hour bezel that you would find on field watches to track a second time zone. The watch has 200 meters of water resistance.
The dial is as mil-spec as you can imagine. Simple, matte black with white markings and white syringe hands. There’s a day/date indicator at 3 o’clock, but you might notice that both indicators are the same size. So how do you display the day of the week with just one symbol? The BlakJak uses Roman numerals, from I to VII, to denote the days of the week and Arabic for the date. Pretty cool. There’s a no-radiation symbol at 10 o’clock, a “7B” at 2 o’clock to denote the model and a tiny stamping of the Tornek-Rayville logo below the 6 o’clock maker.
A major departure from the Type 6, which was a quartz watch, comes inside. It’s powered by the Seiko Caliber NH36 automatic movement which beats at 21,600vph and has a power reserve of 40 hours. The Watch comes with a fairly comprehensive kit that consists of three different strap/bracelet options, a spring bar tool, and even two different types of spring bars, each one being better suited to one of the different included strap options. The three options are a three-link stainless steel bracelet that has a friction-fit closure with an additional safety latch, an Italian-made black rubber strap and a one-piece black nylon strap.
The Tornek-Rayville Type 7B “BlakJak” is priced at $895 and it sold out instantly. Tornek-Rayville is very good at releasing new limited quantities of their existing watches, so do keep an eye on their site. Also, check out the amazing Type 7b Case Study & Technical Specifications section of their website.
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Formex, perhaps, has the most devoted fan base of all the larger microbrands that have popped up in the past decade. And it’s understandable - they are all about attention to detail, great finishing and pleasing design. So, it’s always nice to see them introducing a new model, like this one they are releasing with Worn & Wound, an equally beloved watch publication. The new watch is called the Essence Sector 39 Chronometer, a watch described as coming from an alternate universe.
The influences on this line of watches come from all types of science fiction and include Gattaca, Blade Runner, La Jetée, Dark City and The Twilight Zone. Come on, how can a watch be bad if it’s inspired by those movies? The idea behind the watches is that in the alternate universe, technology evolved on a different timeline, ending up in a mashup of 2024 technology and 1950s aesthetics and it does kind of end up making sense.
Based on the well known and beloved Essence 39, not much has changed on the outside. It comes in the familiar stainless steel case that measures 39mm wide, 10mm thick and has a 45mm lug-to-lug. It comes in the well known Formex suspended case, which is a very cool system of a case within a case, mounted on shocks that allows for the watch to flex when on your wrist, making it ultimately comfortable.
All the change has happened on the dial, which is a strong departure from their usual minimalist dial design. There are three colors to choose from - white, blue, or gray - each with contrasting accent colors. The white and blue dials feature a red crosshair and details. The blue one comes with a red seconds hand, while the other two just have a red tip. The blue-dialed model also has a striking red date disc, while the numerals 12, 3, and 9 o’clock are all center oriented on all three models.
Inside is an automatic, chronometer-grade Sellita SW200-1. It’s a well known movement in the microbrand world that beats at 28,800vph and has a 38 hour power reserve. There’s a skeletonized rotor out back, visible through the caseback. The watch comes on a sturdy bracelet with toolless quick-release and toolless micro-adjustment.
The Formex × Worn & Wound Essence Sector 39 Chronometer is limited to 150 pieces, with 50 in each color. They are on sale now and can be yours for $1,590. See more on the Worn & Wound website.
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You might know Dan Hendy as the microbrand that has been pumping out vintage inspired watches since 2016. They have incredible taste in vintage watches, using them as inspiration for modern recreations, mostly powered by quartz movements and almost all in the sub $500 range. Over the past several months, they have released a couple of cool mechanical watches and now it’s time for a new one - a time-only version of the Dan Henry 1972 Maverick, which previously came as a chronograph, inspired by the venerable Chronograph 1 from Porsche Design.
The Dan Henry 1972 Maverick comes in both a black PVD-coated or non-coated steel version, with a matte blasted finishing, and measures 41mm wide and 12.9mm thick. There’s a sapphire crystal on top and the caseback has an embossed F-14 Tomcat fighter jet medal. If the watch looks familiar, and the name and Tomcat is not enough of a hint, the watch it is based on, the Chronograph 1, is the same watch that Tom Cruise wore in Top Gun. Water resistance is rated at 100 meters.
The dial on both is matte black with an angled inner flange with a 12-hour scale instead of the tachymeter that came on the chronograph. The inner bezel rotates and can be used to track a second time zone. The dial has a sandwich construction with the lower plate coated in white Super-LumiNova and the top black plate featuring cutouts to create the hour markers. There’s a color matching date window at 3 o’clock and the seconds hand comes in blue or red, depending on the color of the case.
Inside is the Miyota 8215 that beats at 3Hz and has a 40 hour power reserve. The watches come on color matched steel bracelets with a folding clasp and quick-release spring bars.
This minimalist version of the famed Top Gun Porsche Design can be had for a really great price - $360. See more on the Dan Henry website.
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Just when you think that every single complication has already been attempted and executed, in strolls Urwerk, the makers of completely off-the-wall watches in the entire industry. Their new UR-100V, based on the very familiar UR-100 line of watches, revolves around the constant speed of light expressed numerically at 299,792.458 km/s. According to one of the Urwerk founders, this watch is like “wearing a piece of the universe on your wrist”, but also, more importantly, gives the wearer an idea of our position in the universe, as you can see how far our planets are from each other.
Since it’s based on the UR-100, the LightSpeed comes in a carbon case that measures 43mm wide, 14.55mm thick and with a lug-to-lug of 51.73mm. The case back is shot-blasted and PVD-coated Grade 5 titanium, while the crown is at the familiar 12 o’clock position. Water resistance is rated at 50 meters.
Things get really interesting under the heavily domed sapphire crystal on top. To tell the time Urwerk uses aluminum satellites set on beryllium-bronze Geneva crosses and an aluminum carousel. The current hour features an arrow that points at the current minute as the satellite moves across a third of a rotation in 60 gradations. As it reaches the 60-minute mark, the next hour appears at zero. And this is the regular part of the watch.
Above the time display at the bottom of the watch, the UR-100 LS displays the eight planets in our solar system on an openworked domed black structure — Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. And each of the planets gets an indication how long it takes light to reach each of the planets - .2 minutes to Mercury, 6 minutes to Venus, 8.3 minutes to Earth, 12.6 minutes to Mars, 43.2 minutes to Jupiter, 79.3 minutes to Saturn, 159.6 minutes to Uranus, and 4.1 hours to Neptune.
There’s more going on here - there’s a small blue and green hand you can see popping up in the openworked areas of the new domed structure advances to indicate the different planets. To perform this task, the hand is attached to one of the three carrousel arms and completes a full turn around the dial in three hours. Once it has reached Saturn at 3 o’clock, it dips under the minutes track and resurfaces at Uranus at 9 o’clock.
Inside is the automatic calibre 12.02. It has a star-shaped rotor and it’s governed by a profiled airscrew known as the Windfänger, a device used to minimise shocks and reduce wear and tear. The base of the movement is made with Vaucher, has a frequency of 28,800vph and a power reserve of 48 hours. The watch comes on a red textured rubber strap and folding clasp.
The Urwerk UR-100V LightSpeed is priced at CHF 65,000 (excl. tax). See more on the Urwerk website.
🫳On hand
Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon
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⚙️Watch Worthy
A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually likewatches
The Companion was already an interesting piece, with a visual identity that clearly marked it as a field watch without feeling like it relied too heavily on the designs of historical field watches. There’s nothing wrong with a well-executed homage to the Dirty Dozen, but at some point, they all blend together. That’s not a risk for the Companion.
⏲️Wait a minute
A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting
In 79 AD, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius destroyed several ancient Roman towns, including Pompeii and Herculaneum. It also buried the Herculaneum papyri, a collection of ancient scrolls kept in an Italian villa. To date, about 800 scrolls have been recovered from excavations at the site, but classical historians think there may be thousands more. Attempts to unroll these fragile scrolls over the centuries, however, have been unsuccessful. In this entertaining read for Businessweek, Ashlee Vance and Ellen Huet recount computer science professor Brent Seales’ more recent quest to decipher them. With the help of Nat Friedman, an AI investor and former GitHub executive; more advanced technology; and a machine-learning competition called the Vesuvius Challenge, it’s finally happening.
Silicon Valley has always dreamed of building its own utopias. In her piece for the Atlantic, Kaitlyn Tiffany recounts her experience from one such network state, Zuzalu, the two-month experiment hosted in Montenegro last year and organized by the inventor of Ethereum.
I tend to steer away from divisive political articles here. But while this might seem like an article about politics, it isn’t. It’s an incredible look at what might happen if Donald Trump, a former president, is sentenced to a jail sentence. How do you protect such a person?
👀Watch this
One video you have to watch today
One of the movies I always liked rewatching as a kid was Memphis Belle. I completely forgot about it until a few weeks ago when Apple TV premiered Spielberg’s new TV show Masters of the Air. It reminded me how much I loved the B-17, one of the main reasons why Ioved Memphis Belle. And just as I was thinking that, I open up youtube to see this very in-depth tour of a Flying Fortress. Very cool!
💵Pre-loved precision
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SOLD: Well, not really new. It’s a great looking mid-90s Tudor Submariner 75090, offered for sale by a member of the It’s About Time reader crew. I love the way it looks and seems to be in great condition. Check it out over on Chrono24.
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-Vuk