Oyster case by Rolex, calibre 390 movement by Fleurier.
The calibre 390 is a 17 rubies automatic, non-hacking movement used in many early Tudor watches.
Pictured here is a cal. 390 inside a c 1966 Submariner 7928.
Its rotor resemble the one used in the Rolex calibre 1030. Some people mistakenly believe that the 390 is an inhouse movement produced especially for Tudor before they started to use ETA. The 390 is, however, based on the calibre 350 Fleurier ébauche.
All kinds of strange ideas about the Omega-Bond connection floats around on the internets. The commonly known association between James Bond and the Omega watches began with GoldenEye (even though Bond once wore a Seamaster 300 between his Submariners and occasional Breitling Top Time sometime during the sixties if I remember correctly). However, it’s been argued that Lindy Hemming, the costume designer of GoldenEye chose to equip Bond with a Blue SMP rather than a Rolex Submariner. In truth, Omega probably payed more money.
In GoldenEye, Bond used the Quartz model and after that the automatic version.
The automatic version pre-Co-axial and PO used the reliable Omega cal. 1120 movement which is based on the tried and tested ETA 2892-A2 ébauche. The shape of the lugs is quite stylish and the wave pattern on the dial is nice and appears in four different nuances of blue depending on the light conditions or WB-adjustment on Your camera. The skeleton hands is another distinctive feature and the bezel is easily turned anti-clockwise.
Additionally, You can unscrew the helium escape valve at ten o’ clock to let the helium in the case find its way out while You chill in the decompression chamber after Your prolonged deep-sea dive.
For many, the bracelet is one of the strongest pull-factors of the “Bond” Seamaster. Some people rate it above Submariner bracelets, even though it’s composed of steel that is 3 times less expensive than its Rolex counterpart. But it is a very comfortable and quite sturdy and solid bracelet.
all in all You do, as they say, “get a lot of bang for Your buck with a pre-owned Omega.”
According to the legend the Explorer model was created for and worn by the climbers to reach the summit of Everest in 1953. Some suggest that Tenzing Norgay wore a Rolex Explorer and that Edmund Hilary wore an English Smith’s watch. If so, no one knows for certain which was first at the summit. This matter little however since, in the end, it was Rolex fantastic publicity machine that succeeded.
Moreover, the Explorer had, in fact, a quite legible and uncluttered dial, an extra strong case, and, on request, it could be lubricated with a special oil which could withstand temperatures of between -20°C and +40°C without changes in its viscosity. Thus, it was suitable for adventurers and have been popular among Everest climbers and other explorers ever since and possibly before the first successful Everest expedition.
The Explorer II, 1655, an entirely different watch, was introduced in 1971. It featured an extra hour hand that was intended specifically for spelæologists, or cave explorers, who “soon lose all notion of time: morning, afternoon, day, or night.” The 24 hour hand help the wearer differentiate day from night.
Between the introduction of the Explorer II in 1971 and around the mid 1970s the extra hour hand was bright orange. After that the hand has been red. The Explorer II orange hand is also called the Steve McQueen Rolex, even though Steve wore a Monaco on LeMans and a Submariner on other occasions.
The Explorer II, 1655, wasn’t very popular when introduced but today the orange hand is one of the most sought after Rolex models around and will most likely remain a holy grail to me. Variants with faded “albino” hands are especially attractive to some collectors.
With its clean and stealthy appearance, the Explorer II 16570 of today, with black or white dial, is one of the most attractive contemporary Rolex models.
The reflected glory of the Explorers, and their supposed ability to “behave flawlessly under any and all the worst conditions imaginable,” are probably the reasons for their continued popularity. They are indeed exceptional deskdiving tools.
(Sources: circulated web material.)
The 14060 is a great tool for all deskdiving purposes. It is also suitable for people dropping phrases like “it is going to get wet tonight (Swedish expression for drunk) so I better wear my divers watch.”
The model is the direct descendent of the original Submariner models introduced at Basel in the fifties and worn by Sean Connery in the Bond movies in the sixties (the ones that made You rewind and pause Your VHS Bond movies as a kid remember?).
The 14060M is pictured here during a pressure test in a glass of Finnish champagne…
…and here wearing Seiko rubber straps collecting dust on the neck of a cheap organic Monastell.
Rico Suave!
Luminous display
I acquired my first mechanical chronograph via a trade earlier this year — a funky seventies Tissot Seastar Navigator.
Its bulky 41 mm case houses a manual Valjoux Valjoux 7734 movement, a model discontinued produced in the seventies and taken over by Poljot. Don’t know much more about the the Seastar Navigator model other than that the orange chronograph hands of this particular example occasionally lights up the snow muddy running track close to here.
Whatever begins, also ends… and possibly begins again.
The purpose of this blog will be to post reflections and photographies of serious stuff like time, and mechanical watches.
Time is a quite common term for experience of duration and, in science, considered as one of the few fundamental quantities, used to define other quantities such as velocity and money, making the defining of time in terms of such quantities quite useless. An operational definition of time, constitutes one standard unit such as the second, is highly useful in the conduct of both advanced experiments and everyday affairs of life. The operational definition leaves aside the question whether there is something called time.
What a proper watch is, is probably harder to define. For operational purposes we define a watch as a timekeeper made to be worn on a person. Usually a wristwatch, worn on the wrist with a strap or a bracelet.
