Keeping Time

Let's wander off the reservation a bit and talk about watches.

I'm a traditionalist. I like my guns to have cylinders that rotate. I like my knives to be made of steel and leather. And I like my time pieces to be all mechanical.

Now, I'm no Luddite. The folding knife in my pocket has synthetic handle scales, I own a lot of Glocks (the original 'Tactical Tupperware'), and the watch I wear most often has a quartz movement.

But show me a traditional Colt Single Action Army, or a Randall Model 1 with a stacked leather handle or an Omega Speedmaster and my heart will skip a beat or two. But alas, I can't afford a Colt Single Action, the wait time for a Randall likely exceeds the time I have left on this earth and my wife would kill me if she spotted a Speedmaster on my wrist. So I make do the best I can. Ruger Blackhawks, some nice Ka-Bars, and for wrist watches a Seiko diver or two.

Today we'll talk about Seiko Divers, and in particular the rugged, almost bomb-proof Model SKX009.

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Seiko SKX009

I've owned several Seiko dive watches down through the years. The first one, a gift from my wife back around 1985, was Seiko's earlier 6309 model. She bought it for me from the Post Exchange in Frankfurt, Germany when I was assigned to the US V Corps HQ. I was thrilled. I had my 'high end' diver. At a time when you could pick up a plain-jane Rolex Oyster through the PX system for about $700 this Seiko was a bit pricey at something like $200. Two hundred bucks was a lot of money to us in those days (particularly with a new baby) and I really appreciated her gift.

Seiko 6309 circa 1980

The 6309 became my daily wear piece. I doubt I took it off even to shower. It got banged up in the normal course of my military duties, the original band ended up being replaced several times over and then one day about five years after Roberta gave it to me it just stopped running. I had a local watch repair shop take a look at it and they reported the bad news - one of the seals had failed, water had leaked into the movement and rusted everything up. The cost of repair exceeded the value of the watch so I just tossed it and moved on.

For a few years I got pulled over to the dark side, aka, Casio G-Shocks. The G-Shock line came out at about the same time my Seiko died. The military fell in love with the G-Shocks. They were inexpensive, rugged and as accurate as a Swiss chronometer. In fact, I've been told that the Air Force began issuing them to their flight crews and para-rescue personnel. The best part was (from a budget perspective) that they were so cheap they were considered expendable. When they stopped working (usually because the battery died) you just threw them away and issued a replacement.

I own a number of Casio G-Shocks. They are all wonderfully accurate (particularly the ones that sync with the atomic time signal from Fort Collins, Colorado). But they are machines without a soul - overly complex, often difficult to read, gimmicky and difficult to use. When the manufacturer has to provide a 20 page instruction manual that's your clue that the gimmicks have overwhelmed the basic functionality.

I need a watch to do two things - display accurate time in a format that is intuitive and easy to read under all conditions and provide a tool for simple timing tasks, like tracking how long the steaks have been on the grill. With its rotating timing bezel the Seiko diver watch accomplishes these tasks with a healthy dose of manly panache.

Let's keep it simple. I like guns with cylinders that rotate, knives with wooden handles and watches
with mechanical guts

But I'm under no allusions; the Seiko SKX009 is no Swiss chronometer, or even close to it. While the quality of materials and construction is very high the movement that Seiko puts into these watches offers only middling accuracy and limited features. The Seiko 7s26 movement is a watch movement born of compromise, designed for ease of automated production, ease of service and ruggedness. These movements can be accurate, and I've got watches that use this movement that can hold to less than 20 seconds/day, but I've got other watches using the same movement that struggle to hold to a minute a day. By comparison I have a watch that sells in the same price range as the Seiko SBX009 that uses an analogue quartz movement and it holds to 15 seconds per month.

The 7s26 movement with the winding rotor removed.
Seiko manufactures these by the tens of thousands each year,
Keep in mind that the movement is less than 1 1/2 inches in diameter
and most of the production is done by robots!

The 7s26 is a 21-jewel automatic movement, meaning it is self winding, but it lacks the ability to hand wind the mainspring and it lacks a hacking feature. Hacking is when you pull out the main (winding) stem and the second hand stops. This feature is extremely useful when you want to synchronize your watch with another time piece to gauge its accuracy.

So, it's a 'good enough' movement. How about the rest of the watch? Well this is really where Seiko shines. Seiko is rightfully proud of its SKX-series of watches and that shows in the overall quality of construction of these time pieces. Polished stainless steel cases, screw-down case backs and crowns with waterproof seals, extremely bright luminescent paint on the watch dial, high quality stainless steel or rubber watch bands and ISO certified water resistance down to 200 feet. These watches are rugged and slick looking little beasts.

It's been beaten up, beaten on and neglected. And it's still ready to go!

Seiko knows it has a winner on its hands and dresses its Diver line up in a wide variety of dial, hand, bezel and strap combinations. This drives collectors mad, but that's the whole idea. There is an incredibly strong collector market for modern and vintage Seiko diver models that spans the globe, fueled by folks who are captivated by the concept of a relatively inexpensive, rugged and good looking diving watch that offers outstanding service and value.

I think that describes me...

Stay sharp!

- Brian

A Watch Review

When I'm not collecting knives, backpacks, fly rods or (lately) canoes I can often be seen haunting the wristwatch offerings on Amazon.  I have always been fascinated by watches and time pieces.  Down through the years I've owned dozens of watches and I've got about nine or more in my current collection.  Some watches are a reflection of my fascination with precision and accuracy.  These tend to be things like Casio digital models that automatically sync with the atomic time signals out of Fort Collins.  Others tend to reflect my love of mechanical watches, mainly Seiko diver models.  I'm not yet rich enough to afford a Rolex or Omega, and probably never will be, so I satisfy me urge for watches that go 'tick-tick' with good quality but lower end mechanical pieces.

My first love has always been the traditional watch - one with moving hands.  However, it has always been hard to find a watch that fit my three main criteria - accurate to within a few seconds each day, rugged and waterproof enough to swim with and cheap enough (sub-$200) for me to afford.  Finding watches that fit any two of these criteria was easy enough, but finding watches that fit all three was tough.  Seiko diver watches are rugged, waterproof and inexpensive, but to be kind their accuracy isn't all that great.  Mine gain or lose up to a minute a day.  I wanted something accurate enough for celestial navigation.

About 18 months ago I stumbled on the Luminox line of watches.  These watches gained fame as the 'offical Navy SEAL watch', though I think that claim was more marketing hype than anything else.  It seems any company that gets a purchase order from the Naval Special Warfare Command claims it's product is 'Offical Navy SEAL' whether it's ball point pens or attack helicopters.  Marketing hype aside, these watches got very good reviews; users found them accurate, rugged and lightweight.  The watches use battery powered Swiss movements and are rated waterproof to a depth of 200 meters.  The only thing thing that irked the traditionalist in me is that the cases are made of a polycarbonate composite.  I kinda' like my wrist watches made of metal.  But still, for a shade under $200 (street price) I was willing to take a chance.

Luninox made it's reputation (and based it's name) on the fact that it uses tritium gas illumination vials in all of it's watches.  These tiny vials, placed on the watch hands and hour indicators, supposedly make the watches very easy to use at night.  The vials don't light up the whole watch face, they just provide clear points of light for visual reference.

So early last year I ordered up one of the Luminox 3000-series watches.  This is the 'original' Navy SEAL model and one of the least expensive in the Luminox line, it's base model so to speak.  It sports an easy to read black face with roman numerals, a date indicator and a rotating bezel.   Two things immediately struck me - it is a small watch by dive watch standards.  Compared to a Seiko dive watch the Luminox is diminutive.  It is also light, very light.  Again, compared to a Seiko diver with it's huge self-winding mechanical movement this watch is feather light.

A few other things that quickly struck me about this watch.  It is attractive in a no-nonsense utilitarian sense - everything you need to tell time quickly and accurately is right there in front of you; no button pushing like on a Casio or other digital watch.  The rotating bezel is well laid out and has strong, positive click stops.  The movement is a 'hacking' movement, which means that when you pull out the winding stem to set the time the second hand stops.  This makes this watch very easy to sync with other watches, and I routinely set it against my atomic clocks, to the second, using this feature.  And last, the tritium illumination makes this the best nighttime use watch I've ever owned, period.  The tritium gas vials are placed on the watch hands (even the second hand) and at all the hour indicators.  Since tritium gas is self-illuminating there is no requirement to expose the watch to light to get the thing to glow.  The tritium illumination is constant, never dimming through the night as the phosphorescent paint used on most other watches does.  A quick glance at the watch face under any lighting conditions - full noonday sun or a pitch black room - and you know immediately what time it is.

The only drawback to the watch is the band.  It is a fairly cheap rubbery strap.  I figured this watch deserved better so I ordered up a one-piece nylon Zulu band from Countycomm.  I also thought the watch would look good accompanied by a wrist compass, so I ordered up a small watch band compass from Brigade Quartermasters.  I've been using these small wrist compasses for 20 years and consider them to be the best quality watch band compass available.  They are made in Japan and are very high quality.  Of course they do take a beating sitting on your wrist next to the watch, but for less than $10.00 they are cheap to replace when they develop a bubble or the face gets too scratched up to view clearly.

Here's the whole package.

Neat, compact and extremely useful.

Over the course of the year this watch has lived up to it's reputation.  It's been dunked innumerable times on fishing and boating trips, been exposed to freezing cold and the baking, humid heat of Georgia summers.  It's been banged into car doors, dropped on floors and at one point thrown at a dog that wouldn't stop barking at the cat.  Over time the polycarbonate casing has received some scars but the mineral crystal face has, surprisingly, remained scratch free.

Most impressive, however, is that this watch remains consistently accurate to within 3 seconds per day as measured against my atomic clock.  Three seconds per day.  Now, for a mechanical watch movement to receive a 'chronometer' certification from the Swiss testing authorities it only needs to be accurate to within 15 seconds per day.  I'm not implying that this watch is the same quality as a Rolex or Omega, but a sub-$200 watch holding that level of accuracy is extremely impressive.

So consider this a long term review.  The Luminox 3000-series watches are impressive.  Hmmm, I see Amazon has the orange face model on sale now....