Sinn 356 Flieger Acrylic on strap

[kontai69]

I was in the market for a mechanical pilot's/military-look chronograph. I'm a research scientist and have an actual need for the chronograph feature to time experiments. After a few months of web research, I finally settled on a Sinn 356 Flieger with acrylic crystal and ordered it from Watchbuys.

I will say that it was love at first sight. I think the bead-blasted finish, acrylic crystal, and dial all combine to give the watch a vintage style that I seeked. I'm glad that I did not spend the extra $700+ for the brushed case and sapphire crystal. IMO, a brushed case is almost too refined for this style of watch. I am not too concerned about getting scratches on the acrylic crystal since I'm pretty easy on my watches. If I do scratch the crystal, Polywatch will easily restore it to perfection (just don't use toothpaste!).

The watch fits my skinny 6.5" wrists perfectly. The lugs extends just to the edges of my wrists, the way it should be. The lug-to-lug distance is 46mm. Its 38.5mm diameter (not including crown) will probably be too small for large-wristed people. The watch is quite thick (14mm), something I had to get used to.

The case is rather chunky but is a little lighter than I anticipated, although still quite heavy. The thick leather strap looked better in person than in pics but was very stiff at first. It took some manual bending to break in. I installed an 18mm RHD double-fold deployant clasp (www.mywatchmaker.net) which made the watch wear more comfortably and makes it MUCH easier to strap on. The thick strap is quite hard to buckle up. IME, deployants make straps wear and feel more like bracelets. I got the polished deployant beadblasted by Jack at IWW to match the case. Interestingly, I found it necessary to keep the protective sticker on the back of the watch in order for me to wear it comfortably. The sticker's surface provides enough "tack" to allow the watch to stay in place on my wrist. Without the sticker, the caseback is relatively slippery and the heavy watch was always sliding down my wrist.

This watch is great in that it also shows the day of week, which I sometimes forget. I almost bought an Omega Speedy Pro Moon watch instead of the 356, but finally decided against it because of the lack of a date window, a much needed feature for me. I also think the Speedy would have been a little too big for me anyways.

The finish on this 356 is completely impeccable, even by my extremely strict standards. Of the more than dozen watches that I've bought, nearly all of them had some minor cosmetic flaw(s) (e.g. a scratched crystal on a "new" Seiko OM). Bad luck, I guess. It was a relief to finally get a watch that was completely blemish-free finish out of the box. There is an extremely slight "wavyness" of the surface of the case on the 9 o'clock side which is visible under bright light and certain sharp viewing angles. Not sure if this should be considered a defect or not.

The legibility is excellent. To me, the large arabic numbers takes less "mental processing" to tell the time, as opposed to having just stick markers at the hour markers (like the Speedy for example). The timekeeping seems to be pretty accurate, running about 3 seconds fast per day.

One very minor flaw is that the hand on the seconds subdial is VERY slightly out of alignment with the markers, but I guess this is acceptable (see pic link below). A quirky thing is that there is no lume at the 12, 3, 6 and 9 o'clock positions, so in darkness, the dial looks "incomplete." Since this watch uses an ETA-7750 movement, it exhibits the infamous "7750 wobble" which manifests itself as whirring and zipping sounds coming from inside the watch. These sounds are normal and is a peculiarity of all 7750-derived movements. I personally think it's cool.

Anyways, I'm really pleased with this watch. It is actually the first time I've even touched a mechanical chronograph, let alone owned one. I can see that it will likely get the most wrist time of any other watch in my collection.


More pics...
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d1...s/sinnback.jpg
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d1.../sinnright.jpg
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d1.../sinnclasp.jpg
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d1...inncloseup.jpg