Aloha Everyone,
We finally have finished production on the first 500 Benthic-Ti watches, and the nice Mr. Fedex man (Tim) brought by the sample for me to sign off on. It looks massive and magnificent! 48mm of solid Ti is a good thing.
Here's a pic and I'll post some specs as well.
Specifications:
Name : Benthic Ti
Movement: 15"' Ronda 7003.N quartz movement with solid brass plates and 4 jewels.
Functions: Time with Large Date and Retrograde Day Complications
Case Diameter: 48.0 mm
Case Height: 15.0 mm
Case material: solid Grade 5 Titanium, including solid Ti crown, bezel, tang buckle and movement holder.
Crystal: 3.8mm anti-reflection coated sapphire
Water Resistance: 200M
Comes with 24mm waterproof leather strap and 24mm rubber Diver strap.
Price: $995
Versions: With matte black dial (shown), with a Bronze sunbrushed dial (my fave), and with a gen-u-wine carbon fiber dial.
Here's the various dial options
And here's a couple pix of the movement and the components..
Basically we designed this watch to withstand anything we can throw at it. It's not pretty - it's just built for survival. I wanted a timepiece that came as close to 'indestructible' as possible. And this is not just marketing hype. Once we get a few of these watches in hand next month, I plan to do full-on destructive testing - well beyond what we already do - but destructive testing, like whacking the watch with sledgehammers and dragging it for miles behind the car. (As you might remember, we already BAKED this movement extensively on molten lava last year, see the video here - but it is still running on the bench right now.)
I really want to see exactly what it will take to break this mutha.
It was pretty funny because as we sat down last year and designed this watch my Swiss technical manager was getting very uneasy as I kept discussing an "indestructible" timepiece.
"Well, of course we cannot guarantee this type of performance", he would say in a very polite Swiss way.
"But we want to throw it off a 1000m rock wall and have it keep running", we said. "Or heat it to 500 Cº. Or leave it in the ocean for 6 months".
"Well...I'm not so sure about this" he'd say.
And of course I felt bad for him, because this is how Swiss people are (not to stereotype too much, but it's true...). If they say it can be done, it better well CAN be done.
So we backed down from making him responsible for all the bad things we want to do to the watch, and just decided to make it as strong and water resistant as we could.
But we'll get back to you with the results of the sledgehammer test...;-)
I expect to get the "what, a thousand bucks for a quartz watch?!" comments, but our goal was to make the absolute most tank-like watch we could, and use the best materials possible. I think we succeeded wildly.
And of course we already make an automatic watch that is only $100 more, so we offer lots of ways to skin a cat. b-)
Couple more things...We decided to not raise our prices this year as a way of doing our part to keep Bathys watches affordable and to show some Aloha to our Ohana.
Also we're down to the last 10-20 of the 2892-based watches such as the Benthic and the Aquaculture. I spotted the very last Rose-Ti bezel Benthic at Grandes Gems last week - I thought it was all sold out, but they've got the last 'un. If you are trying to find a specific model, you can call around to our dealers or shoot an email to our US Distrbutor, Brad Hendrich (brad@picciones.com).
I'll be posting about Baselworld 09l later on, but if you are anywhere near Basel, please come by and hang out in Hall 5 with me and the crew. It's March 27th-April 3rd this year. If you email me in advance, I can make arrangements to get you in for free and am happy to do it.
As always, many thanks to our customers and supporters.
Cheers,
John
ps. Ernie - I just saw I was a "Sponsor" by my avatar. How cool. I'm always the "newbie", or the "just surfed in", or the "sunday mechanic", but never anything so important-sounding!
We finally have finished production on the first 500 Benthic-Ti watches, and the nice Mr. Fedex man (Tim) brought by the sample for me to sign off on. It looks massive and magnificent! 48mm of solid Ti is a good thing.
Here's a pic and I'll post some specs as well.
Specifications:
Name : Benthic Ti
Movement: 15"' Ronda 7003.N quartz movement with solid brass plates and 4 jewels.
Functions: Time with Large Date and Retrograde Day Complications
Case Diameter: 48.0 mm
Case Height: 15.0 mm
Case material: solid Grade 5 Titanium, including solid Ti crown, bezel, tang buckle and movement holder.
Crystal: 3.8mm anti-reflection coated sapphire
Water Resistance: 200M
Comes with 24mm waterproof leather strap and 24mm rubber Diver strap.
Price: $995
Versions: With matte black dial (shown), with a Bronze sunbrushed dial (my fave), and with a gen-u-wine carbon fiber dial.
Here's the various dial options
And here's a couple pix of the movement and the components..
Basically we designed this watch to withstand anything we can throw at it. It's not pretty - it's just built for survival. I wanted a timepiece that came as close to 'indestructible' as possible. And this is not just marketing hype. Once we get a few of these watches in hand next month, I plan to do full-on destructive testing - well beyond what we already do - but destructive testing, like whacking the watch with sledgehammers and dragging it for miles behind the car. (As you might remember, we already BAKED this movement extensively on molten lava last year, see the video here - but it is still running on the bench right now.)
I really want to see exactly what it will take to break this mutha.
It was pretty funny because as we sat down last year and designed this watch my Swiss technical manager was getting very uneasy as I kept discussing an "indestructible" timepiece.
"Well, of course we cannot guarantee this type of performance", he would say in a very polite Swiss way.
"But we want to throw it off a 1000m rock wall and have it keep running", we said. "Or heat it to 500 Cº. Or leave it in the ocean for 6 months".
"Well...I'm not so sure about this" he'd say.
And of course I felt bad for him, because this is how Swiss people are (not to stereotype too much, but it's true...). If they say it can be done, it better well CAN be done.
So we backed down from making him responsible for all the bad things we want to do to the watch, and just decided to make it as strong and water resistant as we could.
But we'll get back to you with the results of the sledgehammer test...;-)
I expect to get the "what, a thousand bucks for a quartz watch?!" comments, but our goal was to make the absolute most tank-like watch we could, and use the best materials possible. I think we succeeded wildly.
And of course we already make an automatic watch that is only $100 more, so we offer lots of ways to skin a cat. b-)
Couple more things...We decided to not raise our prices this year as a way of doing our part to keep Bathys watches affordable and to show some Aloha to our Ohana.
Also we're down to the last 10-20 of the 2892-based watches such as the Benthic and the Aquaculture. I spotted the very last Rose-Ti bezel Benthic at Grandes Gems last week - I thought it was all sold out, but they've got the last 'un. If you are trying to find a specific model, you can call around to our dealers or shoot an email to our US Distrbutor, Brad Hendrich (brad@picciones.com).
I'll be posting about Baselworld 09l later on, but if you are anywhere near Basel, please come by and hang out in Hall 5 with me and the crew. It's March 27th-April 3rd this year. If you email me in advance, I can make arrangements to get you in for free and am happy to do it.
As always, many thanks to our customers and supporters.
Cheers,
John
ps. Ernie - I just saw I was a "Sponsor" by my avatar. How cool. I'm always the "newbie", or the "just surfed in", or the "sunday mechanic", but never anything so important-sounding!