February 1st
At this time I have to push the lead times for custom watches out to 16 weeks. The reason that the lead times have jumped so suddenly is because I am almost out of 2824 movements and I will be taking some time off in April/May right after the Basel show. The remaining movements that we have on hand are going to be reserved for the upcoming Stingray launch so that we can minimize any delays before our next movement order is due in from ETA in June. The movement delivery timetable gave me a natural window to take my wife and daughter to visit my in-laws. So tentatively we will be “out” between April 11th and May 20th. I do expect the lead times to naturally come down to a more normal level as April approaches.
Below are two custom MMT “Blackwaters” that we just shipped out. I’ll post pics of two Seikos that we finished in a little bit.
The pre-order page for the Stingray will be going up probably later today. I didn’t get to finishing up the page today.
Mk II Stingray Update: Stingray 50
The first sample dials arrived earlier this month. The dial needs a minor adjustment but the quality of the print and lume look very good. The date window was stamped using the wrong specs so the date window is too far away from the center of the dial and the window itself is a hair too big. Those issues will naturally corrected before mass production. The current view of the watch somewhat minimizes the misalignment. The design itself is one of the most readily identified with the vintage Blancpain “Fifty Fathoms” name and was featured on a number of military issued pieces in a wide range of different case styles in the 60s and 70s.
I placed the date window at 4.30 because it minimizes the impact on the symmetry of the overall design. While purists would argue that the original design didn’t feature a date display I feel that utility has to take priority. The final date wheels will be black with white text to further tone-down the date window. One of the primary reasons that I chose to have the text printed vertically is so that left-handed customers or those that choose to wear their watches on the right hand will have an easier time reading the date. I have heard from a number of left-handed customers that they generally dislike the traditional 4.30 date window orientation because it is awkward to read from the right wrist.
“Stingray 50″…no this isn’t a typo and you aren’t seeing things. There are two bezels for the Stingray that will be almost identical except for one detail. The bezel insert for the Stingray 50 bezel is smaller in diameter than the 60 but the bezels are the same overall diameter. There have been so many different “Fifty Fathoms” that I couldn’t really pick just one style that I wanted to work with so I choose a sample of three vintage styles. I had calls from customers to work with the “big-bezel” version, hence the 60, but in my humble opinion the very first bezel version from 1953 is the most elegant. So despite is similarity to the 60 I decided to offer this version as well. If the 50 and 60 bezels cause too much confusion I will only offer the more popular of the two after the pre-orders are completed.
In a few days we will begin taking pre-order deposits for the Stingray on the main Mk II site. Since there are still a few items outstanding, such as the hands and other options, those interested won’t be asked to select any options just to purchase a “place-in-line” so to speak.
The final hands for this dial will be arriving in February so I will post another update once those are in. I literally just received the first trial run of the acrylic inserts and after I have a chance to experiment with them I will report back on the feasibility of this option. In the meantime let me know what you think of the way the project is shaping up!
Recent custom Seikos
After fighting with the camera and my photography for a number of years now I can’t tell you how excited I am to finally be producing photos that truly compliment my work. Attached are two photos of Seikos that I finished recently. I wish I had had the set up that I do now three years ago but at least the last group of Seikos that I will be working on will be catalogued the way I had always hoped. But at least I will be able catalog our up coming product launches as well as the current MMT and QUAD10 watches as new versions are finished for customers.
Since I won’t be offering the Seikos directly any more and I have decided to limit our strap options to one or two styles as soon as our current stocks run out I am listing recommended sources for watches and parts that we won’t be offering. The vendors listed are people or companies that I have done business with for quite some time and/or have a good reputation in the wider watch community.
Thanks to Jaimie (aka SOXC) we have a new SPAM filter too so once again readers will be able to post on the blog.
January 23rd
I am about 80% better now and orders are finally going out the door again at a reasonable pace. Over the course of the week I will be getting to the e-mails that have backed up.
For those customers waiting for a confirmation of their orders we are finally caught up for orders placed up until about 3 pm Monday. My apologies for the lower service level that a few customers experienced as my cold was keeping me from a normal pace last week.
One other quick note about lead times…in about a week or so they will unfortunately shoot up to about 16 weeks because of some traveling that I have scheduled in April/May. This will mean that orders for custom watches placed after roughly this week, give or take a few days, will be delivered in June. Naturally for those customers that place orders hoping for a March delivery but receive an estimated deliivery date in June and want to cancel their orders your request will be graciously accomodated as I know this an abnormally long lead time even for me.
More news in coming days…..Thanks for everyone’s patience and support while I was sick this month.
January 12th
Orders and the processing of new orders has been going very slow this week. I have been sick for the past 10 days and it came to a head this week. I basically have been asleep for the last 2 days. At the moment I am about 2 weeks behind schedule on watch orders and about 1 week behind on parts shipments. My apologies for this inconvenience. I expect to ship some orders tomorrow and re-organize the schedule over the weekend.
January 9th
I know this isn’t what many of you were exactly waiting for but we have made some more investments into lighting/photographic equipment. I hope that this time around with the Stingray when it begins to ship and with future Blackwater orders that we will be posting more actual photos of the watches that we build for customers. The problem that I have had for quite some time is being able to take consistent photographs quickly. Finally after doing quite a bit of research over the holidays we gathered the equipment that finally looks like its doing the trick.
In the photograph below is a picture of my own personal MMT. It features the Sea Serpent hand set which I hope that I will finally get around to posting on the site for sale in the next few weeks. The big thing for me is that finally the picture of the hands actually reflects the actual color orange and didn’t take hours of post-production clean-up and fiddling. The additional Stingray photos that will be going up soon will benefit from better quality and more realistic representations than in the past. Moreover we should be able to produce more of them. I hope that you will enjoy the picture attached below.
January 5th
Happy new year to everyone!
I will finally be answering the phone and working down the e-mails in my inbox starting Friday. When I got back from NYC last week I tried taking a vitamin with a ginseng extract in it. Unfortunately I was taking the vitamin about 11.30 at night and for five days couldn’t figure out why I would sleep for only three hours, then was completely wired for the next 4 hours and then slept for 9 hours after that. As a result I ended up completely strung out and on Hawaii time until I realized those damned vitamins were actually keeping me up. It took me much of this week to get back to a normal schedule again. The rest of my time has been spent cleaning up the mess around the office from the Holiday season shipments.
A photo of a pre-production sample of the first dial for the Stingray will be posted in about a week. We should also have a couple more interesting announcements to make this month so please stay tuned!
Unfortunately I have had to fully moderate the blog now. Comments will only be allowed for certain threads to keep the SPAMers at bay. I get about 200-300 SPAM messages a week advertising some of the wierdest most random junk imagineable and I was getting tired of taking out the trash all the time.