January 14th 2024 was a memorable day in Denmark. On this day Her Majesty the Queen abdicated after exactly 52 years on the throne. More than half a century she had been a beacon, the monark, and an institution that the Danes are immensely proud of.
The abdication, which was the first of its kind in almost 900 years, made way for her first-born son, Crown Prince Frederik. Frederik, a father of four and married to Crown Princess Mary of Australian origin, took the reigns and became King Frederik X.
Why is this even remotely relevant in a story about NATO straps? There are several reason for that. King Frederik is what is known in Danish as a 'frømand', which is the name of a member of The Frogman Corps -a maritime special operations force of the Danish Armed Forces. It compares to US Navy Seals or the UK Special Boat Service. It is an elite force and it requires extraordinary skills and stamina to graduate from the extremely tough training. Since its inception in 1957 only 311 have graduated and the King is one of them.
On the day of his coronation he wore an Omega Seamaster special edition, made for the Frogman Corps, and he wore it on a NATO strap. Of all the watches he could have chosen for this very special occasion he went with a relatively humble Seamaster on an even more humble grey NATO strap!
Photo: Getty Images
After wearing our admiralty grey NATO strap for a month now, I have fallen back in love with it. At Enoksen, we have introduced a number of new straps and bracelets recently, which has made us somewhat forget about the NATO strap.
It is nonetheless extremely comfortable to wear, robust, elegant, secure, and as relevant in the surf as it is in the board room. Perhaps most of all - a great companion to any tool watch, and a strap that doesn’t try to upstage the timepiece it’s attached to.
Even though the NATO strap has been the choice of professionals for more than 50 years, it has taken some time for it to capture the imagination of the masses and to achieve mainstream popularity. The recent coronation in Denmark will no doubt change that.
It is ideally suited for an active lifestyle, yet retaining an elegance and suitability for everyday use.
The straps are made from fast drying ballistic nylon webbing that allows it to be easily washed and dried within minutes, living up to its low maintenance reputation. This means that the NATO strap will not rot or break like conventional leather and silicon straps, straps that have been the more popular choice in the past.
The admiralty grey NATO strap was the first colour chosen by the UK Ministry of Defence in 1973. All subsequent NATO straps trace their origins back to this particular variant. The original specification of what we today term "the NATO strap" was laid down by the UK Ministry of Defence and was called Defence Standard 66-47 Issue 2 Publication Date 30 March 2001. The specifications which preceded this were Def Stan 66-47 Issue 1 dated 13 November 1992 and two earlier standards, Def Stan 66-15 (Part 1) Issue 1 – Strap (Nylon) dated 30 November 1973 and Def Stan 66-15 (Part 2) Issue 1 – Strap (Leather/Nylon) dated 31 January 1974.
Nearly 50 years on, this choice has since expanded from grey to RAF Blue, Black, Navy Blue, and then to the iconic James Bond dark grey/light grey pattern strap as well as Olive Green. Following these, a large number of variants in regimental colours, such as Search and Rescue SAR (bright orange) and different designs in national colours, police unit colours and various camouflage options for specific situations. The high-tech, ballistic nylon webbing is ideally suited for use in military watch straps due to its robustness, comfort and resilience.
With credentials like this, the NATO watch strap is perfect for all extreme activities. The design characteristics reduce the total risk of losing a watch to virtually zero thanks to its clever yet simple design. These straps are held securely at two different points, making it very difficult for it to come off the wrist.
Beyond the UK, NATO straps are frequently used by military units around the world, having a large fan base among serving military to use on a wide variety of military watches.
So in summary the NATO strap is what you should wear your watch on when you have action on the agenda. Be it diving, hiking, cycling, riding, climbing - anything where you need accurate time keeping, and where you run the risk of losing your watch to the elements. And as the King of Denmark (who is also a Deep Dive owner - but that is a totally different story) demonstrated, the NATO strap can really be worn in style on even the grandest of occasions.
]]>This time we are taking a closer look at motorsport watches, or rather, watches and brands that you associate with motor racing. Timing is obviously essential in racing, so what defines a motorsport watch is the ability to time a sector, a lap or an entire race. To do so, a certain class of watch known as a chronograph - a term which originates from the greek word khronográphos or ‘time recording’ - was created.
A chronograph has an in-built stopwatch which is operated by one or two pushers on the side of the watch. The upper pusher located at two o’clock starts and stops the stopwatch whilst the lower pusher at four o’clock resets the stop watch. In the one-pusher configuration, the pusher performs both start, stop, and reset.
Clocks with a time recording capability have existed since the early 1800s, but it wasn’t until 1915 that Gaston Breitling produced the first chronograph with a central second hand and a 30-minute counter. In 1923, he introduced the first chronograph with a separate pusher at 2 o'clock. In 1934, Gaston’s son - Willy Breitling - further developed the chronograph with the addition of the second pusher at 4 o'clock. So it is fair to say that Breitling as a company led the way for chronograph watches as we know them today.
As is the case with aviation watches, motorsport, and motoring in general, the development of the chronograph has sparked countless collaborations between watchmakers and racing teams. Williams, McLaren, Aston Martin, Jaguar, Bentley, Porsche - they have all engaged in various associations with watchmakers over the years.
Most of these associations have been seasonal and relatively short-lived, and they are not the focus of this article. Instead, what we are looking at here are the enduring, long term partnerships that have created some of the most desirable watch classics around. Collaborations that have since taken on a life of their own.
One such collaboration is the long standing partnership between Heuer and the Steve McQueen estate. It began in 1971 when Steve McQueen made the film ‘Le Mans’. His character in the film, Michael Delaney, wore a Heuer Monaco watch. It wasn’t until 1985 that Heuer was acquired by Techniques d'Avant Garde and became Tag Heuer… so at the time the company was simply known as Heuer.
For the film, McQueen had the choice of watch from; Rolex, Omega, Tissot, Heuer and Bulova. Each brand had submitted a number of watches for consideration in exchange for some good close up shots in the film. Apparently, his preference lay with the timepieces submitted by Omega. Prior to selecting the watch, McQueen had already picked the white Nomex driver’s suit which he is seen wearing in the movie. This costume had a big HEUER Chronograph sticker near the right collar, completely swaying his decision towards Heuer. To everyone’s surprise, he went with the unorthodox Heuer Monaco rather than the more obvious Autavia or Carrera models. The rest is history and to this day what is now Tag Heuer is making heavy use of the Le Mans film in it’s advertising. The Heuer Monaco has undergone subtle changes over the years but remains true to the original format.
To this day , ‘Le Mans’ remains one of the best motor racing movies ever made. Perhaps this was due to Steve McQueen being the biggest star at that time or because he was a first class racing driver who finished 2nd in the 12-hour Sebring endurance race in 1970 - as a 40 year old!
Today, Steve McQueen is still a poster boy for Tag Heuer - pretty impressive considering that he has been dead for 40 years this year.
Heuer was a dominating force in Formula 1 timekeeping and they held a longstanding sponsorship agreement with Ferrari. We are talking about the 1970s here - a decade of death, sex, drugs and rock’n’roll in Formula 1. Just watch ‘RUSH’ and you will know what we mean.
Ever-present in motorsport timekeeping is also Rolex, whose failed moon watch became revered among both racers and their fans. Indeed so revered that a watch belonging to actor and gentleman racer Paul Newman fetched a record 17.8 million USD at auction back in 2017. The watch, a 6263 Daytona, was a present from his wife back in 1968. She bought it from Tiffany & Co. in New York and had it engraved with the message “Drive carefully, me”, in a bid to encourage him to take care while indulging in his favourite hobby.
Over the years, Paul Newman owned a number of Rolex Daytona models but the 6263 Panda is the most famous of them all.
Rolex has a number of racing legends as ambassadors or ‘Testimonees’ as they call them. Sir Jackie Stewart, Nico Rosberg, Mark Webber and fellow Dane Tom Kristensen are all part of the Rolex team.
The brand has pretty much cleaned up when it comes to sponsoring premiere motorsports events, being the Official Timepiece of Formula 1 since 2013. The brand is also Official Timepiece of the FIA World Endurance Championships, Le Mans 24 and Daytona 24.
Our journey to a driver’s chronograph
Back in 2020 we introduced our first chronograph.
When designing the DRIVE models, we went back to the roots of driver’s chronographs and spent nearly two years in the design and development phase.
Before we began the process, we set ourselves some challenges and requirements that the watch had to meet:
First and foremost we wanted an uncluttered watch dial. Both for legibility, but also because we believe that the vast majority of chronographs available today are too noisy and over-designed.
We wanted a modern, yet old-school look and feel, and also a clear lineage to other Enoksen models, especially the Deep Dive.
We needed the watch to be true to our utility watch ethos, i.e. that it was suitable for an active lifestyle including water sports and diving.
The result of our efforts is the DRIVE E04/A and E04/B.
With special embedded pushers, a screw-down crown, and a sapphire crystal, the watch has a 10ATM water resistance level that makes it suitable for all types of water sports. The stopwatch was made to perform like an old school stopwatch, complete with the ticking and the fly-back reset feature.
Next chapter in our chronograph story is the KRONO E08. We've taken everything we learned from the DRIVE E04 and channeled it into a new and smaller watch. Measuring 39mm excluding the crown, KRONO is 4mm smaller than the DRIVE, and it also has screw-down pushers. Like the DRIVE, KRONO is perfect for a truly active lifestyle, and it has not the slightest issue with being in the water.
KRONO is different in the sense that each colour combination is made in a limited run, and once sold out, will not re-appear in that combination again. It makes the watch highly collectible and exclusive and you are unlikely to meet anyone with the same watch.
]]>Actually, Bond’s love for watches is well articulated in the works of Ian Fleming, so it wasn’t much of a surprise that 007 began in style when he appeared in the surf of a Jamaican beach, chatting up the lovely Honey Ryder. We are several years away from deliberate and sponsored product placement, and there is plenty of speculation as to how Sean Connery got in possession of the Submariner reg. 6538 he is seen wearing, not only in Doctor No but also in the following 5 films.
The fabulous Submariner 6538
Some claim that it was property of Mr. Broccoli himself, others say that it was owned by one of the crew on the film set. What seems certain is that Rolex as a company didn’t pay a penny for this unique piece of plugging. The last 57 years of Bond has seen watch brands come and go, but in overall terms you can talk about three significant but very different eras:
The Rolex Era 1962-1975
The Seiko Era 1975-1985
The Omega Era 1995-present
The Rolex Era
It couldn’t have been any different – Bond had to wear a Rolex, and in the first 9 films at least one Rolex watch is involved. In some of the films there were actually more than one. Always the trusty Submariner, but Bond wasn’t the only person wearing Geneva’s finest. In Goldfinger, Bond’s love interest Pussy Galore is wearing a Rolex GMT-Master ref. 6542 while piloting the newly captured 007 across the Atlantic.
The GMT-Master ref. 6542 as worn by Pussy Galore in Goldfinger
Another significant, but easily overlooked, Rolex moment is when the brilliant Christopher Lee, aka Scaramanga, aka The Man With the Golden Gun is sporting the ultra rare Rolex Cellini King Midas.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service from 1969 featured a new Bond in George Lazenby, and he got to wear two different Rolex models during his only appearance as 007. Most of the time he was wearing a Submariner ref. 5513, but in a certain scene, the stopwatch built into his white-faced Chronograph ref. 6238 allows him to time the movement of a ski gondola during an escape from the villain’s lair high up in the Swiss Alps.
The ultra-rare Chronograph ref. 6238 worn by George Lazenby in OHMSS
So far the Bond watches had been completely gadget free. Other than look good, they just told the time. The exception to that rule was a special edition of the peculiar looking Breitling Top Time used in Thunderball in 1965. Actually the watch used in the film was a modified version of the Top Time chronograph which had been treated to a steel bracelet and an odd looking collar which wrapped around the bezel of the watch.
This watch was fitted with a Geiger counter, which Bond put to good use while investigating Emilio Largo.
Sean Connery had called it a day in 1967, but his replacement George Lazenby had failed to capture the imagination of Bond fans around the world. Despite of that he was offered a contract for an additional four films. Rumour has it that Lazenby’s manager advised him against signing up for that, apparently because he felt that the Bond franchise was over the hill. Possibly some of the worst advise in the history of motion pictures.
As a result, Connery was persuaded to come back for a final hurrah in 1971. Diamonds are Forever, a rather strange and plot-less film saw a Bond with big Elvis-style sideburns, and it was clear that Connery’s best years as 007 were well and truly behind him. From a watch perspective this rather kitsch Bond film was nothing to write home about either.
The modified Breitling Top Time from Thunderball
Enter Roger Moore - the smooth heartthrob who had played The Saint during the 1960s, and who also starred alongside Tony Curtis in The Persuaders, driving a mustard yellow Aston Martin DBS, was cast to take over from Connery. The Q branch that provides 007 with field equipment had also been hard at work. What looked just like a run-of-the-mill Submariner ref. 5513 was packed with new features, and the watch had a built-in ultra powerful magnet, which Bond used to save his life at least twice in two hours, but also to unzip the dress of the stunning Miss Caruso in the pre-title sequence. Even the rotating bezel worked as a circular saw, which got Bond and Miss Solitaire out of trouble in the final scene.
The Man With The Golden Gun from 1975 would be the last film in which a Rolex watch was used, and apart from a brief appearance in the 1989 film Licence to Kill, the Rolex era was over. Considering how long ago it is, the Rolex era still stands out as truly remarkable.
The modified Submariner ref. 5513. Note the saw-tooth edge on the bezel and the red hour markers
The Seiko Era
By 1977 007 had gone digital. Analogue watches were passé, and the Swiss watch industry was nearly killed off by a tsunami of Japanese digital watches. On the wrist, where a beautiful Submariner used to roam, was now something as un-exotic as a digital Seiko watch.
Purists were disgusted but the new generation of Bond fans who were too young to remember the glory days of Sean Connery didn’t mind.
It was a bit like a stone age Apple Watch. Bond’s Seiko watches could do remarkable things like send and receive messages and set off explosions. The Seiko reg. M354 used in Moonraker packed its own explosives, and saved Bond and Holly Goodhead from certain death and cremation.
When you watch the Bond films from 1977-1985 the digital timepieces seem out of place and not at all in line with the style and grace of Roger Moore. The poor man had to contend with digital watches until his very last film in 1985. In A View to a Kill Seiko was still the watch partner, but at least 007 got to wear two different analogue watches, which helped a bit.
The ageing Roger Moore had packed it in after A View to a Kill in 1985, and that also marked the end of the Seiko era.
The brilliant and classically trained stage actor Timothy Dalton took the reigns. Apparently Pierce Brosnan was meant to take over from Moore, but he was contractually bound to the TV-series Remington Steel and couldn’t be released.
Dalton’s Bond was mean and cynical and gone were the days of the smooth one-liners and the raised eyebrow. His wrist game was also different to what Moore’s had been. Gone were the gadget watches, and analogue watches were back in vogue.
In The Living Daylights he was wearing a Heuer Ref. 980.031 Night Dive, and in his second and last film, Licence to Kill he is suddenly wearing a contemporary Rolex Submariner Ref. 16610.
The Tag Heuer ref. 980.031 Night Dive worn by Timothy Dalton's Bond
It was as if the Bond franchise didn’t know where it was going, and after 1989 the 007 saga went into its longest ever hibernation. Since 1962 there had typically been no more than two years between the films, but now Bond went AWOL for six years.
The Omega Era
After such a long absence it would take something special to bring Bond back to relevance. The impasse that had prevented Brosnan from taking the role had now been sorted, and he was finally confirmed as the man who was chosen to take Bond into a world which was no longer as black and white as it used to be.
The cold war had ended, the Soviet Union had collapsed, and from the ashes rose a large number of new countries, each with a unique set of challenges. Being a cold war phenomenon, Bond also had to find his place in this brave, new world.
Bond returned in Goldeneye, initially behind the wheel of his trusty Aston Martin DB5, racing a gorgeous brunette in a Ferrari 355 through the mountains around Monaco. Looking smug and wearing an… Omega Seamaster ref. 2541.80.00. Out of nowhere came the proud Swiss brand, which had barely survived the digital massacre of the 1970s and 1980s, now looking for a new platform to rebuild its brand from.
The Omega Speedmaster 300m ref. 2541.80.00 worn in Goldeneye
It seems they found it in the Bond franchise. The newly released Speedmaster 300M became the choice of 007, and the world went mad for it. At a certain stage of the film Omega was retrofitted into the history of MI6, when the former 006-agent-turned-villain had captured Bond and taken his watch from him. He compared the watch to his own Omega service watch, which he was still wearing.
In the Brosnan films that followed Goldeneye, he remained faithful to the Seamaster 300M, albeit with an automatic movement rather than the quartz version from the first film.
By the turn of the millennium Brosnan had three films to his name and it was as if they gradually got worse. There was fierce competition from both Jason Bourne and Ethan Hunt, and Bond could no longer lay exclusive claim to the spy universe.
The franchise had well and truly lost its way, and Brosnan’s final stint as Bond was particularly embarrassing. By all means, there were still Aston Martins and beautiful girls, but the absence of a proper plot necessitated the use of pointless and ridiculous gadgets that really belonged in the Marvel sequels. It was as if Bond was torn between the jovial one-liners of the Moore era and the toughness of the Connery era.
Many people felt that Bond had nowhere to go from here, but the franchise reinvented itself yet again. It would take something as unlikely as a blond Bond to reignite the passion for the world of 007. Almost designed to be a prequel to previous Bond films, Daniel Craig arrived on the scene and served a big slice of humble pie to all the critics who had defamed him on social media, from the time he was announced as Bond. Already an accomplished and respected actor he took on 007 and made it his own. Bond was back in a raw and very genuine fashion with no ridiculous gadgets, just sheer passion and determination.
To mark that this was really a re-boot, the film was named Casino Royale after the very first of Ian Fleming’s books about Bond. Casino Royale had never been made into a film by the official Bond franchise, only as a spoof back in the early sixties.
Omega was still the brand of choice and the Seamaster Professional Planet Ocean ref. 2900.50.91 looked brilliant on the ultra-fit Craig. In fact he also found time to wear the updated version of the Seamaster 300M made famous by Pierce Brosnan. Featuring the new Co-Axial movement the 300M ref. 2220.80.00 was worn during the climax of the film.
Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean ref. 2900.50.91 worn by Daniel Craig in Casino Royale
To further show off the ambitions and the confidence of Omega, Eva Green’s Vesper Lynn famously mistakes Bond’s Omega for a Rolex.
The arrival of new Omega Seamaster models were expertly choreographed with the launch of the films. Gone are the days where the Bond film set had to use what happened to be to hand in terms of props.
Daniel Craig, himself known as a passionate collector of vintage Rolex watches became an Omega ambassador, both in the shape of being the current James Bond, but also as himself.
The Omega Seamaster 300 SPECTRE Special Edition
In the most recent film, No Time To Die, Daniel Craig made his 5th and final appearance as Bond, and it is safe to say that his successor has some very large shoes to fill.
Watch wise NTTD was of course Omega dominated and this time around it is not just James Bond who wears Omega. Both Miss Moneypenny and Bond’s replacement as 007, Miss Nomi, are sporting timepieces from the Swiss brand.
Bond himself wore the latest Seamaster in titanium, fitted to a barley/grey/black NATO strap, and with parchment markers on the dial. In what is a probably an attempt to give the watch more military clout the legendary Broadarrow symbol can be seen on the dial - a bit of a misrepresentation as this symbol is reserved for watches that are actually being used by the MOD. Nevertheless an unusual and strangely attractive watch which is guaranteed to appreciate in the future.
The Omega Seamaster DIVER 300M CO‑AXIAL MASTER CHRONOMETER 42 MM
The secrecy around the future plans for the franchise is testing the patience of 007 fans like us. We did however have the immense pleasure of playing a small role in the closest we've been to something Bond related: The new game show known as 007 - Road to a Million. Two of the the contestants, Jim O'Neil and his son Sam wore Enoksen watches during their assignments on the show.
As if to say a proper goodbye Daniel Craig caused a stir with his chosen outfit at the world premiere in London. A jacket which can best be described as strawberry red he rewrote the rule book for formal men’s wear. Watch fans noticed the white-faced 18k rose gold Omega Seamaster Aqua Terre on his wrist.
Photograph courtesy Getty images
Enoksen and Bond
At Enoksen we are huge fans of the Bond universe and we wanted to make a watch that pays tribute to the franchise. The result of our efforts is the Dive E02/JB. This quartz dive watch is a nod to the Submariner on a woven strap worn by Sean Connery in several of the early films, but in particular in Goldfinger from 1964.
Enoksen Dive E02/JB
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This might sound like a headline taken from a watch ad but rest assured - it is not.
So let’s begin. There once was a Dane called Henning Enoksen. He had extraordinary skills when it came to football, especially the art of scoring goals. As the papers said back then - he could kick a ball round a corner, or bend it like Beckham to use a contemporary phrase. It made him one of the most feared centre forwards of his generation, and the most scoring player in the history of the Danish football league.
When he finally hung up his boots he had 54 caps and an Olympic silver medal to his name. The resume could easily have ended here, filed amongst other past sporting heroes.
But Henning was not your average footballer. He was an academic with a very pragmatic, yet philosophical approach to life. He believed strongly in what he referred to as ‘The Whole Human Being’. It was based on the indisputable fact that life lasts for as long as you are here on this earth, and that one should make the most of it from start to finish. To him it was not enough to shine brightly for 10 years as a football star. He understood that it was necessary to be not only prepared for, but also to relish, the very different life that follows fame and being recognised everywhere you go.
He educated himself and made his wealth of experience and knowledge available to others. He taught thousands of school teachers, he established elite sports academies, he reformed Danish football in areas like the manager and referee education programmes, he travelled to every World Cup to learn and to observe, he trained with German Bundesliga teams, he became the manager of Iceland, and he helped lay down the tracks to allow Danish football to move from also-rans to a regular fixture in the world top 10 rankings.
He also raised a family and when he passed away in 2016 he left a legacy that inspired me to establish Enoksen Watch Company, based on the values he had based his life on:
1. Be on time
2. Be well prepared for whatever is on your agenda on any given day
3. Be in the moment and treat people with undivided interest and respect
4. Be impeccably dressed
5. Live below your means
Everyone can make a list of life rules but he actually lived by them. His rules also became a manifest of Enoksen Watch Company.
Many years ago, when it was time for me to have a proper watch instead of the digital contraptions worn by everyone back in the late 70s, he gave me a timepiece he had received back in 1959 as recognition from the Danish FA. Whilst he enjoyed the watch and what it represented, he rarely wore it himself due to its rather erratic timekeeping. A man obsessed with being on time could not have a watch that would potentially make him late.
It was not a particularly big watch and that somewhat bothered me. I was grateful for having been gifted it, but I was probably not old enough to appreciate its significance. So it travelled with me through life. Sometimes I would wear it for weeks on end, sometimes it would spend years in its little pouch. I would experiment with different straps but it always ended up with something in dark brown or black. It became my dress watch and in the end I only wore it with a dark suit or a black tie. One such occasion was my wedding - at that time my dad was too ill to attend, and I wore the watch in his honour.
The watch, in case you wonder, is an Omega Seamaster from the late 1950s with a case of steel and 9k gold. The movement is mechanical and it measures 34mm excluding the crown.
When my dad died back in 2016 the watch took on a whole new meaning to me. It embodied the 80 years he had spent trying to be a Whole Human, and it forever linked me to my roots, to my bloodline. I decided to finally address the issue that had compelled him to only use it on rare occasions: the appalling timekeeping. I had it sent to Omega in Switzerland for a full restoration including a full movement refurbishment and a calibration. I left the dial and the case untouched but it needed a new crown and a new crystal.
When it came back it was finally able to be a companion to someone living by the five rules above. I know I will cherish this watch for the rest of my life, and when the time comes I will make sure it moves on to the next generation so a new chapter can be written.
So back to the question asked in the headline: Can a watch change your life? I think it can and this watch has changed mine.
Hans Enoksen
]]>The Roam E07/A is the first ever GMT watch from Enoksen. We have been wanting to make an automatic GMT watch since day one, but the absence of reliable, yet affordable movement options meant that it took 5 years for us to get Roam into production.
Sure enough, there are plenty of Chinese clone movements out there to choose from, had we been that way inclined. There is also a number of really brilliant Swiss automatic options, but none of them were suitable for this project. Why? Because the idea was to make a timepiece that would raise the bar for how much automatic GMT watch you can get for substantially less than £500.
With the introduction of the Seiko NH34A movement we had finally found what we were looking for: a proper automatic GMT movement from a reputable manufacturer with whom we have been working since the very start.
With the movement being the last piece of the puzzle we could begin to move towards manufacturing and assembly.
Bi-directional ceramic bezel
One of the things we saw in the GMT watch market was a lot of corner-cutting. Not many affordable GMT watches have a bi-directional bezel. Most watches out there are effectively based on a diver’s watch with a uni-directional bezel with 60 or 120 clicks. Whilst that kinda works it also reveals a laziness we didn’t want for our entry into GMT land. In our view, a proper GMT watch has a bi-directional bezel with 24 clicks, one per hour. So that is exactly was made. And with a black ceramic insert which doesn’t scratch as easily as a steel or aluminium insert. The idea of a GMT watch is that you can adjust seamlessly between timezones and that is precisely what our bi-directional bezel enables you to do.
Action ready
One thing is having a watch that can tell time in 3 different locations at once, another is having a watch that can stand up to anything and everything you might subject it to once you reach your destination. We have always made robust utility watches that are ready for the surf or the mountains, and we had no intention of making Roam the exception to that rule.
Based on the popular 41mm Dive E02 case, Roam E07/A has the same superior 300m water resistance, screw-in crown and anti-reflective sapphire crystal. The watch is big enough to have a presence on the wrist, and not so big that it looks out of place on a smaller wrist.
Automatic movement
As mentioned, we have been waiting for years for Seiko to make some of their proprietary GMT movements available to OEM customers like Enoksen. With the arrival of the NH34a that has finally happened. Not only are our watchmakers trained in the Seiko automatic movement range, the NH34a also shares components with some of the other Seiko movements we already integrate in our watches. That means we hold all the necessary parts to allow us to repair and service the NH34a when that time comes.
As with all the Seiko NH models, the NH34a has really impressive features like 24 jewels, hacking, 41-hour power reserve, Diashock system, date, 21,600 bpm and of course a fourth hand in the shape of a 24-hour hand.
Ultimate legibility
The use of C3 Super-Luminova on the hands and on the hour markers secures superior legibility. The hands from Dive E02 have been recycled, and you might recognise the 12-hour hand with the integrated Enoksen logo. The 24-hour hand is red and adds a bit of colour contrast to the black dial and the steel hands and markers.
Strap choices
The lug width of the Roam is 20mm, which means that you can fit an unlimited amount of different strap designs on the watch. We have however decided to let the launch of the Roam E07/A coincide with the launch of our new Tropic strap made of vulcanised rubber. The new strap is both soft and durable, and it expels dust particles and remains clean and fresh, even with lots of wear. It come with quick release, allowing you to change it for another straps without having to use a pin tool.
Available is also our signature grey 20mm NATO strap and a stainless steel oyster bracelet.
The price of this watch is £375 including the black Tropic strap. Learn more here!
Quartz – the very mention of this word can make a seasoned watch enthusiast cringe. It is hard to refute that your average quartz movement is superior to even the most expensive of automatic movements in terms of reliability and accuracy.
It is incredible to think that quartz movements power the vast majority of wristwatches across the world, and for four very good reasons; 1) they are highly accurate, 2) they are less expensive to make, 3) they take less time to manufacture than their automatic counterparts and 4) they are more robust with fewer moving parts and therefore the ideal choice for field watches used by military, police etc.
However, no matter how compelling these arguments may be, they are wasted on a lot of people considering themselves as watch connoisseurs. That crowd looks at quartz a bit like a Michelin Star chef gazing contemptuously at a ready-made meal.
But is this fair? Pragmatically speaking, no it is not. The primal purpose of a watch is to tell the time as accurately as possible and, as it happens, quartz is the best choice for doing just that. This, however, might be a flawed argument, especially in this day and age where we have accurate time keepers in abundance…
Over 2 billion of us carry a smartphone, a timekeeping device which will keep us straight and read us the time with extreme accuracy and for all timezones.
Devilishly brilliant you might say.
Meanwhile, the utility of the watch as a keeper of time has shifted to that of a fashion item, sometimes acting as a statement of wealth or arguably as a statement of personality, expressing the way we view the world. In whichever light you choose, the demand for extreme accuracy has diminished.
Today you will probably survive the very best, even if your watch is a minute or two behind. But back to the original question at hand, after all we are in the business of watches, not smartphones… In order to understand why a connoisseur of watches may look down upon the humble quartz watch, it is important to look at their differences, historically and in their construction.
Automatic movements are 100% mechanical, relying on the energy generated from the motion of your arm. The movement of your arm and wrists triggers a rotor (which is sometimes visible on watches with a see-through caseback) which then winds the mainspring. The gathered energy releases from the mainspring through a barrel to the gear trains, powering the timepiece. This winding, storing and releasing of energy is why you may hear someone refer to an automatic movement as a self-winding movement.
Depending on the quality of the movement, the power reserve can be up to 90 hours. As long as someone wears the watch regularly or keeps it in a watch winder, it’ll continue to have power. This technology has been continually refined and in existence for nearly 300 years. The modern automatic watch truly came to be after World War II. Advancements in manufacturing techniques allowed for the complexity of an automatic watch to be manufactured small enough to fit on the wrist. The rest is history… so what about quartz?
The Patek Philippe Aquanaut fitted with the E19C Quartz movement
Quartz caliber movements operate entirely differently to an automatic, utilising an electrical current from a battery to excite a quartz crystal within the movement. This is known as piezo electricity and it works by electrically charging a quartz crystal which causes it to vibrate and emit a frequency. Through emitting this frequency, it begins to oscillate on the movement surfaces of the mechanism and drive the watch motor. Such a delicate harmony of highly precise vibration and oscillation manifests itself as the moving hands across the watch face. It is rather beautiful in its intricacy, yet telling the time this way has only existed for little over 50 years, despite its ubiquity in 2023.
Engineers of the Center Electronique Horloger in 1967 (from left to right) Charles-André Dubois, François Nikles, Jean Hermann, Richard Challandes and Charles Frossard
The late 1960s welcomed a new generation of watchmaking technologies, most notably with the introduction of the first quartz movement. Technologies developed in Japan and the United States allowed for timekeeping in this way to be miniaturised and manufactured fast and inexpensively. This triggered a chaotic period for traditional Swiss manufacturers between the 1970s and 1980s, a time that has come to be known as the Quartz Crisis.
In an effort to remain competitive in the face of Japanese and American products, twenty of the top Swiss watch brands decided to join forces and establish the Centre Electronique Horloger (CEH). In 1970, CEH unveiled to the world the legendary Beta 21 Quartz movement. This movement has found a home in many highly desirable time pieces, namely the OMEGA Electroquartz, the Rolex Oysterquartz, the IWC Da Vinci, and the Patek Philippe 3587. Time has judged these watches favourably and, as of this writing, they remain highly desirable to watch collectors and enthusiasts because of what they stand for. Their historical legacy is that of legitimising the quartz movement.
Rolex Oysterquartz
In 2023, the industry is still evolving and still improving the quartz movement with major players such as Breitling, Cartier, Tag Heuer and Citizen committing to perfecting this wonderful technology. The advent of smoother and more accurate quartz movements is nothing new, but it is rarer than you might think. Bulova partnered with Citizen in a bid to return to their roots, reexamining the 1960’s era Accutron tuning fork watches ahead of the model’s 60th Anniversary. The refined Precisionist line has a groundbreaking degree of smoothness, rivalling the smoothness of even the most prestigious automatic movements. Likewise, at Baselworld 2019, Citizen debuted the Eco-Drive Caliber 0100 – the most accurate wristwatch ever made.
Enoksen Drive E04/A Mecha-quartz Chronograph
Such feats of innovation, and a dedication to precision in timekeeping, surely must earn the quartz movement a place at the table with all the automatic movements.
The argument for and against quartz movements is undeniably a passionate one amongst watch enthusiasts. For the art of timekeeping and horology, the innovations that quartz movements have brought to wristwatch production is irrefutable. Rather than comparing quartz movements to automatic ones, it is perhaps more sensible if we examine and appreciate each as individuals. Both movements have brought breakthroughs, discoveries, and advances to the field of watchmaking.
Each movement has a story to tell, and at Enoksen we introduced a hybrid quartz watch to compliment our range of automatic dive and adventure watches back in 2019. Later, the Drive E04 range of chronograph watches followed, using a very sophisticated Seiko Mecha-Quartz movement.
As we evolve and learn from customer feedback, especially that of our professional users in military services and saturation diving, we realise how important quartz still is. The people whose livelihood (and sometimes their lives) depends on absolute accuracy and reliability prefer quartz to mechanical every day of the week. As a consequence we will embrace quartz movements much more from now on in.
The first example of that is two special editions of the Deep Dive E11 featuring a Swiss quartz movement with a 5-year battery life.
With the introduction of the new Krono E08 range in December 2023 we continue to build on the success of the Drive E04 range. Based on the premium VK63 Mecha-Quartz movement, Krono offers the best of both worlds with a mechanical stopwatch with Fly-back function, and the extreme accuracy of quartz to deliver hours, minutes and seconds.
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It was however not Glycine that gave GMT watches their wider appeal. Pan Am were the pioneers of long distance flights and they had a natural requirement for watches that could provide their pilots with crucial information about time. Rolex was approached and in 1954 they answered the call with the GMT-Master - a now iconic watch which is probably the first thing you think about if you hear the word ‘GMT’. Unlike the Airman, the GMT-Master had a 12-hour hand and a 24-hour hand, and you didn’t need to unlock the rotating bezel - it simply moved bi-directionally in one-hour increments.
Since the introduction of the Rolex GMT-Master, which is visually almost identical to the Submariner (probably not a coincidence), it has been the symbol of wanderlust and the good life, jetting across multiple timezones. Most major watch brands have since embraced the GMT concept and offered their take on a multi-time zone watch. It is however Rolex that leads the way, and over the years the GMT-Master has evolved both technically and visually, and can be had in various materials and with various bezel colours.
How does it work?
To understand GMT, you need to know about Coordinated Universal Time.
Coordinated Universal Time or UTC as it is illogically shortened, is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is within about one second of mean solar time at 0° longitude and is not adjusted for daylight saving time. It is effectively a successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) . All airborne vessels use UTC, so onboard a plane the time reference is always the same, regardless where in the world the plane is.
GMT movements
Many movement manufacturers make a GMT movement, and you can have both mechanical and quartz regulated variations. Overall there are two different types of GMT movements:
- The Traveller’s GMT
- The Caller GMT
The Traveller’s GMT movement
As the name suggests it is the superior solution for frequent travellers who travel across time zones and need to adjust their watches often.
A watch based on a Traveller’s GMT movement displays the time centrally with local hours and minutes and date. There is also a 24-hour hand so visually there is no difference between the two GMT movements. A watch can be equipped with either, but you would not know which one of the two it is until you rotate the crown. The big difference between the two is that the Traveller’s GMT allows you to turn the 12-hour hand in both directions in one-hour increments. Why is that smart you wonder?
Here is an example:
Let’s say you are based in London, and you board a flight to New York at 9pm in the evening of the 6th of January.
At this point the 24-hour hand points to 9pm (or 2100 hours) and the 12-hour hand also says 9 o’clock. The date window indicates that it is January 6th. When you arrive 6 hours later, the time according to your watch is 3am and the date now says January 7th. As New York is GMT -5 hours, you adjust the 12-hour hand by 5 hours by pulling out the crown to its second position, making it 10 o’clock local time. As you adjust the hour hand the Traveller’s GMT movement will also adjust the date back to the 6th of January, which it still is for 2 more hours in New York.
The result is that the date is correct, the time according to the 12-hour hand is 10pm local time, and the 24-hour hand points at 3am, which is the time in London where you just arrived from.
Up until recently watches with a Traveller’s GMT movement onboard were priced at about £3,000 and upwards. That has changed recently with the introduction of the Miyota 9075, which is a brand new movement that has an adjustable 12-hour hand, making it a true Traveller's GMT.
The Caller GMT movement
The Caller GMT movement (sometimes referred to as the Office GMT) is ideal for people who work in an international environment, with contacts located across multiple timezones. In essence the Office GMT is a standard 3-hand movement with a 4th hand added. The latter takes 24 hours to lap the dial.
The Caller GMT makes the assumption, that you are spending most of your time in one timezone, but you want to keep track of two additional timezones. For that purpose you can adjust the 24-hour hand independently, and set it at the timezone you need to track. So let’s assume you are in London and the time is 12 noon. Your colleagues are based in San Francisco, which is GMT -8 hours. That makes it 4am local time, and you now adjust the 24-hour hand to 0400 hours. There is also a team in New York that you like to track, and as they are in the GMT -5 timezone, you turn the bezel anti-clockwise by 3 hours, and voila - you can now see the time in London, New York and San Francisco at a glance.
When you travel with a Caller GMT movement based watch, you need a different approach to the example used above in the Traveller’s GMT description. You would simply leave the 12-hour hand alone and let it show London time during your stay in New York, and then adjust the 24 hour hand to reflect the time on location, ie the New York time. Or if you are staying for a longer period, do it the other way around.
The Caller GMT movement is not as complicated as the Traveller’s GMT and that is reflected in the price. You can assume that watches below £3,000 have a Caller GMT movement onboard. Popular automatic GMT movements like the ETA 2893-2, Seiko NH34, or the Sellita SW330-1 are all Caller GMT movements.
In summary
So which one should you choose? It is really a matter of your budget. If you have less than £3,000 to spend, and you want an automatic GMT watch, the decision has already been made for you. Visually there is no difference - you cannot spot one from the other, and the ability to track three time zones, one way or another, is available with both types of movement. In a perfect world you would pick a Traveller’s GMT, but the difference is insignificant, and there is a perfectly good work-around available if you find yourself travelling a lot with a Caller GMT based watch.
Enoksen and GMT
We introduced our first Enoksen GMT watch at the beginning of 2023. We had been on the lookout for a suitable movement for years without being able to find one that was made by a reputable company, was automatic, and was affordable. With the introduction of the Seiko NH34, the search was over. This new movement is based on the workhorse which is the NH35 - a movement that we have been using since we started the company, and which we have found to be both ultra reliable and easy to calibrate.
ENOKSEN ROAM - Expore the watch here
Our GMT watch is called Roam E07/A and it is based on the popular 40.8mm case we are already using for the Dive E02 models. Like the Dive E02 it has a 300m water resistance, anti-reflective sapphire crystal and drilled lugs. Most affordable GMT watches simply have rotating bezels with the same mechanics as a diver's watch. That means 60, 90, or 120 clicks and uni-directional rotation.
We wanted more than that so we created a bi-directional ceramic bezel with 24 clicks, which is the correct way to make a genuine GMT watch. Roam E07/A has the Seiko NH34 onboard and comes with our new vulcanised Tropic rubber strap, and a tapered oyster steel bracelet.
At the time of writing the Roam E07/A is priced at GBP 375.
Bronze watches have been gaining many new fans over these past few years, a growing interest which is easy to understand. A watch made from bronze rather than stainless steel offers a dynamic alternative for those who acknowledge and enjoy the forever changing colour and appearance of the watch. It is quite an enchanting process to follow over time, with each week revealing new and subtle changes over the previous. It is safe to say we are fans of this material, so how about a little bit of history…
The formidable Panerai Luminor Submersible 1950 Bronzo
Bronze as a material is man-made. You will have heard of the Bronze Age which began some 5,000 years ago. Back then, our ancestors created the first alloy made by man. Through a process of heating copper to 1000 degrees and adding Arsenic, the element As and not the poison, bronze was the product. It was found to be significantly tougher than copper and it was highly suitable for everything from weapons to tools. As the processes improved, Arsenic was soon replaced by Tin with the result remaining the same. Bronze in this guise ruled supreme until about 1200BC where iron took over. Iron was simply more abundant and when alloyed with carbon, you get steel.
The use of bronze for smaller items was well established by this time. The Romans however saw a greater potential in bronze for decorative and security purposes by cladding doors with the material. It would take until the Middle Ages for bronze to be more widely used in architectural applications. To this day, doors dating back to the 15th century and earlier still remain, a testament to the durability of this material. The majority of buildings that feature architectural bronze windows and doors and other decorative features date from the 18th and 19th Century, reflecting the taste and choices of that period.
Over the centuries, and after having been more and more marginalised by iron and steel, bronze has become a prized metal which is generally used on relatively small items of high value. Medals, sculptures and works of art are indicators as to the true worth of this material. The aesthetic qualities of bronze when considered with the sustainable and enduring properties of the material are a combination that will prove to be a long term investment to your home or project.
A beautiful bronze door and from the Antoni Gaudi designed Sagrada Familia in Barcelona
But one thing is the use of bronze for tooling, architecture and decorative purposes. Taking the material to a whole other level is the industrial use of bronze where it still leads the way over all other alloys. One industry that is particularly reliant on bronze is ship building. The world largest propeller which incidentally was built for the world's largest ship, the Danish Emma Maersk, is made of bronze - more specifically, an alloy consisting of copper, aluminium, nickel, iron, and manganese. The propeller is designed to move a seagoing vessel which measures a stunning 1,302 feet (397m). We would say let that sink in, but it seemed crass.
Made by the German company Mecklenburger Metallguss GmbH (MMG), the bronze propeller has a diameter of 31.5 feet (9.6 meters) and weighs over 130 tons. Because of its massive size, it required two weeks to cool after casting. After that, it took another three weeks of milling before it was ready for delivery and installation. Why is it that the marine industry favours bronze over other alloys? For starters no other alloy is more corrosion resistant than bronze. From a seafaring perspective, it is almost completely resistant to the growth of marine life like barnacles. These are two of the biggest obstacles in the shipping industry from an operational perspective, and bronze navigates them both.
Despite of the superior qualities of bronze corrosion resistance, it wasn’t until 1990 that the Swiss watch designer Gérald Genta penned the world’s first bronze divers watch. Keep in mind that this is long after steel had established itself as the preferred material for watches made for marine purposes. Strictly from a suitability perspective, every marine watch ought to be made of bronze rather than steel simply due to its reaction with water. Like steel, Bronze corrodes. Unlike steel however, bronze does not flake as it corrodes, rather it forms a hard coat which strengthens it and creates a protective layer. It is this layer that is an ever changing work of art, that you either love and respect, or absolutely dislike because it makes the watch case look worn. It is stronger and more dynamic over time.
At Enoksen we love bronze - both for its history, its robustness and its ever-changing appearance. To us, it makes perfect sense to offer a number of watches that celebrate the hard-wearing quality of bronze. Indeed we see bronze as the thinking man’s gold.
The latest addition to our range of bronze watches. Our signature watch is now available in solid bronze, and true to Deep Dive form this watch has all the features our customers have come to expect from a Deep Dive watch: 1,000m water resistance, triple-layer sapphire crystal, ceramic bezel, Helium Escape Valve, and the STP1-11 Swiss automatic movement.
The Fly E03/G
Our first bronze watch is the Fly E03/G. This watch is a tribute to the proud aviation history of our hometown, Belfast. Despite the aviation inspired design, the Fly E03/G is an ultra versatile watch which is highly suitable for all water sports activities, thanks to a 200m water resistance and a sapphire crystal. Like the Deep Dive E11/G, the Fly E03/G is powered by the STP1-11 Swiss Automatic movement.
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The Deep Dive is a watch which is very close to our hearts - not only was it our very first watch, it was also the watch that helped us demonstrate that Enoksen deserved its place in the world of watch manufacturing.
One version soon became two, and then four. In 2021 we introduced a Deep Dive in solid bronze to complete the line-up. But we felt that the Deep Dive could go further. We have duly noted the input from our Deep Dive customers from all over the planet, and every time we heard a suggestion to what the next generation might look and feel like, we added it to our growing pile of thoughts and ideas.
In its previous form the Deep Dive was already packed with features so we decided to go through each one of them and see what could be added or improved.
New movement
We felt that a natural progression would be to offer the Deep Dive with a Swiss made automatic movement instead of the trusty NH35 from Seiko. Our chosen movement, the STP1-11 from Swiss Technology Production is slimmer than the NH35 which is good news when it come to the total thickness of the case.
As part of the redesign of the case we managed to bring the dial slightly closer to the crystal. It sits more prominently now, rather than in the sunk position on the E01, and it make the dial pop a bit more.
Legibility and lumen
Customers have always lauded the exceptional legibility and the powerful lumen of the Deep Dive. It literally lights up the darkness and we wanted to carry this feature across to the new generation. Depending on model, we use SuperLuminova C3 or BGW9.
Drilled lugs
Customers told us that they wanted to have easy access to changing straps. By creating so-called drilled lugs on the E11 cases, this couldn’t be easier. Drilled lugs also give the watch a more classic look.
The line-up
There will be five different versions of the Deep Dive E11. Four of them are available now:
E11/A - stainless steel, classic black dial
E11/A Special Edition - stainless steel, classic dial with bronze hands and markers
E11/G - CUSN8 Bronze case with bronze hands and markers
E11/SF - stainless steel with premium PVD coating and the Special Forces 24-hour dial
Later this year the Deep Dive E11/B will follow as a replacement of the current Deep Dive E01/B Black Edition.
At Enoksen, we are now three years into our Quartz movement journey. We therefore felt it was time to revisit the story below which was written at a time when all our watches had automatic movements. By the time of writing the original story, plans for Quartz based watches were well advanced, but we were yet to learn what reactions we would receive from the market.
It also coincides with a decision we took recently; we have decided to introduce an additional level of quality control prior to shipping a watch with an automatic movement.
As you will learn below, the accuracy of an automatic movement is depending on a number of factors, some of which we can control and others we can’t. With thousands of Enoksen watches in service around the planet we have seen movements perform very accurately, and others not so accurately. When we receive the movements from Seiko they are obviously quality controlled and tested with a guaranteed accuracy ranging from -20 to +40 seconds per 24 hours. This is, in reality, potentially quite far away from what we consider accurate.
So whilst our watches perform within the factory tolerances, it is not good enough for our standards. We have therefore invested in both equipment and Human Resources allowing us to fine tune our automatic movements prior to shipment. In other words - when you take delivery of an Enoksen watch with an automatic movement, you can do so in the knowledge that the movement has been adjusted and optimised as much as humanly possible.
Most watch connoisseurs will argue that only a mechanical movement will do. Although this may be true, the majority of premium brand watches are equipped with a mechanical movement, with the odd exception having a manual one, which needs to be wound regularly to keep it moving.
There is definitely a case for both mechanical and quartz movements, depending on the purpose of the watch of course. It’s hard to beat the fascination of craftsmanship that makes a mechanical movement. On the other hand, it’s hard to beat the incredible robustness and accuracy of a quartz movement.
It sounds insane, but more often than not a £40 quartz watch will keep time more accurately than a £10,000 mechanical one. Mechanical movements are more delicate and they require regular servicing to be at their best. Their accuracy is influenced by a number of factors such as the activity levels of the wearer, resting positions, temperature, humidity and even the gravitational pull of the earth.
Quartz, on the other hand is more clinical – it merely relies on the power from its battery... and it just works.
In the modern world, a watch battery usually delivers three to ten years of service, depending on which type of quartz movement we are talking about. This is why quartz-based watches are almost always used by servicemen such as police, coast guard, army, and Special Forces.
At Enoksen, we love the romance and the drama of a mechanical watch and we have done our very best to select a movement that gets as close to quartz accuracy as possible. We want to provide you with that incredible feeling of owning something that is truly analogue in this digital age and for you to have that sweeping movement of the second hand.
There are exactly 86,400 seconds in a single day. As time goes on, most watches will gain or lose a few seconds regardless of whether they are mechanical or quartz-based.
In the case of our mechanical watches, the second-hand makes 6 small steps every second, which is what gives it its sweeping movement for a total of 518,400 small steps per 24 hours.
Even if a watch is 99.9% accurate, it will still be off by nearly a minute and a half in only 24 hours! So even a mediocre wristwatch has to be well over 99.9% accurate to even begin to be useful on an ongoing basis.
Generally speaking, modern mechanical watches vary in accuracy from movement to movement, ranging between +/- 60 seconds per day at the lower end and +/- 2 or 3 seconds per day at the very best. The Seiko NH35A used in many of our Automatic watches is rated for between +/- 20 to 40 seconds per 24 hours. We tend to find the range to be somewhere towards the middle. With our added quality control, we have been able to get that figure down to +/- 4 seconds per 24 hours.
Automatic watches are usually more accurate than their purely mechanical counterparts, but quartz is superior to mechanical by a large margin. As a rule, a quartz watch could be as accurate as +/- 0.01, although +/- 2 seconds a day is within the acceptable limits.
Yes, they are, but not always. Accuracy and precision are not exactly the same thing. It’s important to remember that even when a mechanical watch is allowed to vary +6/-4 seconds per day, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will consistently vary by that amount each day. A mechanical movement is noticeably affected by the gravitational pull of the Earth. It only takes a performance distortion of 1/1000th of a per cent for a watch movement to be one second less accurate in a day. This causes the performance of mechanical movements to be somewhat different from day to day when not stored in a fixed position. The good news is that the actual variations of a mechanical watch will often cancel each other out. This means a mechanical watch will tend to be more accurate over a longer period than the single-day COSC (Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres) measurement may imply.
In layman’s terms... looking at the performance of a watch over a 24-hour period may not provide the full picture of its accuracy.
On a daily basis, quartz watches are generally more consistent than mechanical variants under identical conditions. Quartz performance is affected mainly by temperature changes and weakened batteries. So a quartz watch that you measured to gain 0.5 seconds yesterday will be consistently and increasingly off correct time by about that amount. You can be pretty certain that in 60 days, it will be about 30 seconds off. At the end of a year, it would likely be over 180 seconds off.
Compare that to a mechanical watch that you measured to gain 2 seconds yesterday. It would seem that our example quartz watch is 4 times more accurate than this. But while the daily measured variations seem much higher, they are not likely to be as consistent, so will have a dampening effect. You cannot accurately predict that the mechanical watch would be off by 120 seconds at the end of the same 60 days. It might be right on time, or it may be 200 seconds off. The broader range of variations allows most mechanical watches to stay closer to correct time than the daily variation rate implies. Over a year, some mechanicals can on average stay closer to correct time without having to be reset than a quartz watch might, where others always tend to gain roughly the same amount each day.
In the 1970s, the demand for simplicity favoured the more accurate quartz style watch. Quartz technology debuted in watches with LED screens, and by the end of the 1980s, they powered both digital and analog watches, kitchen timers, wall clocks and everything in between. The dramatic rise of quartz technology nearly killed the Swiss watch industry in the 1980’s. It wasn’t until the 1990’s that the appreciation for the mechanical watch began to increase again. Why? Well, there's no single answer to that, so you can take your pick: there is beauty and artistry in imperfection, there's tradition in the history of mechanical watchmaking and there's fascinating engineering at work in every mechanical watch.
]]>In a typical tennis year, which stretches from January to November, these events represent the ‘must-see’ highlights of tennis and for most of modern memory this has happened annually with little disruption.
COVID-19 severely disrupted the Grand Slam events in 2020 and 2021, and many of them were played with a significant limitation in the number of spectators. Some were played with no spectators at all, and one was cancelled outright. Linesmen very replaced by technology making the calls on whether balls were in or out. The players had to walk across to their own designated towel basket to collect their towel, rather than have it handed to them by a ballboy.
Just as lockdowns eased another factor began to impact some of the events. The Russian invasion of Ukraine made the organisers of Wimbledon issue a ban on all players from Russian and Belarus. So the 2022 edition of Wimbledon will take place without two of the ten best male players, including the current world no. 1.
Before we get into too much detail about current affairs it is time to return to the original purpose of his article, which is to discuss a little history and look at what it takes to be a Grand Slam player.
So, we begin with a question: what does it actually take to compete in a Grand Slam?
Competing in a Grand Slam as a single male or female competitor is a privilege reserved only for the best 128 male and female players in the world. There is only one way to get direct access to the main draw, however - be in the top 104 of the world rankings. Besides that, you may hope for a wildcard or put in the time and grit to get through the qualification events.
At Wimbledon, an additional 16 players can gain access if they win three matches held in the qualification events a week before the main tournament. Again this isn’t for everyone as you need to be ranked between 105 and 232 in the world to even get invited, let alone qualify. In addition to the direct entries and the 16 qualifiers, 8 wildcards are issued to make up a total field of 128 players.
It goes without saying that participating in a Grand Slam event like Wimbledon is the dream of every tennis professional, and indeed the rest of us. But the complexity of qualifying for Wimbledon goes even further than that. Enter the pre-qualifying event held at the National Tennis Centre in Roehampton…
At Roehampton, a shootout is held to determine who makes it through to the main qualification event at Wimbledon. You have to qualify to qualify, so to speak. If you think that grass tennis equals perfectly groomed lawns, Pimms, strawberries and cream and a very posh audience, you should go to Roehampton and see what really happens there. It is far from glorious. This is where the journeyman players, the young and hopeful, and the established players returning from injury go to battle it out.
In 2016, tennis pro and cherished friend of Enoksen Watch Co., Marcus Willis, decided to give it one last roll of the dice. Despite an enormous talent and determination, Marcus was mentally preparing for a new life as a tennis coach, not one as a successful player. His then new love interest, and now wife, Jennifer convinced him that he had what it took to do well on the biggest stage and finally deliver on the promise he had made as a junior talent, tipped to be able to go all the way.
And so he too went to Roehampton and was granted access to the pre-qualifier event, only by way of his relatively high UK ranking. His world ranking at the time was 772nd, which wouldn't have allowed him near the competition. He quietly won three matches and he had now qualified for the qualifier for Wimbledon. Three more wins and the doors to the most revered tennis courts in the world would open wide. He beat Yūchi Sugita of Japan in the first round. The next round however, he was up against the very talented Russian Andrey Rublev and the outlook didn’t look great. Marcus prevailed, defying the odds and winning in straight sets.
It was here that the British Media machine started to pay attention to the handsome Englishman and his unorthodox left-hand playing style. Surely a man ranked No. 772nd in the world couldn't go all the way?
Standing in his way was another Russian, Daniil Medvedev, today ranked no. 1 in the world. Again, Marcus prevailed and now everyone was watching him. Marcus Willis was the overnight sensation who dared to dream big.
In the first round of Wimbledon 2016, Marcus was facing Lithuanian Ričardas Berankis. Ranked a whole 700 places above him, Marcus’ victory over him sent the British press into overdrive. Nobody wanted to hear about Andy Murray’s chances, it was all about Marcus Willis and his beautiful fiancé. It was obviously a massive draw that his next challenger was the greatest tennis player the world has ever seen - Roger Federer. This is fairytale perfect storytelling, with the unexpected twist that it is true. The journeyman tennis coach from Warwick Boat Club was facing off against the Swiss titan. David and Goliath. That day, Marcus was the most talked about tennis player in England, if not the world. It would be Federer who ended his incredible run, it was a fine match which earned Willis a lot of respect. In that one week, he made more prize money than he had made in 9 previous years of professional tennis career. That is what it takes to be a Grand Slam player.
So after this long detour, we come back to the Slams. To say we are fans of these fierce and prestigious events is an understatement that we feel is worth marking. To celebrate this, we have designed a range of watches which pay tribute to the efforts of our ambassador Mikael Pernfors and his efforts in New York, London, Paris and Melbourne. Read all about Mikael’s experiences at these four slams in the blog article Mikael and The Slams.
]]>Mikael’s participation in grand slam events is steeped in great stories and anecdotes. We recently sat down with him to hear some of the best, and probably untold, stories from the glory years. Mikael brings a unique perspective being one of the very few players in the world to experience centre court play at all four of the slams. In his own words:
“Getting into the tournaments is hard work, getting to play on centre court is even harder. Unless you run into a top 4 seeded player, your matches are almost always played on the secondary courts”.
Australian Open
For Mikael, the sunshine slam ranks as one of the best and most enjoyable events in the calendar. There is a long standing love affair between the Swedish players and the Australians, and playing in Melbourne ranks among his top memories. It was also there he beat John McEnroe in the round of 16 at the 1990 tournament.
In a match that was played in the midday heat - his first and only clash with the fiery American, Mikael remembers feeling uncomfortable on court, not just because of the heat and a lingering foot injury, but also because of the way that McEnroe played. In the end, McEnroe defeated himself and Mikael was through to the quarter finals. McEnroe and Pernfors never clashed again on the ATP tour, and Mikael is one of the few players to own a positive head-to-head record against the American.
French Open
It was 1986 and Mikael had been a professional tennis player for less than a year when he landed in Paris for his first French Open. Unseeded and unknown, he quietly won his first match and ran into fellow Swede Stefan Edberg. Although clay was never Edberg’s favourite surface he was still the favourite to win. After three sets, the rain came and the match had to be continued the following day. Mikael prevailed and after that he felt he couldn’t lose. After two more wins against Robert Seguso and Martin Jaite, none other than Boris Becker was waiting in the quarter finals.
The world suddenly started to pay attention to the rise of the Swedish newcomer, especially Nike with whom he signed a contract mid-tournament. So for the match against Becker, he was apparelled in Nike gear from top to toe. That turned out to be a near-catastrophic decision as the new shoes gave him terrible pain during the first set, which he lost in no time at all. In the second set he had settled in and never looked back. A four-set victory against the German superstar meant that he was in his first ever grand slam semi final, facing off against the popular home boy Henri Leconte. So there he was, heading out to play against the fan favourite, whose biggest dream was to lift the trophy on home soil. Reflecting on the pressure of being up against 15,000 French fans, everyone against you, Mikael reminisces over his years playing college tennis in America in front of extremely hostile crowds, and how it hardened him. On that semi finals day, he was ready and although Leconte took the first set quickly, he bounced back and won the next three sets and was heading for the final.
Remember Mikael was unseeded and playing in his first French Open, checking in to a cheap players hotel when he first arrived. As he progressed, he moved to a better establishment and from quarter finals he kept upgrading himself until he got to the biggest suite.
Finals day came and the opponent was World No. 1 Ivan Lendl. A solid baseline player with very powerful ground strokes and in no shape or form an opponent that fitted Mikael’s flamboyant style. Although he battled bravely, the Czech was too much of a handful. But he had arrived on the big stage and had established himself as a force to be reckoned with.
Wimbledon
The most special tournament of them all. Looking back on his debut at the holiest of tennis courts, Mikael get’s emotional reminiscing. He arrived as the new face of Swedish tennis, the newcomer who had just made the final at Roland Garros. But at Wimbledon that doesn’t count. First one has to prove oneself on the sacred lawns. Mikael and his first round opponent, Mike de Palmer, were scheduled to play at one of the secondary courts, one far away from the glamour of Centre Court. Or so they thought. Centre Court freed up earlier than expected and somehow the organisers must have had a wish to introduce its savvy Centre Court audience to the Swede, the French Open runner up. So it came to pass that Mikael got to play his first ever Wimbledon match on Centre Court. And it got better. The match had to be stopped as darkness fell on SW19, and the players had to return the following day to finish the match. It literally felt as though two matches were had for the price of one.
The debut went well - Mikael advanced to the round of sixteen where he ran into the defending champion Boris Becker, who had every intention of repeating his feat from the year before, when Boris became the youngest champion in the history of Wimbledon. Becker was unstoppable and won in straight sets. A respectable debut, and Mikael had established himself as a player who could master both the clay and the grass.
Every tennis player knows the feeling of ‘the one that got away’. The match you could and should have won, but you didn’t. In 1987 he returned to Wimbledon, now an established top 10 player who could no longer fly under the radar. Again he found himself in the round of sixteen, after a remarkable comeback win in the round of 32 against Tim Mayotte. This time he was up against the ageing, but totally unpredictable, Jimmy Connors. Mikael was cruising and won the first two sets in record time. Leading 4-1 in the third set, it looked like a foregone conclusion, but never count Connors out until the handshake. Connors battled back, turned the match around and won in five sets.
Looking from the outside in, this must count as the most bitter defeat in a great career. Mikael is very pragmatic about it and he has only fond memories of the evening after the loss. He went across town from Wimbledon to Wembley where Genesis were performing, went backstage with Phil Collins and partied till the early hours with the band. A great way to get over a stinging loss.
US Open
The noisy slam and the tournament at which Mikael holds a record which still stands today. In 1993, he and Mats Wilander were both coming back from injury and had to wait for ages to get on court for the last scheduled match that day. While waiting in the player’s lounge, they were following a women’s singles match which lasted forever and delayed their own match. When the ladies finally finished and the two Swedes were allowed onto centre court, they could fully appreciate why the ladies had played a match which looked sub-standard. It was blowing a gale, making for very hard conditions, even for an elite tennis match. Anyway, the match started at 10pm and holds the record for the latest finish at the US Open ever. After five hard contested sets, Wilander pipped his friend and the two men shook hands at 2:26am. To this day no US Open match at the US Open has finished this late.
Mikael’s best result at the US Open came in 1989 when he lost to the later winner Boris Becker in the round of sixteen in four sets.
Today
Mikael has been lucky enough to get invited back to the four majors on numerous occasions. It is a tradition to stage a legends doubles event in connection with the slams. As one of the finest and most artistic ball strikers in the history of the game, he is a sought-after player to experience in the legends events, especially when he is playing with or against his lifelong friend, the great Mansour Bahrami.
All over the world, attempts were made to achieve controlled, sustained flight and one of the early pioneers in Europe was the Brazilian national Alberto Santos-Dumont, whose family wealth had enabled him to live in Paris and dedicate his life to aviation.
Legend has it that during a conversation with his close friend and jeweller Louis Cartier, Santos discussed the trouble he had checking the time on his pocket watch while airborne. Cartier went back to his workshop to create a wristwatch durable and large enough to solve Santos’ problem. The aviator watch was born.
Santos liked the watch so much that he wore it regularly, and given his celebrity status at the time, that wristwatch didn’t go unnoticed. At the time, it was common for women to wear wristwatches, and men to carry pocket watches. Santos changed all that, much to the delight of Cartier. He was able to ride the wave of interest from the aviation community, but also from anyone whose imagination had been captured by those new airborne heroes.
The Cartier Santos model still exists today, albeit in a variety of sizes, movements and materials. It is however easy to see the resemblance between the very first and the present-day models.
Another brand that grew to fame in those days was Zenith when one Louis Blériot did what was considered impossible: crossing the English Channel by plane. The year was 1909, just six years after the Wright brothers took off, and flight technology had already matured to a level where a 20-mile long flight over water was possible.
No mean feat and the achievement won him £1,000 from the Daily Mail in exchange for the exclusive story – an opportunity he (ab)used to sing the praises of his Zenith watch.
While aviation pioneers all over the world risked their lives to continuously improve the technology, the military started to pay attention. Imagine the possibilities if you had an eye in the sky, allowing you to monitor every step your enemy took? Not to mention the potential capability to accurately drop a payload of bombs on a specific target...
It seems unlikely that men like the Wright brothers, Santos or Blériot had warfare in mind when they took to the skies.
Intentional or not, the aeroplane made its debut in armed conflict when WWI broke out in 1914. Thousands of pilots were trained and deployed and with them followed various watch technologies to help them keep track of time.
The period witnessed a number of different form factors. Pocket watches that would fit into a gap on the instrument panel of the plane, alongside further developments of the Santos Cartier wristwatch. At that stage, a watch helped time coordinated attacks as radio communication was as yet unavailable.
Another invention to emerge from the wartime workshop was luminous hands, which allowed the aviator to better read his watch during night time.
The rapidly growing market for aviation timepieces attracted the usual suspects in the shape of Omega, Zenith but also Longines. The latter was the official Olympic time-keeper during those years but soon made a name for itself with an attractive range of aviation watches.
So good were the Longines watches that Charles Lindbergh wore one during his famous Atlantic crossing in 1927 in the purpose-built Spirit of St. Louis plane.
It is still a mystery how Lindbergh managed to keep himself awake for the 33 hours the crossing took, especially when you consider that he had very little sleep in the days leading up to the flight.
Lindbergh became an overnight sensation and one of the most famous Americans ever as he rose to fortune in the wake of the achievement. His high profile made him a target and in 1932 his infant son Charles Jr. was kidnapped and later found dead. The event is described in the famous book and film ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ by Agatha Christie.
The watch was an essential part of an aviator's navigation equipment. Time was the primary way of determining an aeroplane’s location since the ocean offered no landmarks. By knowing their speed and direction the time would give them an approximate idea of where they were. A way of navigating also known as dead reckoning.
In the 1930s the aeroplane had gone from a novel toy for the wealthy to mainstream. Both when it came to civil aviation and military purposes. The roaring 1920s were over and what followed was a decade of depression and financial uncertainty. The tough times created an environment in which Adolf Hitler and his ideology could thrive. Just as Germany was showing signs of recovery from WWI the Great Depression struck in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash in 1929. Hitler seized the opportunity and soon forced his way to power in Europe’s largest country. In 1935 he instructed Hermann Göring to re-establish the Luftwaffe – an early sign of what was to come - and primed German manufacturers for pretty much everything needed for armed conflict. Including the watch industry.
The German way
RLM (Reichs-Luftfahrtministerium, or Reich’s Ministry of Air Transport) was looking for a standard issue watch for the bomber crews. The design was a bit similar to the Lindbergh watch with the hour angle indication, but the new B-Uhr (Beobachtungsuhr or Observation watch in English) introduced a very distinctive design. It became so iconic that it is a template for any aviation watch today.
The B-Uhr became standard issue, but the watches were owned by Luftwaffe, not the pilots, who had to return them after each mission. Measuring 55mm these watches were massive, even by today’s standard. There were two different types – The type A and B, with the former being made for less than one year. Type A sports a classic dial with numerals 1 to 11 and the triangle with two dots at 12. Type B went into production in January 1941 and differs only from Type A in the dial design. With big minute numerals from 5 to 55 and a small inner circle with numerals for hours.
In the case of the B-Uhr, no single manufacturer was able to meet the volume requirements on their own, so purchasing was spread across many watch factories in order to be able to make up the total numbers needed.
Five companies ended up manufacturing the B-Uhr: A. Lange & Söhne, Wempe, Lacher & Company/Durowe (Laco), and Walter Storz (Stowa). Wempe and Stowa used Swiss movements. Prominent brands like Patek Philippe, Wempe, and IWC also submitted watches for approval.
The B-Uhr is a big deal today with Laco and Stowa still offering a wide range of both Type A and B models in various sizes and colours. Laco even has a watch named Erbstück (‘inheritance piece’ in English), which is made to look like a watch which has actually seen wartime action.
The American way
Whilst the Germans had the B-uhr the Americans had the A-11. More of a standard than an actual watch, the A-11 became the timepiece that millions of officers, engineers, pilots, sailors and soldiers came to rely on during WWII. The huge quantities required kept homegrown companies like Waltham, Elgin and Bulova very busy.
Even by today’s standards the A-11 specs were quite rigorous: dust and waterproof casing, robust movements with accuracy requirements of +/- 30 seconds per day and a 30 – 56 hour power reserve, as well as extreme temperature resistance.
The British way
British watchmakers were more focused on building naval and aviation instruments, rather than wristwatches so the British Ministry of Defence had to turn to neutral Swiss watchmakers to fulfill the need for their military spec watch known as WWW, short for Wrist Watch Waterproof. What later became known as the ‘Dirty Dozen’, a group of 12 companies all produced an implementation of the required specification: Buren, Cyma, Eterna, Grana, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Lemania, Longines, IWC, Omega, Record, Timor and Vertex.
Some of these brands are long gone today, others are still going strong.
Not all the RAF pilots were happy with their watches. Many of them were buying Rolex watches to replace what they considered inferior standard-issue timepieces. However, when captured and sent to POW camps, their watches were confiscated.
Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf learned about this and offered to replace all watches that had been confiscated. He would not require payment until the end of the war. All that was required was for the officers to write to Rolex and explain the circumstances of their loss, and obviously where they were being held.
Wilsdorf was personally in charge of the scheme, and as a result of this, an estimated 3,000 Rolex watches were ordered by British officers in the Oflag VII B POW camp in Bavaria alone. This move raised the morale among the allied prisoners of war because it suggested that Wilsdorf did not believe that the Germans would win the war.
American servicemen heard about this when stationed in Europe during the war and took this fantastic story with them back to America. Needless to say, this significantly helped Rolex sales efforts after the war.
After WWII the Jet Age arrived, and with the rising speeds of aircraft, watches had to be more and more accurate. We will address that period in The Aviators Watch; a history – Part 2.
]]>The jet age began where WWII ended in 1945. Although the Luftwaffe had a fully operational jet fighter from Messerschmitt, the Me 262, by 1944 Germany lacked the resources to scale up production of this otherwise superior plane. So the Me 262 never became the game changer it could have been.
Defeated Germany began to rebuild, the Soviet Union joined the nuclear weapons club and another less bloody but potentially far more dangerous war broke out. The Cold War. Germany was divided four ways and became a hotbed of potential conflict, ultimately leading to the creation of West Germany and East Germany. This era of fighting in the shadows, as well as the race to dominate space, lead to a virtual explosion in the demand for suitable timepieces.
Many of the greatest Cold War watches were manufactured for military purposes, but other ground breaking timepieces made primarily for civil aviation came to be. We must also not forget the significant part wristwatches played in the space race, however we will come to this in just a few short paragraphs… There are countless watches we could look at here, but something has to give. So let’s start with a story that not many people know yet it is one that is totally relevant and compelling.
Lemania… you may never have heard of this now defunct Swiss watch company. From the late 1940s and up to the 1970s, Lemania was the exclusive supplier of military chronographs to the UK Ministry of Defence, also known as the MoD. Fleet Air Arm pilots and Royal Air Force pilots alike relied on the various Lemania chronographs being issued during that period. The watch in use during the early years was completely basic with a simple pusher to eliminate mistakes. If there was only one button to push, less could go wrong. At the very end of Lemania’s stint as the exclusive timepiece supplier to British military pilots, the Royal Navy Ref. 818 was introduced. Having been in production for just two years, this watch is incredibly difficult to find in good, original condition.
Based on the formidable Lemania Caliber 1872 movement, the 818 was one of the most interesting chronographs ever crafted for military purposes. Unlike previous Lemania chronographs, the 818 had two pushers; one for start/stop and one for reset. The watch case was asymmetrical which meant that the pushers were partly shielded. The crown was oversized to allow for seamless winding. All focus was on legibility and ease of use and, although this watch marked the end of the exclusive collaboration, this was truly Lemania’s finest hour.
As you would expect, the ever-present Swiss brand did play a role in the history of aviation watches, however not quite in the way that Rolex would have wanted. There is a tale of success and a tale of failure, the latter of which is mostly forgotten because ultimately it was turned into a formidable success. In the 1950s when non-stop transatlantic flights first became available, aviators had to deal with the challenge that travelling through multiple time zones represented.
The absolute leaders in the field were Pan American Airways, an airline that completely pioneered the long haul flights market. This is the time where pilots were treated like gods and no job could be more prestigious than being an air hostess. Indeed, any job that related to aviation was perhaps the ultimate dream of the post-war generation.
The need to keep track of the correct time across different time zones lead to a collaboration between Pan Am and Rolex. This partnership gave birth to the iconic Rolex GMT-Master. In addition to hours, minutes and seconds, a GMT-Master has a second hour hand which takes 24 hours to complete a lap. By also adding a rotating bezel with 24-hour markers, you have all the ingredients to keep track of time at home, at your destination and at your present location.
The Rolex GMT-Master was originally issued with a black dial and a two-colour rotating bezel in blue and red, earning the watch its ‘Pepsi’ nickname. Original Pan Am issued GMT-Master watches are extremely hard to find and those available to buy command high 5-figure prices. The GMT-Master is an essential Rolex watch, iconic and still in production to this day. So, we have heard the success but what about failure…
A less known story is that about the Rolex Daytona chronograph. The real name of this legendary watch holds a clue about this tumultuous tale. The watch was originally named the Rolex Cosmograph Oyster and was created in a bid to be selected for NASA’s Apollo space programme. Unfortunately for Rolex, the watch did not pass the rigorous tests and was therefore dismissed. Instead, the Cosmograph ended up as the darling of racing drivers, a fact that is celebrated still to this day in its Daytona nickname. So really, what else is there to say?
No watch brand is more associated with space travel than Omega. Famously being the creators of the first and only watch on the moon, Omega put the Speedmaster watch forward for consideration. The Speedmaster made the cut and came out on top in a NASA shootout that took place in 1964-65. NASA had created a test designed to emulate the extreme environment they expected to find in space.
Other brands like Breitling, Rolex and Longines also submitted watches for consideration but only the Speedmaster was accurate to within 5 seconds per day after having been taken to hell and back in a test that looked like this: • High temperature: 48 hours at 71 °C followed by 30 minutes at 93 °C • Low temperature: Four hours at −18 °C • Temperature cycling in near-vacuum: Fifteen cycles of heating to 71 °C for 45 minutes, followed by cooling to -18 °C for 45 minutes at 10−6 atm • Humidity: 250 hours at temperatures between 20 °C and 71 °C at relative humidity of 95% • Oxygen environment: 100% oxygen at 0.35 atm and 71 °C for 48 hours • Shock: Six 11 ms 40g shocks from different directions • Linear acceleration: from 1 to 7.25 g within 333 seconds • Low pressure: 90 minutes at 10−6 atm at 71 °C, followed by 30 minutes at 93 °C • High pressure: 1.6 atm for one hour • Vibration: three cycles of 30 minutes vibration varying from 5 to 2000 Hz with minimum 8.8 g impulse • Acoustic noise: 30 minutes at 130 dB from 40 to 10,000 Hz.
The Speedmaster which survived these atrocities had a manual wound movement and is still available today, albeit with a slightly large case diameter. The successful participation in the Apollo programme cemented Omega’s position as a true expert in the field of tool watches.
Breitling is in many ways the most dominant brand when it comes to modern era aviation watches. We could have focused on several of their models but the Navitimer is the best known, and it is also the watch from the Breitling family with perhaps the highest pedigree and longevity. It was however not the course that Willy Breitling, the grandson of the founder Léon Breitling, had planned for the family business. In 1934, when he filed a patent for a chronograph watch with two pushers - one for start/stop and one for reset, he wanted to be more than just another watch company making watches for aviation. His vision was to merge a precision chronograph with a slide rule and create the perfect tool for engineers and scientists, not for aviators. So stubborn was Willy that he refused to make watches for aviation like everyone else did in 1940-45.
He eventually had to give in to pressure from the aviation market and, in 1952, Breitling launched the Navitimer, which was essentially a reworked Breitling Chronomat (Mat for mathematician). The slide rule was converted for aviation purposes and the Navitimer became a massive success within the booming aviation industry. Operating a slide rule is almost a science in its own right and well outside the boundaries of this article, but it truly is a fascinating thought that before the computer and the calculator, the slide rule was king. The Navitimer enjoyed perhaps its finest moment in 1961 when Scott Carpenter, one of the original astronauts in the Mercury space program, asked Breitling to incorporate a 24-hour dial instead of the normal 12-hour dial. This was relevant because of the lack of day and night during space travel. Breitling delivered, and made the 24-hour Navitimer, which Carpenter wore on his 1962 space flight.
To this day the Navitimer is one of Breitling’s most important watches and, apart from being a great looking timepiece, it is also the most functional of all chronographs from the pre-digital era.
The Enoksen Fly range is an important part of our Five Watches philosophy. Our current models, the Fly E03/A, B, D, E, and F are all tributes to the early days of military watches in aviation. When we introduced the Fly E03/D Chronograph, we decided to take things a step further. We have a soft spot for the Lemania 818 described above. We therefore performed the following experiment: We tried to imagine how we would approach constructing the 818 with today’s technology and requirements. We began with the watch case. With a diameter of 38mm, the 818 was a relatively big watch back in its time.
Today, we felt that 43mm would be more appropriate for a watch where legibility is absolutely essential. We imagined that a pilot would want to wear his watch everywhere, including when taking a swim or going for a dive, so we specified a screw-down crown and a different pusher design. The original pushers were relatively thin and mushroom shaped. We wanted something more robust. These changes and improvements meant that water resistance could be increased from 30m to 100m.
Then we considered the crystal. Although hardened mineral glass or Perspex has its charm, only a sapphire crystal would do. The next consideration was the lug pins. On the 818 the pins are fixed. This is great if you are happy to wear the watch on a one-piece nylon strap. We, however, wanted more flexibility and specified heavy duty spring pins to give the customer more options. Bracelet, leather band, nylon, rubber, NATO… everything is possible with this set up.
Finally, we had to address the movement. Whilst the 818 was equipped with the iconic Lemania Caliber 1872, we wanted to utilise a more affordable option. A comparable movement would take the price of the watch well out of the range we sell our watches in. Also, if our watch were to be considered by institutions liked the MoD, the price had to be reasonable. So with that in mind, we went with the exciting VK64 movement from Seiko.
Being a so-called hybrid movement, the VK64 combines the best of both worlds. A pinpoint accurate quartz element to provide hours & minutes and an old school mechanical stopwatch with the correct manual ticking and the highly desirable fly-back reset function. The finishing touches lay in deciding our dial colour scheme. Instead of using black, as featured on the 818, we went with our signature grey which is used on a number of our other watches. This signature grey combined with white and light orange markers, numbers and hands meant this experiment was now complete.
After all was said and done, all that remained was for us to push the button and put our new watch into production. We hope you will like it as much as we do.
]]>The new Deco E06 is the latest addition to the Enoksen range. A watch that has been two years in the making and which seeks to meet at least two different requirements at the same time. Since we launched Enoksen Watch Company there have been calls for a watch that would appeal to women, or at least has a size that wouldn’t overwhelm a female wrist.
Whilst that sounds easy to do, it has taken a long time to arrive at what you are looking at here. Enoksen is making functional, no-nonsense timepieces that are made to be worn. That doesn’t necessarily chime with diamond cladded, mother-of-pearl coloured dials and petite watch cases. The challenge was therefore to remain true to our ethos and still create something that is appealing to the fairer sex.
During the process a realisation was made: we could actually make a watch that would 1) look great on both women and men, 2) would have the technical specifications we are known for, and 3) pass as a very credible dress watch for a man looking for a timepiece to wear in a formal setting.
The case
Measuring 36mm the Deco sits firmly in the middle of the scale. Big enough to have presence on a male wrist and small enough to work well on even small female wrists. We are suckers for a satin case finish, but on Deco we have turned up the charm a bit by having the sides, the bezel and the crown finished in high gloss polish. The rest of the case is satin as usual. The mixture of the two creates a more vibrant appearance and makes the watch more dressy. Available in steel, and as a first for Enoksen, in gold, the Deco presents its unisex message in a convincing way. So much for the appearance. To make Deco a watch that is true to what our customers have come to expect from Enoksen, we designed it to have a screw-down crown and a screw-down caseback, which allowed us to achieve a 200m/660ft water resistance. In other words a Deco can go diving without missing a beat.
The dial
We wanted the clarity and legibility Enoksen is known for. The 3-6-9 hour markers steal the show and are deliberately made a bit bigger than they needed to be, creating an Art Deco-esque style from which the watch takes it name. Oversized markers are also a great place to put lots of BGW9 SuperLuminova and achieve superior legibility, even after several hours of complete darkness.
The hour hand is the classic Mercedes design, modified to hold the Enoksen logo instead of the three spoke star. The Mercedes hand is often associated with the Rolex Submariner but that design actually dates back to the 1940s - 10 years before the launch of Rolex’s iconic diver.
Colours are always an interesting topic but we wanted to keep it real with clean and classic colours. To echo the vibrance of the case we decided to go for a sunburst effect on all dials apart from the white. A sunburst dial responds well to light and offers a reflection of its surroundings. Take the black dial for instance, which is available on both gold and steel. It can appear to be everything from pitch black to grey, depending on the light.
All the beautiful dial colours can be enjoyed through the anti-reflective sapphire crystal, which protects the dial and the hands.
The movement
Back in 2019 we launched a special version of our classic Dive E02 featuring a new Seiko quartz movement called VH31. A so-called Mecha-quartz movements which offers the best of both worlds: pinpoint accuracy, lots of moving parts and the delightful sweeping second hand like a mechanical watch. We felt that the VH31 would be ideal for the Deco, making the watch accurate and affordable, without humiliating it with an undesirable 60-steps-a-minute second hand action.
The straps
Like a supermodel the Deco looks good in pretty much everything, and is supplied with a fine mesh bracelet in steel or gold, depending on the model. We also offer a number of rubber straps, leather straps and even a range of NATO straps.
In fact, the more we experimented, the more versatile the watch seemed to become. We put one of our seatbelt NATO straps in Khaki on the warm grey steel version of the watch, and we simply couldn’t stop looking at how the strap colour and the dial colour just engaged in the most enchanting encounter. It was literally watch porn taken to a different level.
Or when Hans added a grey Tropic rubber strap to the black dial steel Deco and never took the watch off for two weeks - a definite record for him. Or when Oliver took a lush brown leather strap with white stitching and fitted it to the black dial gold deco and created a watch that looks and feels like 20x the asking price. It should be obvious by now that we are smitten with this, the newest member of the Enoksen range.
In the end we settled for two different versions of each of the 6 Deco models. One for the ladies and one for the men.
The ladies versions come with a lizard leather strap and a micro-adjustable mesh strap in steel or gold, depending on the colour of the watch. The ladies versions are known as AF, BF, CF, DF, EF, and FF.
For the more masculine look we selected the above mentioned lush leather strap with white stitching, but also a black or white rubber strap to make the watch suitable for the wet element. The men's versions are known as AM, BM, CM, DM, EM, and FM.
So all in all Deco is not just a pretty face but a serious tool watch at the same time. Now it’s your turn.
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Born alongside scuba diving technologies and used today by modern divers as a back-up in case of high-tech diving computer failures, the dive watch is a critical piece of lifesaving equipment. Measuring our time under water, the watch has three core features to keep a diver safe. The first feature is water-resistance, enabled by robust cases and crown designs that ensure the watch will survive the tough underwater conditions. The second feature is timekeeping, including the functionality of the rotating bezel and high degrees of accuracy to not mislead the diver. The third feature is an uncluttered dial design with a bright lumen to provide clear legibility in the dark conditions.
The Enoksen Dive accentuates these tool-watch features. 300 metres of water resistance is standard with a solid 316L steel case and hardened sapphire crystal glass. A rotating ceramic bezel with a protected crown case provides the timekeeping function, while the use of Quartz movements and our Calibrated® precision tuning for our Mechanical movements provides best-in-class accuracy. The dial is completely minimalist to give centre-stage to seeing the time easily, while the lumen brightness is maximised.
Enoksen watches are built to withstand the tests of time. The Enoksen Dive is an original dive watch, accentuating those features that have helped us go safely beneath the waves for decades. We removed the clutter and the noisiness found on many of today’s dive watches. We have stripped it back to remind ourselves of the purity of its original purpose.
Thanks to its enduring design and exciting allure, the dive watch has become the go-to active lifestyle watch worn by men and women for everyday life. It is considered by many to be the new dress watch. At Enoksen we love the clean-cut look of the black dial, black bezel, and oyster steel bracelet combination. It simply suits any occasion.
We also love the fashion statement that bezel colours offer, making a dive watch work for specific occasions – match your favourite team colours, colour-coordinate with a particular outfit, or just wear the colour combination to suit your mood.
Enoksen Dive – pure, versatile, imaginative. For the adventurer in all of us.
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If you’d like to read more about some of the history of key features of the Enoksen Dive, here are some other Enoksen Stories we would recommend:
]]>Today there are three core models in steel, PVD black and bronze to suit different style choices. Each model shares the same basic feature set of 1000m water resistance, helium escape value, automatic movement, 4 o’clock crown, sapphire crystal glass, 316L steel, ceramic bezel and high lumen levels. Every Deep Dive also receives our specialist Calibrated® service that provides best possible accuracy levels in a mechanical watch. Please read on to learn more.
The Deep Dive is a signature watch for many reasons. The 4 o’clock position makes this robust watch more comfortable on the wrist and protects the crown from accidental damage. The no-brand “sterile” look creates maximum legibility which, for a true tool watch, is a non-negotiable feature.
Customers who wear it (and I personally wear it every day) feel it becomes their “trusty steed”. That phrase typically refers to a sure-footed horse that would partner a cowboy or traveller on their journey. Today, motorcyclists can feel the same as they undertake long journeys on 2 wheels. The Deep Dive feels the same – it’s there, it’s solid, it works, and it is our companion. It is a big watch, no doubt, which means it’s not for everyone. But for those of us who enjoy a weightier, more substantial watch that you know is there and really stands out on the wrist, the Deep Dive’s presence is what we admire and grow to love. We find ourselves feeling that it is indeed our trusty steed.
Enoksen has taken this trustworthiness to a new level with its Calibrated® treatment. As a rule, automatic watches at the c. £500 price point are solid but operate with normal factory tolerances when it comes to timing accuracy. That means that the renowned Seiko NH35A movement that we use can lose 20-40 seconds per day. It’s normal, but we didn’t think it was good enough. Our Calibrated® treatment tunes the movement’s performance to a stunning, world-class-by-any-standard +/- 3 seconds per day. For automatic watches, which let’s face it are amazingly complicated time-telling machines that fit easily on our wrist, this is outstanding. At Enoksen, we take enormous pride in doing this, so that all our watches are trusty timekeepers for their owners. And the Deep Dive receives this treatment on every single watch we ship. We don’t like to boast but we think this is pretty awesome.
The Deep Dive is a wow watch. It has some of the world’s most impressive specs of any watch you can wear, making the Deep Dive E01/G one of the best men's bronze watches at this price. I wear it because of this. Why not wear a time-telling machine that is truly impressive? And you do not even need to spend thousands of £ / € / $ for materials like gold and platinum materials that scratch and wear just as easily as other metals. We focused our energy on the core of timekeeping accuracy, professional grade tool performance, and solid good looks.
This particular blog is to draw attention to the Deep Dive E01/G men's bronze watch, which carries with it a unique feature even within the Deep Dive family. The patina effect.
Men's bronze watches change in hue and tone during their lives – this is the patina. And each bronze item changes uniquely when compared to another. This means that your bronze watch will mature differently to mine. So aside from the serial number on the back, this makes my bronze watch’s character unique. It ages with me and changes with the experiences I put it through.
So not only is my trusty timekeeper doing everything it should to be trustworthy, it is also developing its own personality.
This might sound crazy to some, but to people who love the machines and animals they share their lives with, you know what I mean. Anyone who has a dog or a cat with a clear personality, or a motorcycle or car they use heavily, the feeling is clear: this is one of my friends in life. My watch is the same, and my Bronze Deep Dive is particularly special.
So yes, my favourite watch is my Deep Dive. It has that extra je ne sais quoi about it. We do in fact know exactly what the Deep Dive is, but it still somehow manages to supersede normal expectations of what a watch is.
Big, bold, trustworthy, rugged, sophisticated – there are so many things we love about the Deep Dive and the E01/G is one of the best men's bronze watches on the market. It’s a classic for the ages.
If you’d like to read more about some of the history of key features of the watch, here are some other Enoksen Stories you will enjoy:
]]>But for now, we hope you enjoy this short read about the philosophy behind the Enoksen Drive E04/B and the fascinating history of motoring manufacturing in our HQ location, Belfast.
The Enoksen Drive E04/B
The Enoksen Drive E04/B is our very own Chronograph.
It was born from the desire to offer a super-clean dial, unusual in the world of Chronographs. We wanted to create the feeling of oceans of space with vivid clarity. We wanted the watch to be minimalist without sacrificing responsibility to be a tool watch with all the right features.
Part of the minimalist design is achieved by using the hour markers and hands from our signature Deep Dive watch. These Diver watches were built as professional grade tools that would satisfy even the most ardent saturation diver's need for legibility. We thought, why not apply the same legibility to our own Chronograph?
The white dial with black sub-dials captures the mood of the classic motorsports associations. The famous Rolex Daytona worn by Paul Newman, recently sold at auction for a staggering $17 million, utilised this eye-catching style. The black on white contrast makes the two sub-dials stand out clearly, harking back to the classic automotive dashboard with its side-by-side speedometer and tachometer.
Our desire for legibility made us focus on the lumen of the watch. We want our customers to be comfortable checking the time in dim lighting conditions, so the lumen is accentuated more than usual. We thought to ourselves as we made the Drive E04/B, why resort to reading a bright digital timer at night when you can quickly glance at your wrist the enjoyable old-fashioned way?
Another core principle at Enoksen is to deliver maximum value for money by focusing our product designs on high-quality components where they are really needed. To that end, the Drive E04/B is made of 316L stainless steel and excellent sapphire crystal glass to withstand everyday wear and tear. We use heavy-duty spring pins to hold the strap securely in place inside the lugs. And the outstanding Seiko VK64 movement is extremely reliable, while also offering the highly desirable fly-back feature for the timer hand.
Speaking of reliability, this is a traditional weak point of Chronograph watches because they are a more complicated watch with more points of failure than other styles. A Chronograph usu has a crown and two pushers, plus a more complex movement to handle the stopwatch functions. But we didn’t see why this should lead to a less reliable watch than our Diver and Aviator watches. So we beefed up the pushers and protected them inside the watch casing, and we ensured the crystal and case back seals could withstand a highly usable level of water pressure of 10ATM, or 100 metres.
And just to top it all off, we gave the watch a date feature given we know our customers like to be organised and on top of their schedules, and we offer a range of leather, steel, rubber and NATO straps to allow the watch to be worn on any occasion.
What has time travel got to do with Enoksen?
This is not your average trivia question, but we’d love for you to know the answer! So what does time travel have to do with Enoksen?
Cars
The story starts with the famous DeLorean, pictured below. A little-known fact is that this now iconic car was manufactured in our own home-town of Belfast from 1981 to 1982 before the business was drawn into bankruptcy largely caused by an FBI sting operation. Made from steel panels that didn’t offer many options for colour customisation, only 9000 of the vehicles were produced before operations shut down. While it was short-lived in reality, it soon grew to become one of the more famous cars on the planet!
Time Travel
The DeLorean’s place in popular culture was created by the incredibly successful Back To The Future film trilogy, starring Michael J Fox. What films these were for science fiction time-warping fans! The Flux Capacitor invention by Doc Brown was the thing of dreams in these heady days! Anyone who grew up in the 1980s is likely to remember the amazing adventures of Marty McFly. Marty the time traveller of course had to wear a wristwatch (even if he was famous for being late) but given it was the 80s a cool Casio digital watch with on-wrist calculator was his choice.
While it could be considered a tenuous link, to us these stories are a big part of the passion we feel for manufacturing our time-telling machines here in Belfast. And whether time-travel will ever become a reality, who knows, but at least with Enoksen you can rely on knowing what time you’re in right now.
]]>The classic lines of the Aviator watch style make for a distinctive and interesting dress watch. The classic dial provides excellent legibility while harking back to a yesteryear where simple dials built for exceptional legibility were important. For a dress watch that fits in yet stands out on more formal occasions, we think the Aviator style is a great choice.
With an elegant 39mm width and a handsome 12mm depth, the Enoksen Fly E03/E sits modestly, yet importantly, on the wrist. It is easy to fit under a shirt cuff, light enough for all-day wear, and easily legible even when the lights are dimmed given its excellent lumen. Whether going to the office, attending a formal event, or just wearing it on a normal day out, this watch is an easy all-rounder.
Supplied with two straps – a classic two-piece leather riveted strap and an adaptable, durable rubber strap – the watch can change character to suit the occasion. Add an optional NATO strap or steel bracelet and the character changes again. From a rugged adventurer watch to a classic dress watch and everything in between.
That is why we made this traditional Pilot’s watch to be water resistant to 200m, or 20ATM (atmospheres). Why settle for less functionality simply because this was not part of the traditional feature set? With that in mind, a date window also become a must have part of the watch. Adventurers, travellers, and all-round well-organised people want to routinely know both date and time, so this Enoksen timepiece delivers as required.
And as an Enoksen watch, which like all our watches is aimed at being the best value watch money can buy, we focused on the most necessary must have features. 316L stainless steel and sapphire crystal had to be on the list. Both materials ensure the watch remains pristine or only slightly marked even after use under the most demanding conditions.
Finally, there is the all-important watch movement itself, its beating heart. At Enoksen we love our mechanical watches, and simply for convenience we prefer automatics over hand-wound. Our adventuring customers need not be distracted by their watch losing time while they are out and about. The Fly E03/E comes with an extremely reliable and well-made Seiko NH35A movement, so there is no need to be concerned about its performance over time.
But this is where the story shifts gear, and we enter a realm that similarly priced and styled watches simply do not enter. Let me say that we take time seriously at Enoksen. It is a precious finite resource that we want to make the most of. Our customers are people with full lives, who make the most of their time, and we deeply admire and respect them for it. This principle is also why we involve ourselves in exciting sporting events where the concept of timekeeping is of high importance. The time in our lives is what we stand for.
We were therefore inspired to think about the level of timekeeping that we offer in an Enoksen automatic watch (you will recall that an automatic movement is a complex mechanism of springs and cogs that constantly works away quietly on our wrist). We evaluated our automatic movements and inspected them closely. We listened to our most avid customers and people with deep horology roots. We established that we did not need to accept standard factory tolerances for time loss of +/- 20-40 seconds per day. In fact, we decided that it would only be right for us to optimize every single automatic watch that leaves our facility in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Not only because our customers deserve it and because we think it's right that watches are highly accurate, but also because Belfast's rich engineering and manufacturing tradition inspires us on (see below for more on that).
We want our part in this rich tradition to be earned by producing the most accurate automatic watches that it is possible to produce, at least relative to our target price point. Therefore, we measure and inspect every single automatic movement, tune it, listen to it, measure it, observe it, tune again if necessary, and only when its tolerance has been adjusted to +/- 3 seconds per day do we declare it ready for shipment. We call this our Enoksen Calibrated© treatment, and we are immensely proud to offer a product with this capability.
So if you’re looking for your next dress watch, your next adventure watch, or your next everyday watch, why not try the Enoksen Fly E03/E? We promise you’ll be impressed.
A Belfast Story
Belfast has an incredible manufacturing history. First and foremost, Belfast is most well-known in maritime history as the place that Titanic was built. There is an incredible museum at 1 Olympic Way in Belfast that tells the story of the build, the shipbuilders, the passengers and the fateful journey of this incredible vessel.
But Belfast also has a special place in aviation history. In 1936 the British Air Ministry established a new aircraft factory in Belfast which was 50% owned by the Shorts brothers (these three brothers had established the world’s first volume producing aircraft company in London in 1909 which became known simply as Shorts; they made their name building the aircraft designed by the Wright Brothers that had become famous in Europe in 1908). Belfast therefore became a critical engineering and manufacturing centre that played a pivotal role during World War II. In 1943 the company was nationalised by the British government as part of the war-time effort, and in 1948 the entire company’s operations were concentrated in Belfast. Today, Shorts has been divided and acquired by Canada’s Bombardier who in turn sold to the USA’s Spirit AeroSystems and by France’s Thales Air Defence Ltd, but operations in Belfast still continue.
At Enoksen we feel at home amongst the water, the land, and the skies, and we are proud to be part of Belfast’s ongoing tradition of producing impressive machines.
If you are interested to know more about where Aviator watches originated and how they have evolved, please read our fascinating 2-piece history of Aviator watches, written by our Founder, Hans Enoksen.
The Aviator’s Watch, A History, Part 1
The Aviator’s Watch, A History, Part 2
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The Tour is designed to be a watch that does everything well. In many ways it is a metaphor for life, or rather your journey through life and all the things life throws at you. Tour is equally suited for business, leisure, sports, and even formal occasions.
With an accessible size of 39mm it is big enough to show its presence but not so big that it is in the way. The Tour E05 is made from a 39mm 316L stainless steel with sapphire crystal, powered by a high-quality Seiko automatic movement and water resistant to 200m.
The Tour E05/A
The first edition in the Tour range will be made in a limited run of just 200 pieces, making it highly collectible. It has been made as part of our Official Timekeeper commitment to the ATP Tour Swedish Open. Each of the next three years we will launch a watch which celebrates the event in general, and a former Swedish Men's Singles winner in particular. We are thrilled that the first in the range is a tribute to Joakim Nyström, one of our heroes, winner of the 1987 Swedish Open, and a Scandinavian tennis legend.
About Joakim ‘Jocke’ Nyström
Born in 1963 in Skellefteå Nyström is a former Davis Cup winner and a top 10 ranked singles player, peaking at no. 7 in the world in 1986. He won Wimbledon doubles with Mats Wilander in 1985.
After his successful career as a player he turned to coaching and has worked with world class players like Jürgen Melzer, Jack Sock and Dominic Thiem. Today he works with the Good to Great Academy.
]]>We call it Calibrated©.
It means we know with 100% certainty what the accuracy of your new watch is, and each watch is supplied with a certificate with the exact measurements, post adjustment. It also means that you can own an affordable mechanical watch without having to constantly adjust the time.
To paraphrase an ad from a well known insurance company: Can your watch do that?
The Submariner is of course a watch by the Swiss company Rolex, first going into production in 1953 and was first shown to the public at the Basel Watch Fair in 1954. Since then, the Submariner has evolved and on its journey through time it has assisted greats like Jacques Cousteau and James Bond in their endeavours. It was the chosen companion of film maker James Cameron when he piloted the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER submersible he co-designed and engineered 11 kilometres (7 miles) to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench. It has been on the wrist of those who changed the world through the latter half of the 20th century and well into the 21st century, and it is still as relevant as ever. Yet through all of this time, it has retained its perfect proportions and features which made it an instant classic back in 1954.
In an ideal world, everybody who wants a Rolex Submariner should get one... but that is not possible for a number of reasons. A Submariner, regardless of age, is costing more than £5,000 nowadays, which is above and beyond what most people are prepared to spend on a wrist watch. Those who can, and will, spend that kind of money are left desperately trying to juggle waiting lists and a hyper inflated second hand market in a mad scramble to land the holy grail of watches. Originally available in steel only, the Submariner was later introduced in a combination of gold and steel and in 18k solid gold.
Since the launch of the Submariner, most watch brands have attempted to follow Rolex’s act by bringing out watches which took everything from a few to a lot of style and design cues from the master. A watch brand had an incomplete lineup if it didn’t offer a diver’s watch which at least tried to give the Submariner a run for its money.
When we planned the Dive E02 range, we knew that there would be both yea and nay-sayers out there. This came after having considered if it was even fair to entertain the idea of making a watch which takes it primary inspiration from the great Submariner in the first place. For us the decision was simple. Here is our rationale: Thomas Burberry invented the trench coat and today most people agree that a Burberry trench coat is the one to have, assuming you can afford it. But how many of today’s trench coats are made by Burberry? Every serious fashion brand offers their own take on the trench coat, meaning that there are hundreds of great trench coats you can buy - some of them even more expensive than a genuine Burberry. All of this is to say that making your own interpretation of this legendary piece of garment is not a counterfeit.
This begs the question: what would it take for Enoksen to join the the ranks of watch companies making a tribute to the Submariner? For starters, a Dive E02 is not just a watch that takes certain design cues from the great Submariner. It is more than that. It is a watch that revives what the original was designed to be; a no nonsense and ultra durable tool watch made for people with a maritime lifestyle.
Although a Submariner was never a cheap watch, in the past it was far more accessible to people with average incomes than is the case today. We wanted to achieve the same with the Dive E02. We wanted to create not just the look, but more importantly the feel, the sense of quality and robustness you get from a Rolex Submariner. Therefore, we made a watch with sublime specifications. 300m water resistance, sapphire crystal and 316L steel. The Dive E02 is a fraction larger than a Submariner and we have made it ours by changing key design features here and there. After all, it was our objective to create a nod to the Submariner, not a shameless replica. You will not automatically or wrongly assume that a Dive E02 is a Submariner when you see it in the flesh.
We didn’t stop there, however. Through our configurator, we are able to offer a choice of 3 different dial colours, 25 different bezel colours and an almost ungodly amount of straps and bracelets. It is truly possible to configure a Dive E02 in your own image.
So there it is: If you like the look and feel of the Rolex Submariner, lack the desire to pay north of £5k for the privilege, and if you want to pick your own, personal colour scheme, look no further than our customisable Dive E02 range.
We have drawn the line at materials relevant in today's watch manufacturing processes, leaving out old school methods like Radium paint which dominated prior to the nuclear age.
Some of the first watches with the ability to glow in the dark were based on the use of Tritium. If you have come across an older watch with a small ’T’ in a circle on the dial, you might have experienced it first hand. Tritium or hydrogen-3 is a rare and radioactive isotope of hydrogen.
Naturally occurring tritium is extremely rare on Earth. The atmosphere has only trace amounts, formed by the interaction of its gases with cosmic rays. It can be produced by irradiating lithium metal or lithium-bearing ceramic pebbles in a nuclear reactor.
Tritium is used as the energy source in radio-luminescent lights for everything from watches, instruments and tools, even self-illuminating key chains. It is deployed in a medical and scientific setting as a radioactive tracer. Tritium is also used as a nuclear fusion fuel, along with more abundant deuterium, in tokamak reactors and in hydrogen bombs. As you might have figured out by now, Tritium is not your average material.
Being radioactive and rare means that there are some obvious question marks over the safe use of Tritium based materials being worn directly on the skin. However we are talking about fairly low levels of radioactivity, so low that there is no genuine health risk associated with its use in watches. Nevertheless the use of Tritium mixed with paint for decorating a watch dial ceased a number of years ago, and today Tritium is only available in tubes which are then applied directly to a watch dial, or to the hands, or to the hour and minute markers.
The advantage of Tritium is that it glows constantly and doesn’t need to be charged via exposure to light. Although Tritium tubes don’t glow as brightly as other materials they are the best choice for environments with a long absence of natural light. By encapsulating the Tritium in tubes the concern about radiation has been overcome, and with a half life of 12 years it is still the go-to material for really high end watches needed for mission critical projects.
Watches with Tritium tubes often have a radioactivity warning sign on the dial for extra drama, and even some timepieces which pay tribute to watches from the era of the Tritium based paint, have the little ’T’ in a circle logo on the dial, just for kicks.
So with Tritium being radioactive and no longer available as paint, the watch industry has turned its focus onto other solutions.
The leader of the market is Super-LumiNova. Often referred to as Luminova is a strontium aluminate–based, non-radioactive and nontoxic photo-luminescent (afterglow pigments in plain English).
Luminova was first invented in 1993 in by the Japanese company Nemoto & Co., and in 1998 a joint venture between Nemoto and RC-Tritec AG led to the creation of LumiNova AG Switzerland, with a view to supply the Swiss watch industry.
Being easier to manage than Tritium, cheaper to source and less dangerous, Luminova has almost entirely taken over the market. You don’t have to encapsulate Luminova to shield the radiation, and its ability to recharge after a period of darkness doesn’t wear off, so it doesn’t age like Tritium does. Its only enemy is water, and with time Luminova parts on a watch exposed to water - typically the bezel, will lose its effect eventually or just wash off.
To offer variation in colour and brightness Luminova is available in a number of different versions. From the ultra bright to the more subtle, giving watch companies the ability to integrate the lumen in the design of a watch dial.
Depending on the application, where something like a diver’s watch will favour as much brightness as possible, a more dressy watch will have less of a desire to light up the entire room it is in. The Enoksen range of watches is making good use of Luminova. From the lushness of the Deep Dive to the discrete lumen of the Fly E03/D, the different ranges have different levels of brightness.
The image shows a number of watches from our catalogue, starting with the Deep Dive, the Dive and the Drive. These three models have the ultra bright C3 Luminova which appears to be plain white in broad daylight, but immediately turns light green in the darkness. Next model is the Fly E03/E which has BG W9 Luminova which is a tad more discrete - still plain white in daylight but with a hint of light blue in darkness. After that comes the Fly E03/D chronograph with its Light Orange, almost parchment daytime colour. It has a very subtle lumen in direct comparison with both C3 and BG W9. Finally, to the far right is a prototype we are currently working on. It is shown here because it has Tritium tubes and offers a very good impression of how Tritium performs next to different Luminova based dials. Less bright but constant and reliable.
Some watches are simply iconic and time can do nothing to change that fact. More often than not, a watch can be dated simply by looking at its dial, its case, or even its colours. That is until a once in a generation design comes along which is simply perfect...
Simply perfect means no improvements required, nothing you need to change in the fundamentals of the design. A design which simply lasts forever and that you never get tired of. We think you know which watch we are talking about here. The Submariner, launched in 1953 and still the classic it was born to be. It is possibly the most desired watch in the world. This is analogous to the Porsche 911, another piece of industrial design which perfectly fits the above description.
So what is there improve upon? Well, a Rolex Submariner is out of reach for most. Not only is it expensive, it is also illusive. Rolex make far less of them than they could sell, which only increases the desire to own one which in turn results in waiting lists... long waiting lists. Some dealers have customers waiting for up to 5 years before they can get their hands on one. Indeed some dealers are not even bothering any longer, and just turn people away when they ask for a Submariner in steel. That has in turn created a booming aftermarket for pre-owned Submariners, and most models cost well above list price of a new Submariner - even the most plain versions.
With the September 1st launch of a new generation of the Submariner, Rolex has done it again - reignited the hype and made the world stop and stare - Hans Christian Andersen style. Although the changes are almost impossible to spot, and the little boy from the fairy tale is entitled to shout: ‘He is not wearing any clothes’, Rolex has made the most significant change to the winning formula yet. They have increased the size of the watch by 1mm, going from 40mm to 41mm. Does that even matter? Yes it does.
For years there has been rumours and speculation about a smaller Submariner. Some of those who follow the market the closest were fantasising about a 36mm Submariner. Indeed the current trend up until this moment is that watches are shrinking in size, not growing. Leading brands who were bringing out one big monstrosity after the next have stopped making watches that can be seen from space. Many have introduced smaller sizes most likely in a bid to make their products more accessible in more parts of the world. And then Rolex went the other way with the new Submariner. So it actually matters a lot, even if it is just 1mm.
The Submariner 14060M was my first Rolex watch so I have a particular fondness when it comes to this basic, no nonsense icon. But I also remember it for its inability of keeping good time. I remember the dirt from the bracelet which covered my wrist on a warm and sweaty summer’s day. I remember the sub-standard clasp which didn’t lock properly. So it is not all a bed of roses and Rolex ownership comes with a number of other compromises.
When we started Enoksen it was always the plan to have a product range, which included a model that pays tribute to the great Submariner, without being a shameless replica.
So the spirit of our efforts was always the utmost respect for the original, coupled with a desire to experiment with colours and features. First and foremost for us is allowing our customers to enjoy that unique Submariner feeling without the pain of the wait and that of the high price.
Our Dive E02 models draw inspiration from some of the earlier models in the Submariner lineage. Especially the Submariner 5513, which was manufactured from 1962 - 1989.
So how do you go about making a watch which is true to the original, yet new and somewhat different? We knew one thing to be true - the world didn’t need a Submariner homage watch in poor quality and sub standard finish. It was a goal from the outset that the look and feel, and not least weight, had to be as good as or even better than the real thing. Ideally when we buy a new watch, our new watch should be so good that you would hardly believe the price tag.
The basics of the Dive E02 watch family
We began with the case. At 40.8mm, our case is marginally bigger than the original. It is also slightly thicker, but there is a good reason for that. We wanted our watch to have a water resistance level of 300 meters. Greater water resistance requires a slightly beefier watch case.
To create a more utilitarian look we had the watch case satin finished, rather than high gloss polished. The brushed look of the satin finish is more scratch resistant and doesn’t look greasy on warm days. The spirit of the Submariner is action, both under water and on land and knocks will most certainly be a fact of life for a watch of that category. So more action and less board room. In that light we opted for sapphire crystal rather than perspex or hardened mineral. It felt good to know that it would take a diamond to scratch the crystal of the watch. To be water resistant to 300 meters you need a chunky screw-in crown, and to protect the crown further chunky crown guards are an integrated part of the case structure.
A ticket to play for a watch for diving is the ability to time your dive. Therefore the bezel must be rotatable and equipped with timing markers. Our bezel consists of two parts; the rotating bezel which can only travel anti-clockwise, and a bezel insert made of aluminium and a luminous dot located at 12 o’clock. The numbers and markers on our bezel differ in the sense that we use our own typeface for the numbers, rather than the classic Rolex font which is used by everyone else.
To make the watch as serviceable as possible, all access to the movement is achieved via the screw-down caseback which is sealed and pressure tested prior to delivery.
Another very important feature on a watch for diving is legibility and we wanted to make sure that our watch could almost light up a room. Generous use of Luminova on both hour markers and on all three hands ensures that you can tell time regardless of the light settings. In terms of hand design we opted to stay close to the original Submariner design, however with one exception - we couldn’t resist temptation to replace the Mercedes logo inside of the circle of the hour hand with our own Enoksen ‘<‘ logo.
In terms of dial colours we went for three base colours - black, white and grey. We decided from the outset that we would offer a variety of colours for the bezel insert to allow customers to make there own, personal watch, and at present there are 18 different colours to select from.
The movements
In its first version, the Dive E02 was only available with an automatic movement. We went with one of the most popular and reliable movements available - the Seiko NH35a. A movement which is accurate, serviceable and extremely shock resistant. With its date complication and its smooth operation, it supports our idea of what a good diver’s watch should be. In 2019 we added another movement to the range - the Seiko VH31. The VH31 is a so-called Hybrid Quartz, so a combination of a mechanical movement and a quartz movement. The result is the best of both worlds; the incredible accuracy of quartz and the magic of a mechanical movement with a sweeping second hand. On a VH31 based watch the second hand takes four small steps a second rather than one.
Make it your own
Since its launch in August 2018 the Dive range has evolved from being available in one standard colour scheme (our popular E02/A), as well as two special editions - the results our collaboration with Mikael Pernfors and Bernard Fouquet. Today the choice is yours: three dials colours, 18 different bezel colours, as well as a large number of strap and bracelet options mean that you can have the Dive just for you.
When we think of a deep sea diving watch, your Rolex Sea Dwellers and Omega Seamaster Planet Oceans of the world, we are quite familiar with the small, circular cut out usually found at the 9 o’clock position. But what does this actually do? It seems that the key prerequisite for a deep sea capable watch is to be, well, waterproof. This is usually achieved by rubber o-rings and pressure testing. Helium however behaves differently to H2O and can subvert even the most sophisticated of waterproofness systems. This is due to the helium molecule being amongst the smallest of all molecules. Even when the waterproof seals of a watch are working fine to keep water out, the helium molecules can still get through this and enter the watch even though other gases and water cannot.
So why is this a problem? The primary users of such watches are saturation divers. These divers can operate at great depths for extended periods of time by living in dry environments pressurised with an oxygen & helium mix. This is due to helium being an inert gas that has no negative effects on the diver, unlike nitrogen which causes nitrogen narcosis and the loss of consciousness. Additionally, when decompressing, nitrogen facilitates a potentially lethal state called ‘the bends’. Consequently, helium is far safer and is used to replace nitrogen in most deep sea mixed-gas diving applications.
Herein lies the requirement for a helium escape valve. Whilst living and working in this environment, helium molecules can enter the watch and build up inside creating a high pressure differential to the outside world. This build-up of gaseous pressure within the case can inflict serious damage on the watch and even blow out the crystal or crown when it’s unscrewed or the pressure changes. For the diver, this can be extremely dangerous when simply checking the time or handling the watch can potentially write it off. Losing the ability to tell the time at this depth can be catastrophic.
To prevent this from happening, the helium escape valve automatically allows helium molecules to escape using a one-way valve. This lets the helium out whilst preventing anything external from entering. This enables correct performance, pressurisation and decompression of the watch as it moves between differing sea level pressures over the course of its service.
In reality, most divers will not be living or working in a pressurised environment for days or weeks on end. For many of us, our adventures are a little closer to shore meaning we have no direct need for a watch equipped with a helium escape valve. Regardless of how deep you dive, the Enoksen Deep Dive family is safe up to 100ATM and comes fitted with a helium escape valve just in case it’s needed. In our opinion, the E01 family would not be fit for purpose without it.
Since mankind began underwater exploration, a watch has been his companion. Knowing the correct time is a matter of life or death, and the relevance of a robust and accurate timepiece cannot be underestimated.
A Diver’s watch was born out of necessity, making it the ultimate tool watch. The Enoksen philosophy is to merge great design with functionality, quality and affordability, giving you a range of highly credible watches with a purpose and at a price everyone can afford. The desirability comes from what the watch does, not from how much it costs.
Our first watch, the Deep Dive is a tribute to underwater exploration and to the great pioneers who opened our eyes to the world beneath the sea.
With features like water resistance to 100 ATM (1,000 metres), helium escape valve, sapphire crystal, ceramic uni-directional bezel, automatic movement and two high-quality NATO straps, the Deep Dive has it all.
With its no-nonsense design and easy to read Luminova dial it will keep up with you, regardless if you are a deep-sea diver or if you just feel good about owning the best technology available.
To better understand how Deep Dive came about, it makes sense to take a look at what preceded it.
The innovation of modern underwater diving is often credited to one man; Jacques Cousteau. Working together with the engineer Émile Gagnan, who invented the Demand Regulator which significantly improved on existing underwater breathing technology. With the regulator fitted to a breathing apparatus, longer dives became possible. This new invention allowed Cousteau and Gagnan to film and explore more easily underwater and paved the way for scuba diving as we know it today. Scuba is actually a reference to the device that Cousteau and Gagnan so brilliantly pioneered.
With longer dives now being possible, timing suddenly became a big issue. It was a matter of life and death to know when the air supply would run out. At this time watches for diving were still in its infancy. Rolex had introduced the Oyster case, which featured a hermetic seal as early as 1927.
In 1932 Omega introduced a rectangular watch called Marine, which featured a patented double sliding and removable case. Unlike the Rolex Oyster, the Marine achieved its water resistance from encapsulating the watch itself, and in doing so obtained the Swiss Laboratory for Horology’s certification that the watch was able to withstand 13.5 ATM of water pressure without any water intake. 13.5 ATM equates to 135m or 443ft.
By 1935 the Royal Italian Navy began to search for a water resistant and luminous watch for its divers. Panerai rose to the challenge and presented the navy with its brand new Radiomir model – a watch that interestingly enough was manufactured by Rolex.
World War II dampened the efforts to move the diver’s watch game forward but in 1953 Blancpain introduced its legendary Fifty Fathoms model and laid the foundation to the modern diver’s watch.
Indeed Jacques Cousteau and his team of divers were all equipped with Fifty Fathoms watches during the making of the underwater film "Le monde du silence", for which he won the Palme d'or at the Cannes film festival in 1956. Since then Fifty Fathoms has evolved and it is still a highly desirable and sought-after watch today.
A story about diver’s watches would not be complete without the mentioning of the most iconic watch of them all; The Rolex Submariner. Submariner is probably the most recognisable and desired watch in the world. Nothing spells adventure, class and robustness like a Submariner.
Introduced at the Basel Watch Fair in 1954 it became an instant classic and was elevated to further fame when James Bond made it his watch of choice in the first 10 of the world famous spy’s outings. This was in a time before product placement and legend has it that Sean Connery borrowed the Submariner he is sporting in Dr. No from one of the producers. In other words, Rolex didn’t pay a penny for having their watches on the wrist of 007.
Another company that did have to pay for the privilege of kitting out the world’s best known secret agent is Omega. Omega launched its iconic Seamaster range in the 1950s and it was game on in the battle against Rolex.
During the 1960s and the 1970s the two companies exchanged blows and Omega launched its rather odd looking but highly efficient Proplof watch (Plongeur Professionnel) to meet the requirements of companies specializing in deep diving operations like the French Comex (Compagnie Maritime d'Expertises).
Rolex responded with the introduction of the Submariner Seadweller – a watch with a 610m/2000ft water resistance. A special version of the Seadweller, made for Comex is one of the most desirable pre-owned Rolex watches there is. Expect to pay from £50,000 and upwards if you can find one.
Today all the premium watch brands offer a wide range of diver’s watches. At Enoksen, we're proud to carry on the heritage of the Diver's watch, but for the new age. Quality, fashionable timepieces without the brand tax.
]]>Our thesis is that five watches will cut it, but it all depends on your lifestyle, your interest in fashion, your hobbies and what you do for a living.
So why have more than one? Owning a truly well-crafted watch, manufactured with the best parts and assembled in the right location has never been easier or more affordable. Furthermore, watch collecting is a hobby for many. It is enjoyable to buy a watch and learn every little detail about it. Some say that collecting watches is a bit like getting tattoos. Once you get started it seems hard to stop again.
If you consider some of the greatest and most desirable watches from the past one hundred years, they all seem to fall into one of our five categories. There are watches for diving, for driving, for flying, for dressing up and then there is the unsung hero which is none of the above: the everyday watch - a watch that does everything well, and something that remains relevant and appealing years after you have bought it.
Diver
If you ask a watch enthusiast what he would pick if he could only ever buy one watch, there is a fair chance that he would ask for a Rolex Submariner. Why? Because it is a great looking and highly recognisable watch, which will appreciate over time. It is also a diver’s watch, which was groundbreaking when launched back in the 50s. Despite its age, it is just as sought after today as it was then, and gentle evolution has managed to keep it relevant 60 years on. New or vintage, you are never wrong with a Submariner in steel.
So this is a good place for your watch collection journey to begin. Get the best diver’s watch you can afford. Look for features like water resistance to at least 300 meters, sapphire crystal, a unidirectional bezel to help time your dives, and great lumen (it is pretty dark down there).
Aviator
With the diver’s watch in place, you can start looking to the skies for inspiration. Since man first took flight in 1903, a wristwatch has followed him in his endeavours to go higher, further and faster – even into space. This has been an infinite source of inspiration for watch companies across the globe, whether driven by strictly defined customer requirements, or just a matter of creating a feature-rich timepiece for the sake of it. The drama, the history and the achievements that are deeply embedded in some of the great aviator’s watches are truly the stuff that dreams are made of.
Just think about the Cartier Santos, the IWC Flieger Chronograph, the Breitling Navitimer or the Omega Speedmaster Moon Watch. The latter is a strictly functional chronograph built to withstand conditions no one actually knew anything about beforehand.
Or take the sheer number of purpose-built watches made for military use, the tools that would allow pilots to time their missions correctly and make those do-or-die decisions that would change the course of history.
An aviator’s watch is an absolute necessity in any watch collection, with or without chronograph complications. The definition of an aviator’s watch is not as clear as is the case with the diver’s watches: It all depends on the era and the assignment for which it was created. A WWII watch which did nothing more than tell time; a watch created for transatlantic flights showing multiple time zones; a highly advanced instrument capable of measuring altitude, speed, and distances. Regardless of what takes your fancy, you need a representative from this fascinating universe in your watch collection.
Driver
Now that you are equipped to both dive and to fly, it is time to examine the fascinating world of watches designed for motorsport. Whether you like to have a solid handle on your lap times on track days, or you simply like the look of a chronograph capable of measuring speed, a good driver’s watch is, we believe, essential for your collection. As is the case with diving, watchmakers have drawn inspiration from the unique functional requirements of the activity. For motorsport the need to know lap times accurately (a driver’s watch is defined by its stopwatch) has attracted the usual suspects. Brands like Chopard, Zenith, Omega, Tag Heuer, Breitling and Rolex all have a proud history of making watches for driving. Perhaps the most desirable – and again this is debatable – is the Rolex Cosmograph Daytona. It was originally conceived as Rolex’s bid to create a watch for the Apollo space program. However, when Omega won the shootout in space, the Daytona instead won on the racetracks of the 1960s, and it has ruled supreme ever since. In fact, a Daytona given to Paul Newman by his wife recently fetched $17.8m at auction (Forbes, 2017). Not bad for a watch made of steel and purchased for less than $500 when new.
Dress
As the name suggests this is a watch for special occasions, perhaps only a handful of events over the course of a lifetime. This is the watch that you put on your wrist on days when your other watches simply won’t do. Discretion is the watchword here. The dress watch is designed to compliment your black tie, not dominate it. Often a man’s dress watch is inherited from his father or his grandfather and has both history and sentimental value in spades (Fashion Beans, 2016). The Omega Seamaster below is a great example of a watch, which has passed from father to son. It is from 1959 and measures just 34mm excluding the crown.
Until recently, a man’s watch was not much bigger than 36mm wide, and the dress watch is no exception. It is small, perhaps even discrete, and it has a very simple design. Probably made of gold, white or yellow, it is usually fitted with a mesh bracelet or black leather strap. It normally has an automatic or manual movement and it should be slim enough to sit comfortably under the cuff.
Everyday
What is an everyday watch? At Enoksen we define it as a watch which does everything well. A watch for the office, for sports, for holidays and everything in between. Perhaps even with a feature or two that makes your life easier and which is linked to what you do. It could be that it displays an additional time zone to make your world travels easier or it might have a 24-hour hand for those whose job demands precise tracking of time.
The everyday watch shows who you are and what you stand for but it never upstages you. It is your go-to watch and it is probably the watch you use the most. Therefore getting it right is essential. Go for longevity, classic features, and a good size. You can always make noise with your diver, your driver or your aviator so don’t do it with your everyday watch. If you want examples of what we are talking about, just take a look at the new Omega Railmaster or the classic Rolex Explorer.
Our mission at Enoksen is to create watches that stand for exceptional quality and great design, fitting the purpose of every occasion. With the release of our Diver and Fly ranges, we continue to create beautiful watches that every man needs for every occasion.
Be sure to keep a close eye on our new product launches throughout the summer.
Since I first began to appreciate watches I wanted a Rolex Submariner. It was the holy grail, the North, everything I could possibly hope to aspire to. Every watch I had until I finally got to own one, was in one way or another an attempt to get something that felt a bit like the real thing. I am not certain what started the desire for this particular watch, perhaps it was my fascination with the Bond universe. Even though the Bond I grew up with was Roger Moore, whose arm was mostly cladded in Seiko digital timepieces, I had seen him wear the hell out of a Submariner in Live and Let Die, and that was enough for me.
It had to be a Submariner and on a beautiful spring day in 1999 I finally joined the club. It was in Hamburg and, just like today, the Rolex sports watches were like gold dust. So finding one, which could be bought at list price, was something special. The jeweller and his white gloves, the glass of champagne I sipped while listing to his instructions on how to set the watch and care for it, and the incredible sense of occasion present in the Wempe shop at Jungfernstieg elevated the buying experience to a level I had not experienced before. The watch that was to be mine was the 14060M Submariner – the absolute entry level Sub with a mediocre movement which wasn’t even chronometer certified, and a completely clean and dateless dial. But it didn’t matter one bit – it was a brand new Rolex Submariner and I was now part of an elite group of extremely successful people. Or so it felt.
One thing that I will always remember about that watch was the way I felt when I put it on in the morning – the way that this ritual kick started the day never really lost its magic. Apart from that it was a dreadful watch from a more pragmatic perspective; it didn’t keep good time, the crystal always appeared to be greasy and the clasp was of an appalling quality. Furthermore owning the watch let me in on a nasty little secret – there always seems to be a more desirable model which you should have bought instead. I should have picked the date version, which also had a better movement. Or I should have waited until I could afford the ultra cool Seadweller version, and so I kept on torturing myself. When I was amongst other Rolex owners I felt a bit like I was a member of the club, but on the thinnest mandate possible. It felt like I had bought a BMW 114i – the smallest and the cheapest model of the entire range. It just looked desperate. The truth is that nobody gave a toss, the conflict was entirely inside my head and nowhere else.
The years passed and I was never able to completely let these feelings go, but I still wore my 14060M with pride every single day.
Things were going fairly well and I thought that the time had come for the upgrade I had been craving for years. At that time I really liked the gold/steel watches, and when the new GMT-Master with its ceramic bezel came out I knew I had to own it. In fact I paid the local jeweller at least five visits where I tried the watch on again and again before I finally parted with my old Submariner and quite a few quid to get the GMT-Master.
Weirdly the spell had been broken somewhat. I looked at my wrist and my new possession stared back at me, I could see the beauty and the massive presence, I could feel the weight of the gold. It just didn’t feel as special as the first time around. The joy that the first Submariner gave me was never felt with the next one.
The polished gold in the centre of the bracelet picked up visible scratches like there was no tomorrow, and after a while the watch looked beaten up and very used. I went back to the jeweller and asked him to refurbish it, speculating it would increase its value if the watch appeared in mint condition. When it came back after two months I showed it to my new girlfriend and the look of disgust and disbelief in her eyes made me trade the GMT-Master for a brand new Explorer II with a white dial and an orange 24-hour hand. A relatively big and very matter-of-factual watch, and possibly the last of the Rolex range, which hadn’t gone bling.
I really liked the watch but the magic had now gone and I found myself spending more and more time looking at Tudor rather than Rolex. It was as if Rolex had sold its soul to become more appealing to some of the new, emerging watch markets where appearance mattered more than functionality, and it was now up to Tudor to carry the torch forward and deliver the virtues that had made Rolex great in the first place.
As I grew older I got a better understanding of what I wanted and that I was no longer as attracted to loud branding on a watch. I didn’t need a brand to hide behind, I didn’t need a club to belong to. In fact I got obsessed with minimalistic or no branding, but I couldn’t find a watch that delivered exactly that. Most watches with no branding looked like train station clocks for the wrist. Where could I find a beautiful range of watches that paid tribute to some of the greatest timepieces known to man, without having to tolerate a branding that meant nothing to me.
There and then the idea for Enoksen Watches was born.
Hans-Henrik Enoksen, CEO & Founder
]]>The perfect watch is one that talks to you.
Not by way of artificial intelligence like Siri or Alexa, but by connecting with something deeper, something inside. It’s a little bit like true love…you know you’ve found your match when you cannot stop staring at it. When you put on your perfect timepiece, every morning is joyful. The perfect watch completes your outfit and makes you look and feel great, regardless of whatever else you are wearing.
Like your significant other, your perfect watch needs to have lasting qualities, perhaps in the way its been made, but even more so in its timeless appearance and longevity.
If you translate these requirements into something tangible – no matter how hard it is, you end up with a list of outer and inner quality requirements. Life is a long string of moments and the quality of a life is determined almost entirely by the frequency at which these moments seem joyous and rewarding.
So your perfect watch should match the kind of life you live, or perhaps the life you aspire to live. Not everyone is a diver, but anyone who can swim can also dive, so in a way we are all divers if we choose to be. Perhaps this is what makes divers watches so popular and attractive. That said, 99% of dive watches are never tested to the limit of their abilities and yet they retain their popular allure.
We buy them because we like the sound of a watch being water resistant to 1,000 meters – not because we will ever go there ourselves. We like to tell our friends how that opening on the left side of the watch is a helium escape valve, which prevents the watch from exploding while re-emerging from the depths.
At Enoksen, we make perfect watches as defined above. Watches that you can afford, and yet comprise all the qualities that make people pay 30-40 times more for a timepiece. Watches that look great in the surf, with a suit, with jeans, with shorts or with nothing at all. Watches that will take a beating and show accurate time for years. Watches that don’t make you a target when you travel to far away places. Watches that connect you with nothing else than your sanity.
My personal favourite from our range is the Dive E02/A with its grey, no-nonsense colours, its sapphire crystal and its trusty mechanical movement. There is simply no situation I find myself in where this watch isn’t the perfect complement to what I need.
But that’s just me – take a look for yourself and find your own favourite from our range.
Hans Enoksen
Since man began underwater exploration, the watch has been one of his most valued companions. In this environment, knowing the correct time is often a matter of life or death, and the need for a robust and accurate timepiece cannot be underestimated. This need gave birth to the ultimate tool watch: a watch that must remain equally accurate on land and beneath the waves, able to cope with the crushing pressure of deep water.
Our philosophy is to blend great design with functionality, craftsmanship and affordability, comprising a range of highly credible watches with a purpose and at a reasonable price. It is therefore no coincidence that our first timepiece was a diver's watch. Introduced in March 2018 the Enoksen Deep Dive soon found friends all over the planet, and the model remains our best seller.
This is how we got there.
The Enoksen Deep Dive is a tribute to underwater exploration and to the great pioneers who opened our eyes to the world beneath the sea.
When developing the Enoksen Deep Dive we knew from the outset that this would be a watch which had to be truly remarkable.
Most serious diver’s watches are water resistant to 30 ATM (300 metres), but we wanted to do better than that. We raised the bar and decided we would aim for 100 ATM (1,000 metres) instead, even if it meant that the watch would be big and mighty. We wanted to create a watch that would promise adventure and the deep blue ocean.
The principal challenge in building a watch that remains intact, even at 100 ATM is that of making it absolutely resistant to the extreme pressure found at those depths. To create a watertight seal around the crown, it must be screwed shut on a long thread, increasing the size of this component. If located at 3 o’clock (the conventional position), this larger crown may touch the back of your hand. So we have moved the crown position down to 4 o’clock where it is better shielded and easier to operate.
With the case and the crown in place, we decided on a very clean and legible dial in black with Luminova indicators and a sapphire crystal. Not that you need to know the date when exploring the sea, but we felt that this would nonetheless be relevant everywhere else, so we fitted a date window – also at 4 o’clock. The face is finished with a uni-directional bezel made of ceramic, rather than steel, to ensure that all elements of the watch stand the test of time and tide.
All the greatest diver’s watches have automatic movements and Deep Dive is no exception. After testing a variety of movements we approved a modified and optimised version of the STP1-11 from Swiss Technology Products. The STP1-11 is exceptionally accurate and highly serviceable, guaranteeing that the Enoksen Deep Dive continues to be your valued companion for many years to come. Furthermore it has the patented Incabloc system which means that it can sustain even very rough use.
Since the introduction of the very first Deep Dive E01/A, the range has grown. Today there are five different models to choose from: The classic E11/A in stainless steel, the all-black E11/B, the E11/G Bronze edition, and the E11/SF which is a watch made for Swedish Special Forces. The E11/SF is available in both a black and a stainless steel case. The E11/A is also available in a Special Edition with bronze markers and hands.
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