An Icy Blue Timex Waterbury Heritage Chrono; New Colors For The Familiar Sinn 903; Kurono Tokyo Solves Major Dive Watch Problem; A Pink Dial Parmigiani Tonda PF 36mm In Steel And Platinum

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Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Sorry everyone, I had to cut today a bit short as I’m swamped finishing a project. We’ll be back to our regular schedule very soon.

In this issue

• Timex Brings An Icy Blue Dial To The Smaller Waterbury Heritage Chronograph

• Sinn Updates Their Very Familiar 903 Models With New Dial Colors

• Kurono Tokyo Releases Their First Diver Solving One Of The Major Problems Of The Genre

• A Pink Dial Joins The Parmigiani Fleurier Tonda PF Automatic 36mm Steel And Platinum Lineup

👂What’s new

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Timex Brings An Icy Blue Dial To The Smaller Waterbury Heritage Chronograph

We’ve known for a while that more and more watch brands are shrinking down their watches and it will certainly take a while for this trend to propagate through all the brands and all the collection. Timex is one of the brands that is working quickly on this move, introducing more and more of their watches in smaller cases. That’s why maybe half a year ago, we got a smaller take on the Timex Waterbury Heritage Chronograph. That one was released with a black and white dial, followed up quickly by a sunray brushed green with some choice yellow details. Now, we’re getting a cool blue dial version of the same watch.

While smaller than previous versions, the new case isn’t tiny. Not by a long shot. Especially when it comes to thickness. The stainless steel case of the Waterbury Heritage Chronograph measures 39mm wide and 13.5mm thick, a measurement that could have been cut down a bit since the watch is using a quartz movement. On top is a mineral glass crystal, surrounded by a fixed black tachymeter bezel. Despite the fact that the watch looks like it has screw down pushers, it doesn’t, so water resistance is 50 meters.

This latest release gets a sunray brushed blue dial with black sunken sub dials, a 24-hour sub-dial at 3 o’clock, and a running seconds counter at 9 o’clock. You get applied hour markers and lume filled silver hands.

Inside, you’ll find a quartz analog chronograph movement that isn’t named, as Timex is known to do. The watch comes on a green double-layered slip through fabric strap that has a yellow strip down the middle to match the dial and central chrono hand.

The new Timex Waterbury Heritage Chronograph 39 is part of the regular collection, but only available through the Timex website. Price is set at €329. This might be a problem, since this is a significant price bump from the green model from last year that sold for €275. See more on the Timex website.

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Sinn Updates Their Very Familiar 903 Models With New Dial Colors

The story of the Sinn model 903 is a great one, as you might already intuit just by their look, which is nearly identical to the Breitling Navitimer. Back in the 1970s, the Swiss watch industry was taking a trashing with the skyrocketing of sales of quartz powered watches. Many major brands didn’t survive this era and among them was Breitling, which shut down in 1979, with its assets sold off. Two Swiss companies, Sicura and Sinn, bought the rights to the Breitling Navitimer model, while Sinn, Ollech and Wajs and another company bought up cases and dials that Breitling held in stock. While Sicura continued to produce watches under the Breitling name, owning the rights to the names Breitling and Navitimer, Sinn bought the rights to the Breitling 806 and 809 Navitimer models as well as 500 cases and dials with the intent of making their own pilot’s watch with a logarithmic scale and slide rule function. This gave birth to the Sinn 903 ST B E Navigational Chronograph, a 41mm stainless steel cased pilot watch that reminds us so incredibly of the Breitling. Just the other week I wrote about the new titanium version of 903, but what I missed is that the brand released two new dials for the regular steel 903.

Both watches share the case that the revived 903 had, which means that it’s stainless steel, measuring 41mm wide, 14,5 mm and I can’t find what the lug-to-lug on the new watch is. I would love to know, as those lugs look like they could be on the long side with their pointy look. The watches get a silver-electroplated bezel that has a very pronounced coin edge to it. Rotate the outer diameter, and you’ll move the internal bezel that’s protected under the sapphire crystal. The crown screws down and you can get 200 meters of water resistance, which is quite nice for a chronograph without screw down pushers.

There are two new dial options — a grey and a green, both with sunray brushed surfaces. Both have the internal bezel which is marked with the slide rule bezel with logarithmic scale that can be used to calculate times, distances or fuel consumption. They also have silver sub-dials in a tri-compax setup, while the hand applied indices, hands and the 12 numeral are made out of hybrid ceramic luminous elements which make up for some great lume shots.

Inside all three watches is the same movement, the La Joux-Perret L110, a column wheel automatic chronograph movement. It beats at 28,800vph and has a 60 hour power reserve. You can choose between a five link bracelet, a leather or a silicone strap.

The new Sinn 903 models are available now, priced between €3,350 and €3,650, depending on the strap you get. See more on the Sinn website.

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Kurono Tokyo Releases Their First Diver Solving One Of The Major Problems Of The Genre

There’s no stopping Japanese indie watchmaker Hajime Asaoka and his brand Kurono Tokyo. They offer fantastic watches at great prices. This simple brand has become the face of indie Japanese watchmaking and good on them! However, the vast majority of watches we’ve seen from them have been field and dressy watches, with a couple of GMT and chronograph watches added to the mix. One major genre of watch has been missing from the mix for years now, and now we’re getting it — the first Kurono Tokyo Diver. And boy, is it a wild watch.

Here’s the one major problem with dive watches — they’re large. And they’re not large because watchmakers necessarily want them to be large. They combat pressure under water with their size. To make the watch waterproof to 300 meters, you want a lot of steel and sapphire, along with gaskets, separating your insides from the outsides. Asaoka has a very different approach to a dive watch. The base of the watch is a case made out of steel, their first cushion-shaped case, that could easily be described as tiny. It measures 35mm x 35mm, with a length of 37.4mm and an almost impossible thinness of 9mm, including the sapphire crystal. However, there’s just one issue with this watch — it’s water resistant to just 50 meters. How is it, then, a dive watch?

Well, the Kurono Diver comes with an additional steel diving case. Pop off the strap from the cushion-shaped watch, use the tool to open the diving case, and the entire watch fits inside, protecting it from the pressure of diving. And this is where the size comes in. The case is made out of polished steel, measuring 46mm wide, 13.5mm thick, with a 56.7mm lug-to-lug. On top is a sapphire crystal, surrounded by a bezel made out of red Extra Super Duralumin, with a 60 minute scale on it. There’s a bunch more interesting stuff with this external case. For example, you’ll notice that there’s no crown. That’s because other brands before Kurono tried similar things with outer cases for divers, but the weak point was always the connection between the outer case and the crown. Kurono says that since this is an automatic watch, there’s no reason to wind it, and quick time adjustments won’t be made while diving — they can be made when you take out the watch out of the case. Even more interesting is the water resistance. If you seal the case by hand, Kurono says you’ll get 100 meters of water resistance. If you use the included tool to crank down the case, you get 300 meters of water resistance.

While the case is incredibly interesting, this is still a Kurono watch, which means that you get a very nice looking white dial with large markers filled with white lume, pointed to with blue steel cathedral hands. It’s a great looking watch. Inside, you’ll find the Miyota calibre 90S5, which beats at 4Hz and has a 40 hour power reserve. The small watch comes on a leather strap, while the dive case gets a rubber strap.

The Kurono Diver comes as a full set and will be limited in production, a timed release. The order window for the watch closes tomorrow, March 11 and delivery priority will be given to owners of dive certifications. Price is set at $2,700. See more on the Kurono Tokyo website.

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A Pink Dial Joins The Parmigiani Fleurier Tonda PF Automatic 36mm Steel And Platinum Lineup

The last time I wrote about the 36mm Tonda from Parmigiani Fleurier, I complained how the 40mm version got a ton of updates over the releases and the smaller version was a bit neglected. That was in October, when PF released the beautiful two-tone Tonda PF Automatic 36mm with a purple dial. Well, it hasn’t been long and we’re getting a new version of the 36mm Tonda, this time in a tone-on-tone steel and platinum case with a gorgeous pastel pink dial.

The 36mm Tonda PF is exactly what most people will think of when they think of Parmigiani. It’s elegant, subdued, but insanely beautiful. It measures in at 36mm wide and 8.6mm thick. It has the recognizable knurled bezel and teardrop-shaped lugs, with the case now done in stainless steel and a platinum bezel, and a fantastic combination of brushed and polished surfaces. This is still a sports watch, so water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial has the traditional Tonda PF hand-guilloché barleycorn pattern on the dial, here rendered in a color they call Arctic Rose, which is the softest pastel pink. Beautiful. That’s paired with hand-applied 18k white gold rhodium-plated indices, skeletonized delta-shaped white gold hands and an applied PF logo.

Inside, you’ll find the in-house automatic calibre PF770. It has a 60 hour power reserve and a 22k gold skeletonized rotor. The watch comes on a five link bracelet made out of stainless steel, with a fantastic construction that hides the complexity and a brushed and polished finish.

The new Parmigiani Fleurier Tonda PF Automatic 36mm Arctic Rose is available now for CHF 21,400. See more on the Parmigiani website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• A powerful February storm triggered California’s deadliest avalanche in modern history, killing nine of 15 backcountry skiers traveling from the Frog Lake huts near Lake Tahoe. Joshua Partlow carefully and tactfully picks through the decisions and route choices that may have contributed to this tragedy amid forecast high avalanche danger. With an investigation underway, it is still too early for definitive answers, but not for the hard questions.

• Charlie McCann rides along as Ran Fowler, a California nursery owner and plant sneak, travels to Mexico to gather seeds and cuttings from a dozen different kinds of succulent and then sneak them back across the US border. McCann’s tense narrative carries an engaging history of plant theft, and is barbed, here and there, fun writing. And Fowler makes a great subject: an obsessive whose reverence for succulents falls somewhere between righteousness and delusion.

• “I’d become a teacher in large part because I wanted to spend time with young people’s writing, honouring it with close attention,” writes Peter C Baker in this piece for The Guardian. But what happens when writing—and even reading—without the help of AI becomes a foreign concept in the classroom? This topic is not new, but Baker’s passion for creating AI-free teaching is inspiring.

👀Watch this

One video you have to watch today

I know I’ve been spamming you with Gorillaz music, but two (and a half) things about them: the new album is divine, this appearance on SNL is even better (and I’ll be seeing them this summer in Zagreb).

Thanks for reading,
Vuk