Casio Proves We Need More Hiking Watches; Nivada Grenchen's Chronoking Racing II; Ba111od's Chapter 7 With A Natural Steel Look; Sartory-Billard's First Daily Wearer; A Wonderful UN

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Have a nice weekend everybody, hope you enjoy the Traska review.

In this issue

• Casio Strips the Pro Trek Down to Three Hands And Proves We Need More Hiking Watches

• Nivada Grenchen Brings A Bunch Of New Dials To The Chronoking Racing With The New Racing II

• Ba111od Gives The Skeletonized Chapter 7 A Natural Stainless Steel Look

• The Sartory-Billard SB04-E Nuances Could Be The Brand's First Real Daily Wearer

• Ulysse Nardin Puts the Solar System On Your Wrist In The Rose Gold Blast Moonstruck

• IAT REVEIW: The Traska Venturer GMT Is What Happens When A Watch Has Everything But A Past

👂What’s new

1/

Casio Strips the Pro Trek Down to Three Hands And Proves We Need More Hiking Watches

I've long thought there should be more hiking watches. Hiking is pretty much the most accessible outdoor activity there is, requiring no gear beyond shoes and a willingness to walk uphill, and yet the watch world mostly offers you either a plain field watch or a full sensor-loaded expedition computer with nothing sensible in between. Sure, of course, you can hike with your JLC Reverso if you so please, but let’s pretend we need purpose-built tools to walk around in nature. The Casio Pro Trek PRJ-01 fills that gap. It's the first fully analog Pro Trek, dropping the digital display and the Triple Sensor package that has defined the line for decades in favor of three hands and a date.

The resin case measures 39.10mm wide and 11.60mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 44.40mm, which makes this one of the smallest Pro Treks Casio has ever built. Water resistance is 100 meters, the crystal is mineral glass, and the case back is resin. The rotating bezel is very cool. In its default position it gives the watch an angular, geometric profile, but turn it and it shifts a protective wall around the crown. The markings also let you work out rough direction using the sun, and I’m a fan of low-tech navigation aids.

The dial on all three models is a milky white with central hours, minutes, and seconds, and a date window kind of awkwardly hanging there at 4:30. Neobrite covers both the dial and hands, which means that the entire thing lights up. Each of the three references has its own accent color: yellow on the black PRJ-01-1, blue on the black PRJ-01AE-8, and orange on the white PRJ-01AE-7.

Inside is module 5548, a solar-powered quartz calibre, with roughly five months of running time from a full charge and a low battery warning. All three come on a resin NATO-style strap that passes under the case, matching the case color. The AE versions add a textile carabiner attachment so you can clip the watch to a pack or a belt loop, which is something that more watches should have.

Now, for some bad news. Currently, the Casio PRJ-01 is sold only in Japan, but sources they will go worldwide with them. Price is $157 for the PRJ-01-1 and the two AE references are around $194. I love these, I want these. See more on the Casio website.

2/

Nivada Grenchen Brings A Bunch Of New Dials To The Chronoking Racing With The New Racing II

Last September I told you I'd have to buy the green Chronoking Racing, and I stand by that. I still haven’t bought one because the list of stuff I have to buy is getting super long. However, in the meantime, Nivada Grenchen released the new Chronoking Racing Collection which is either good news or an expensive problem. This is a collection that was made with input from Nivada buyers that got a chance to vote on their favorite colors.

The case carries over unchanged. Stainless steel, 38mm wide and 13mm thick, brushed and polished, with pump pushers and a signed fluted crown. It's a well-proportioned vintage chronograph case and 100 meters of water resistance is more than welcome. On top sits the interchangeable bezel system, and every watch ships with all five bezels regardless of which dial you pick. This time they carry the City Track design, a 60-minute scale paired with 12 city names for time zones.

While the interchangeable bezels are cool, those dials are the show stoppers. Five pretty wild colorways are available: black with burgundy, black with blue, a monochrome blue, a green and an ice blue. They all share the same setup, with three recessed registers, running seconds at six, a 60-minute chronograph counter at nine and a 24-hour indicator at three, all with the square-tipped exotic markers inside them. Nivada Grenchen also widened the chapter ring, simplified the hour markers down to plain applied batons and slimmed the central chronograph hand.

Inside is the Seiko VK63 mecaquartz, which you already knew by that stupid 24-hour indicator, quartz for the timekeeping and a mechanical chronograph module for the stopwatch. Straps are a beads-of-rice steel bracelet with a folding clasp or a black perforated leather strap on a pin buckle.

The Nivada Grenchen Chronoking Racing II is available now, €640 on the leather strap and €840 on the bracelet. See more on the Nivada website.

3/

Ba111od Gives The Skeletonized Chapter 7 A Natural Stainless Steel Look

BA111OD launched the Chapter 7 Skeleton back in May, and, curiously, they only launched it in an anthracite PVD finish, with no silver option. It wasn’t a bad move, far from it, but it was a bit unusual. Well, they just fixed that with the new Chapter 7 Skeleton with the anthracite PVD taken off. Nothing else has changed. Same case, same movement, same openworked dial, just brushed and polished steel instead of a dark coating.

The case is 316L stainless steel at 40mm wide, with vertical brushing across the flat surfaces and polished facets picking out the edges. There’s a sapphire crystal with antireflective coating up top, a display caseback below, and the crown sits at 4 o'clock engraved with the BA111OD emblem, as the brand is known to do. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial is openworked and arranged to put the movement on display, with vertical brushing and polished bevels on the bridges and a sandblasted texture filling the space between the indexes. Removing the PVD changes the look completely, and it’s a much brighter overall look.

Inside is the Soprod P024, a skeletonised automatic with 38 hours of power reserve and a 4Hz beat rate. Two strap choices are available: an integrated stainless steel bracelet with tool-free micro-adjustment, or a frost blue rubber strap.

The new Ba111od Chapter 7 Skeleton can be ordered now, but deliveries are expected in mid-August. Price on the rubber strap is €1,125 and on the steel bracelet it’s €1,195. See more on the Ba111od website.

4/

The Sartory-Billard SB04-E Nuances Could Be The Brand's First Real Daily Wearer

Sartory-Billard has spent most of its existence in the bespoke business, letting customers pick materials and shades until the watch was theirs alone. But that’s complicated, for both the manufacturer and often for the client that sometimes just wants an off the shelf watch without much fuss. And Sartory-Billard acknowledges that with the new SB04-E Nuances, which keeps things simple and brings them the closes to making a straightforward daily wearer.

The case is stainless steel measuring 39.5mm wide and 10.2mm thick, with a lug-to-lug of 44mm and alternating polished and brushed surfaces. Those are good numbers, and the thickness in particular deserves credit given how many independents land closer to 12mm with a comparable movement inside. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial is slightly concave, sunray brushed, with a very slight fumé gradient that darkens toward the edge. Applied numerals replace the sapphire disc used on earlier SB04-E models. The typography was drawn for the brand by Simon Schmidt (it shows that they put effort into it) and the polished concave hands take their shape from a fountain pen nib, filled with Super-LumiNova. Three colors are available at launch: red, green and blue, and I assume more will folow. And you still get the cool sector dividers and railroad track scale on the edge of the dial.

Inside is the La Joux-Perret G101A, beating at 4Hz, with 68 hours of power reserve. No date, which suits the dial. You get a choice of colour-matched rubber strap with a pin buckle or a steel bracelet with alternating brushed and polished links, closed with a three-fold clasp.

The SB04-E Nuances is available now, priced at €3,600 without tax on rubber and €3,800 without tax on the bracelet. First deliveries start October 2026. See more on the Sartory-Billard website.

5/

Ulysse Nardin Puts the Solar System On Your Wrist In The Rose Gold Blast Moonstruck

Ludwig Oechslin's astronomical watches for Ulysse Nardin are the rare complications that actually work as instruments rather than as party tricks. Sure, technically, they still are party tricks because no one truly needs to be tracking celestial objects with their wristwatch, but they are also incredible works of art. One such example is the Astrolabium Galileo Galilei in 1985, then the Planetarium Copernicus and Tellurium Johannes Kepler, and in 2009 the first Moonstruck, which condensed the Earth-Sun-Moon relationship into one display you can read without a manual. The new Blast Moonstruck in rose gold is that same calibre wrapped in the Blast case, limited to 20 examples.

The case is 45mm wide, and being made out of 18k rose gold, you’ll know when you’re wearing this watch. But to cut down on weight, UN makes the case middle and bezel out of black DLC titanium. Not sure how much that helps, but would you care with a thing this impressive? The upper case mixes satin and polished surfaces with laser-cut facets. That bezel is almost non-existent because the entire front is taken up by a pretty spectacular box-shaped crystal that sits on top of the case. Interestingly, you even get 30 meters of water resistance.

That sapphire glass box was developed to accommodate the movement, but it’s also part of the main attraction of the watch — it features an engraving of the Northern Hemisphere, as seen from the north pole, on its underside and it’s a pretty spectacular look. Below it is a beautiful aventurine glass dial that mimics the night sky. A rotating 24-hour disc carries a bronzite Sun indication with a two-tone day/night display, working against a fixed city ring for world time. The Moon tracks its own orbital path around the globe, showing phase and position in the lunar month, and the lit portion of the Moon always faces the Sun exactly as it does in the sky. That last detail is an Oechslin signature. The relative Sun and Moon positions also drive the tidal coefficient reading, so you can see spring and neap tides coming. The moonphase is accurate to one day of drift over 40.3 years. A rose gold ring engraved with the days of the month runs around the outside

The calibre UN-106 is Ulysse Nardin's in-house automatic, 338 parts and 42 jewels, beating at 4 Hz with a 50 hour power reserve. It uses a silicon escapement and silicon hairspring, made in-house at SIGATEC, which the brand introduced with the Freak back in 2001. Local time jumps forward and backward in one-hour steps via case-side pushers. Everything else sets from the crown. It comes on a black alligator strap with a folding clasp in black DLC titanium and rose gold.

The Blast Moonstruck in rose gold, reference 1065-400LE-2A-BLACK/1A, is limited to 20 examples, priced at €102,600. Yes, this is completely insane to say, but that seems like a pretty good deal. See more on the Ulysse Nardin website.

IAT REVEIW: The Traska Venturer GMT Is What Happens When A Watch Has Everything But A Past

There's a shop about fifteen minutes from where I live that sells nothing but reproduction furniture. Not actual knock-offs, but chairs that look like they came out of a Danish workshop in 1958, sideboards with proper taper on the legs, the right walnut, the correct proportions. The man who runs it makes most of it himself, and he's very good. A few years ago I asked him why he didn't just put his own name on the things and sell them as his own designs, because frankly some of them are better executed than the originals. He laughed and said that nobody wants a chair by a guy from Zagreb. They want a chair by a dead Dane.
I've thought about that conversation a lot since, mostly because it explains the watch industry in a nutshell.

Consider what you're actually buying when you buy a watch above a certain price. You're buying a case, a dial, a movement, and a bracelet, and every one of those things has a production cost that can be calculated to the cent. Some are more expensive to make, others less. Then you're buying the other thing. The thing that isn't on the spec sheet. A story about a mountain, or a moon landing, or a race in the desert, or a diver in 1953 who needed to know how long he had left in the water. Sometimes that story is true. Sometimes it's been sanded down and polished by four decades of marketing until it barely resembles what happened. It doesn't much matter, because it’s always a story. It's the reason a steel sports watch with a date window can command a five-figure sum and a waiting list, and it's the reason another steel sports watch with a date window, built to the same standard or better, sits on a shelf.
That gap between the two is the most interesting economic feature of this hobby, and it has a name: heritage. Which brings me to a small brand in Florida, and a watch I've been wearing for the past couple of days.
Traska has been around since 2018, founded by Jon Mack, and the entire operating philosophy is visible in the product line if you follow it closely enough. The brand does not blow up its designs and start over. It revises. A case gets reworked, a bracelet gets better, a dial gets simplified, and the watch that emerges is recognizably the same watch, just better than it was. This is exactly what Rolex has done for seventy years, and it's the least glamorous strategy in watchmaking, which is presumably why so few small brands have the discipline for it. Put aside whatever emotions you might have for the Crown, but it’s a fact that their consistency in evolution is unparalleled.

What I liked about the Venturer specifically was that it refused to be another GMT-Master tribute. Instead of a bidirectional 24-hour bezel around the outside, Traska put the second time zone scale on an internal rotating ring, controlled by a second crown. Same functionality, completely different apperance. In a category where roughly nine out of 10 releases are working from the same 1954 template, that’s nice to see.
So the new Venturer GMT arrives with a specific problem to solve, which is that the old one was already very good. The changes here are borrowed from two other Traska projects: the Chronograph, which was a genuine departure for the brand, and a Jump Hour model that Mack and designer Max Resnick have been finalizing. Both are attempts to build a visual language that belongs to Traska rather than to the general vocabulary of mid-century sports watches. The Venturer is where that language gets applied to an existing product for the first time and makes it their own.

Read the entire review here.

⏲️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

• When we think of the ancient world, Greece and Rome usually come to mind, with perhaps a smattering of Cleopatra and Egypt thrown in. This is true not only for the general public but for scholars too, who have tended to keep a narrow focus on these cultures. But, as Carlos Noreña reports, we are on the brink of an exciting shift that explores the patterns of connectivity and exchange that shaped a truly global ancient world. After all, when eighth‑century Central Asian silver vessels turn up in an archaeological dig in Scotland, you have to broaden your view.

• People are choosing cremation far more often these days. Open-casket funerals are on a steep decline, along with the professions that allow for loved ones to comfortably view their dead for the last time. For Harper’s Magazine, John Semley talks to Anthony Saldivar, Berri Cooper, Danielle Colquitt, and Hannah Bugos, all of whom competed in the Restorative Art Technical Showcase, “the highlight event of last year’s National Funeral Directors Association convention.” These elite undertakers are highly skilled in what’s known as restorative art, the process by which humans disfigured by grievous injury or disease are made to look like they did in life, so that their loved ones can bid farewell to someone they recognize.

• The peg for Robert Zaretsky’s essay on Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot feels flimsy: “the 70th anniversary of its American premiere,” which lagged the show’s proper premiere, in Paris, by three years. Disregard the peg; as Zaretsky makes clear, there’s not a bad time, these days, to consider Beckett’s best-known work, a demonstration of “solidarity and compassion” set against a “featureless, colorless vista.” The stage directions for Godot have Estragon, one of the play’s leads, look out into the auditorium as an extension of the devastation. “Inspiring prospects,” he says. Let’s hope so.

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