What time is it? Watches and horology

I’d expect it to be a small pilot watch for legibility while riding with WR of 100m on a 38mm case.

WR of 100mm

World record of 10cm (im assuming thickness)

Bremont have some nice looking watching but not in a way I want to part with £5k for one.

This is a startlingly accurate summary of their entire line.

Nice, but pricey.

Wait a minute.....

I don't mind the Rapha watch looks but the price is hilarious. I wonder if they will even sell one...

I like the Montblanc pens and pencils, always feel a bit uncertain about their watches though.

Montblanc have two distinct watch product lines really - the higher-quality stuff made by what was Minerva (eg the monopusher chronographs), and the cheaper stuff. The cheaper stuff does look cheap IRL and probably not worth their £2k+ price tags.

My local jewelers and a couple of online shops are starting to offer Bremont at 20-25% off which makes the super marines cheaper than a Black bay but still more expensive than a longines spirit zulu gmt but thats not swaying me. How much cheaper would they need to get for you to seriously consider on as an alternative to those or the similarly priced offerings from Breitling, Oris, GS etc?

What abouty Bremont's in-house movement(s)? Quite a story. https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/up-close-and-personal-with-the-bremont-eng300 Are they worth the high RRPs?

Loving this JB200, but dislike the original strap, was thinking of a black nato with PVD coated buckle or brushed steel..

My only concern is the thickness the double pass will add to the already beefy case..

Any other suggestion ?

Any tough ?

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The uncharitable take is that they claimed to have launched their own manufacture movement several years ago, but it turned out it wasn't theirs. They took a pummelling from many people for that. Now they have a new one, which they also didn't develop from scratch, but bought the rights to and modified. It is mostly made in their UK facilities but not 100%. So is it really in-house? Is it any better than a Swiss ebauché? It it actually just a Swiss ebauché?

The prices are probably the result of the investment they've taken and the new building they have to pay for. Maybe with some aspirational element in there too - hey, if we’re the same price as Omega, people will think we must be as good.

They're like TVR or someone like that - a frumpy and mostly unexceptional product with corners cut that is always going to sell to a certain type of customer who wants to buy British things and will pay for them despite their poorer value or relative lack of quality.

The more charitable take is that their tenacity is admirable and they have a clear goal - it's a plucky fight against the big boys. And it is very hard and extremely expensive to make a new watch movement. They're not doing much that someone like Nomos didn't do when they started out - take an existing movement and make your own version.

Now you mention it, the huge crowns do remind me of various horrifying TVR design exercises which somehow made it into production. To be faithful to the TVR heritage the crowns need to start smouldering, then you stand on the pavement for 2 hours before someone collects your Bremont in a truck, and you have to sit inside the truck for 2 more hours, and it's so dirty that you can never wear your clothes for anything except gardening.

A mate of mine had a Trevor a chimera or cerbera i can't remember which but it was massive yellow and shit and anything in the boot would melt. I'm not talking about your ice-cream defrosting. Plastic tool handles and a Jerry can melted. It eventually cought fire.

Poor Bremont....

Theyre no different to many brands that sell themselves as being more than they are with 'inhouse' movements.

Not sure how bad the quality is, but Ive held a Martin Baker, and it seemed alright. Quite nice really. But my taste is unrefined

Yeah, I didn’t mean to imply that they’re badly made, per se. But they’re not five grand well made. Compare to a Seamaster 300M.

https://www.shophq.com/Product/invicta-men-s-52mm-speedway-swiss-quartz-chronograph-0-75ctw-diamond-bracelet-watch/687-200

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Single pass nato or perlon strap.

What about their rubber bracelets?

60mm!

What's with the pilot fetish anyway? It's always seemed a bit odd to me. I can understand the appeal of the B-Uhr ones, but the IWC Top Gun nonsense and the Bremont ejection seat bollocks are as tragic as this.

On the other hand, watch forums are full of selfies of watch-with-steering-wheel. There are so many men with a masculinity crisis.

70mm. The Sea Hunter.

What's with the pilot fetish anyway?

Just like the army fetish, a way that we can romanticised warfare without questioning it.

Yes ed the retractable crown is brilliant.

That crown is a great feature, even on smaller watches under 39mm, the crown does dig in enough to swap wrist, hit a bump too hard and got a little red dot on my wrist.

I'd question whether it's actually worthwhile having a 90% custom movement and pricing yourself at the edge of Omega. If they want to go for that £5k market it feels they need to be fully making their own or they should embrace the fact they use a good LJP one, polish it a bit, spend the rest of the effort on design and case finishing and go for the <£3k market with Longines.

+1

Sort of a taint watch brand.