Return of the King

Got my Ollech and Wajs 3095 back from Duarte Mendonca earlier this week.  Well, that was certainly a happy ending to a long, knock-down, drag out saga.

This watch has been the solution to my bad case of withdrawal from mechanical Swiss watches.  I bought it on-line, directly from Herr Wajs (I address him as Herr Wajs whenever I email him.  I should just call him Mr Wajs, but hey--he's Swiss, and I'm trying to be respectful).

Ollech and Wajs has a long history of making inexpensive--as opposed to cheap (read: unreliable) Swiss watches before the quartz revolution torpedoed a lot of the lesser-known brands--and even a few of the famous ones.

It's a humongous watch.  I'm an enormous guy, so the watch doesn't look big on the wrist shot.  When you see it in person, its size is an attention getter.  But, this watch has substance--as opposed to the large number of cheap-looking bling-bling over-sized quartz watches out there, right now.  When people see it on my wrist, they notice what is obviously a good quality watch. 

A self-winding, waterproof* Swiss watch that costs 1/20th the price of a stainless steel Rolex.

The watch's plusses:

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1) The case is of a good quality hypoallergenic stainless steel.

2) The black dial with large--yet thin--hour and minute markers is legible. It was easy to read underwater, yesterday, while I was swimming.

3) The dial, along with the hour, minute, and second hands are all glow-in-the dark

4) The case has a screw-in back to keep water out.

5) The crown is a screw-in crown to keep water out.

6) The ETA 2824 movement is a common, reliable, well-built movement that any watch repairman can service.

7) The price.

8) The second hand has a bright red-orange tip that not only increases its visibility, but makes the watch look good.

9) The second hand hacks: if you want to completely stop the watch, to set it to the exact time to the second, you pull the crown all the way out.  When the atomic clock hits zero, push the crown in, and the watch starts again.

The watch's minuses:

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1) It comes with a mineral glass crystal.  A watch this big has no business having a crystal that is not scratch-proof.  Within two months of receiving the watch last year (and wearing it a lot) it looked like a 20 year old watch that has never been serviced.  It took forever before I found Duarte Mendonca, who was able to get a (synthetic) sapphire scratch-resistant crystal.  The two watch shops before him couldn't find a sapphire for this watch.  Now I can wear the watch in the Emergency Room, and not worry about it.

2) The luminescent paint on the three hands and the dial does not glow very long.  To make it glow brightly, you have to hold the watch under a bright fluorescent light e.g. a kitchen light or compact fluorescent bulb (one of those new, energy-saving light bulbs), and when the dog wakes you up at 02:00 a.m., you can't read the time on the watch.

3) When you hack the watch, you have to pull really hard on the crown to make it come all the way out.

4) Like all mechanical watches--be they self-winding (a.k.a. automatic) or hand-wound (you have to wind it up every day), its accuracy is no-where near that of a quartz watch.  A cheapo $40 Timex with a quartz movement is more accurate than a $5,000 Rolex--or my Ollech & Wajs.  This one was 20 seconds fast per day, and I would re-set it to the exact time every Monday morning.  Now it it hovers around +/1 second per day, if I wear it all day long.  That brings up #5

5) This watch has to be worn a lot, to maintain accuracy.  You will read on a lot of web sites that you only need to shake a self-winding watch for a minute to make it run for a day. Baloney.  You will also read that you only need to wear it one hour a day to keep it wound up.  Baloney.

*You're not supposed to call watches "waterproof" any more.  I'm going to call any watch that is water resistant "waterproof" just to be annoying.  I will discuss the topic of watches' varying ability to withstand water in a later post.