It’s not every day you find a watch that can feasibly kill a man. The Rogue Warrior Red Cell is just such a watch.
The watch, designed by Richard “Dick” Marcinko AKA the Rogue Warrior, chairman of Red Cell International Corp., a security consulting firm. Mr. Marcinko (you call this guy “Mister” and “Sir”) has a Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat, and founded SEAL Team SIX, the Navy’s counter terrorist command and Red Cell, a group that could… heck. I’ll just paste this from his website:
Marcinko later was named commanding officer and founder of a second counter-terrorism unit, Red Cell. Commanding Red Cell, Marcinko was directed to use his team to test the Navy’s anti-terrorist capabilities. As a result he was able to infiltrate seemingly impenetrable, highly-secured bases, nuclear submarines, ships and other purported “secure areas”, including the U.S. Presidential plane Air Force One. In doing so he reportedly embarrassed several superior officers, whom he accuses of involvement in his subsequent conviction for misappropriation of funds and resources under his command.
Homeboy could sneak on board Air Force One. That is badass.
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The look of the Bell & Ross BR-01 92 is based on the simple, clean design used on airplane instrumentation panels. The hands and numeral markers on these watches are recognizable as those on analog altimeters or airspeed indicators. The infamous square case of the BRs, with its four visible fastening screws, reflects the way the airplane instruments are affixed to the panel via four screws in order to make their removal and installation quick and easy. With the BR-01 92 Heritage, Bell & Ross captures the allure of vintage watches and applies it to the square BR “Instrument” concept.
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I’m going to apologize in advance for this review. There are some who may be offended by its content in that I am discussing, in relative depth, an erotic watch of the type made popular by randy potentates in the 18th and 19th centuries along with one aspect that I find utterly vile and revolting. It is important to state that I do not condone this aspect of the watch and I find it highly offensive to boot.
The bile is rising even as I write this, friends, for this $34 watch from eBay advertises itself as a tourbillon yet is as far from a tourbillon as humanly possible. If tourbillon were the sun and this watch were a meteorite, the meteorite would be five million light years from the sun. And exploded already. And in little pieces in some distant star field. That’s how distant this is from a tourbillon.
Note: This is kind of NSFW.
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The i-Toc is really what you would call a “mystery watch.” It has two overlapping disks that are graduated from light to dark and the point of absolute black – or whatever color you’ve bought – marks the hour and minutes hand. Pretty sly, right?
Designed by CG reader Sean, the i-Toc is a mere $99 and comes in six colors including silver, blue, purple, red, and orange. It has a 41mm case and has a silicone strap with butterfly clasp. Heck, they even have a screen saver so you can add a pink i-Toc to your PC or Mac.
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Italo Fontana created the original U-Boat watches as a designer. The watches were mostly regarded as fashion accessories rather then high-end watches thanks to the use of Japanese quartz movements and K1 mineral crystals. Today, the company and their timepieces have evolved. While one of their most appealing aspects is still their look, this aspect is backed by all the features of high-end watch production, including modified mechanical ETA movements, sapphire crystals, hand-made straps, and sturdy well designed cases. I can attest to the quality of today’s U-Boat models, and will demonstrate it by examining U-Boat’s Classico series.
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Starting your own watch company is hard. Unlike, say, hiring a factory in Taiwan to make a bunch of MP3 players for you, creating a watch takes patience, an understanding of the history of horology, and a willingness to risk failure. Thankfully, Buscum Ducis’ Svan van Der Zande has all of these attributes.
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Serket, formerly Scorpion, makes really nice dive watches. They’re not very flashy but they’re well-made and use real Swiss Movements inside an American-designed case. I’ve reviewed the 1.0 version of this watch and I really liked it.
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OK. I just suffered a fairly hair-raising situation with my new baby. Due to my own carelessness, I dinged the Jaeger a few times and wanted to polish them out. I got a few types of polish including one designed for delicate metals and tried to do it by hand. BAD IDEA. This created a fog of fine scratches that only I could really see but that drove me crazy nonetheless. So I tried Flitz by hand. More scratches. I was at wits end.
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You know me and my watch fetish. Well, there’s one rarified section of the watch industry where mere mortals dare not tread. While you and I can’t “go there,” MB&F certainly went, producing the Horological Machine #3, a dual read-out crazy clock with a large date wheel and an odd inverted power transmission system using bearings and disks.
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Click to see it in more detail. This is the watch I’m writing about and it might be the most beautiful watch I’ve ever seen. To look at it up close is amazing – all of the complications are hidden, like a Mac. It actually couldn’t be set by hand. In fact, a master watchmaker had to set it if it wound down, which means this wasn’t a sports watch. The rock crystal is striking and that riot of gears was recreated, piece by piece, from only a few images and a description of the watch by an English collector. I’ve got some more images but I thought I’d put this one up as a treat to you guys. It was actually an honor to be in the same room with the old girl.
