Japanese watch maker Haruo Suekichi is famous for his unique, steampunk style timepieces. Each of the amazing watches is handmade by Suekichi himself, even though he doesn’t have any formal education and actually started his career by hawking the first watches at flea markets. Guest writer Natsuki Yamada sat down with Suekichi in his studio in Tokyo earlier this month to conduct the following interview for CrunchGear.

To read the interview in it’s entirety, click here.

This week we talk about a million dollar watch and the brand new bomb timer.

Download MP3

Subscribe in iTunes

Projectwatches sent us an email today showcasing their latest; the Turbine, the Rush Hour, and the Yin Yang. Projectswatches can be found at your favorite design store, museum, and sites like Watchismo and ThinkGeek. No word on pricing, but check out the gallery after the jump.

Unless Storm of London official got permission to call their watch Darth, I’d be a little worried. Regardless, this is a pretty cool piece with three coo-centric circles that show the time. It comes in black, blue, chrome and white and is currently sold out at $170.00.

It looks a bit like some of the vintage jump hours you see on sites like Watchismo but with a name like Darth you can pretend you’re a Sith.
Product Page

The Tissot T-Touch is Tissot’s flagship sports watch. While other models have come and gone, the venerated T-Touch with its touch-sensitive crystal and bold styling has remained constant. A few models appeared to replace the original, notably the T-Touch Expert, but nothing could quite unseat it.

Now, however, Tissot is essentially mothballing the old model and is focusing on the bold T-Touch II. This new model has a larger LCD screen, better water resistance, and more style options. But it’s still the T-Touch you know and love. But, and this is important, it has a backlight!

The T-Touch was one of the first wrist computers and it was unusually mostly because it came out of a Swiss house. To activate the functions you held down the button at 3 o’clock and then tapped the crystal at one of the points on the face. The functions included an altimeter, barometer, thermometer, and even a very unique compass that caused the hands to rotate, well, like a compass. It was the ultimate in cool to be able to activate the watch and have the hands spin around of their own accord. It was, for a time, fairly magical.

Now the T-Touch isn’t quite as magical but it’s still a cool piece of kit. The watch is quite thick and is about 47mm wide. The rubber strap is, in short, one of my favorite straps ever and the traditional orange goes well with almost nothing, which is why it’s so great. The orange strap, in short is a big thumb in the nose of fashion.

The backlight first appeared on the T-Touch Expert and adds quite a bit of value to this watch. The backlight has always been the biggest problem with the original model and this new light is a marked improvement.

The functions, barring a few additions, are the same in the T-Touch II as in the first model. You have extra time zones in this new model and you have some unique settings that allow you to set “climate zone” and hemisphere for more accurate altimeter readings. It is also a bit more water resistant with up to 100M resistance. It is obviously not a diving watch, however, simply because the sensors require access to the outside air to work.

The model I tested with rubber strap costs $825 at the official Tissot shop. This is the perfect geek’s watch and except for a few Casios I’ve grown to know and love it’s probably one of the best wrist computers I’ve worn. It’s fun, useful, and quite handsome and only a hopeless snob wouldn’t love the orange strap. It makes for a great Swiss quartz timepiece for almost anyone and, as evidenced by my wife wearing mine for most of the summer, is great for men and women.

Kobold hasn’t been amazing me lately with their designs but I’m down to post this close-up look at one of their latest models, a $3K three-hander.

via KeepTheTime

This week we talk about Parmagiani, Liquid Metal, and Fakes.
Download MP3

Subscribe in iTunes

Hamilton is well known in railroad circles as one of the watches that kept the trains running in the 20th century. Now they’ve gone back to that illustrious past with their Railroad Evolution, a big fat chrono with an auto movement.

No pricing yet, but it’s a cool move back towards traditional watchmaking values for the brand. Compared to some of the stuff they’ve been putting out, this is a breath of fresh air.

Parmigiani Website

Interview music by M.W.D.

I really like Perrelet. They do a good job at making understated, cool watches with a bit of fun. They’re most famous for their Turbine watches that spin when you turn them. Kind of goofy but aviators love them. Now the company is launching a Moonphase watch that looks pretty sexy.

Really pretty stuff but is it just me or is that moon huge?