The 2019 HODINKEE Holiday Gift Guide¶
Published on Mon, 16 Dec 2019 14:39:15 +0000
Still got gifts to buy? We've got you covered.
Synopsis¶
This episode of Hodinkee Radio features two distinct segments. In the first half, hosts Stephen Pulvirent, Cara Barrett, James Stacey, and John Mayer create a holiday gift guide in a game-show style format inspired by Cards Against Humanity. They take turns recommending gifts for various categories including colleagues, romantic partners, friends with different interests, and family members. The recommendations range from practical items like magazine subscriptions and cooking classes to watches and watch straps from the Hodinkee shop. The conversation is casual and humorous, with the hosts sharing personal anecdotes and debating the merits of different gift options across various price points.
The second half features a conversation between Hodinkee Editor-in-Chief Jack Forster and Joshua Shapiro, an independent watchmaker and dial maker based in Pasadena, California who specializes in hand guilloche work. Shapiro discusses his journey from skeletonizing pocket watch movements as a hobby to becoming a master of engine-turned dials. He explains the technical challenges of creating guilloche dials, including the mathematics behind rosette design, the importance of tooling maintenance, and his development of a proprietary "infinity weave" pattern. Shapiro emphasizes the human element in hand-finished work and his ambition to eventually produce fully American-made watches with in-house movements and cases. The conversation provides rare insight into the craft of traditional dial making and the challenges of establishing an independent watchmaking business in America.
Links¶
Transcript¶
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| Unknown | And and the truth is, on real hand engine-turned guichet dials, you know, you see microscopic mistakes. You'll see the human hand there. And that's what uh adds value to the watch that a human being was sitting there doing this one at a time, one bevel at a time, one cut at a time, versus uh a machine that's completely taking care of it. It's the romance of watches. It's what intrigues us. It's where a lot of the value is. |
| Unknown | Hey everybody, I'm your host Stephen Polverin and this is Hodinky Radio. It's hard to believe that the holidays are coming up so quick, but they're next week. Uh and if you're anything like me, you've still got a ton of shopping left to do. So we thought it'd be nice to give you a little bit of help. I was able to pull Cara, James, and John into the studio, and we created a little hodinky radio gift guide game. Uh, I'm not gonna spoil the rules or the format too much for you, you'll pick up on it really quickly. We've got dozens of gifting options for you at all kinds of price points and for all different kinds of people. After that, we've got a conversation between our own editor-in-chief, Mr. Jack Forrester, and Joshua Shapiro, an independent watchmaker based in Pasadena, California. His specialty is hand guillet work. It's really incredible stuff, and it's unlike anything I've seen before. The two of them talk about a side of the watch industry that you don't hear about too often. It's a really interesting thing. So without further ado, let's get into it. This week's episode is brought to you by Timex and their new American documents collection. Watch as the combine American materials with a Swiss movement hand assembled in Connecticut. For more, visit Timex. Hey guys, what's going on? Not much. It's been a pretty uh turnt morning here at uh Hodinki HQ. Morning, it's like four o'clock. I know, but we've got the Hodinki stab holiday party this evening. Yeah. And for some reason everybody thought it was a good idea to start the day, or I guess middle of the day, with fried chicken and donuts. Yeah, Popeyes for lunch, baby. I have never seen so much Popeyes on one table in Bobby. That is that is rough. Is that on brand for us? Popeyes? Good. I'm in. We can link it up in the notes at the section. James looks pained. That's because James had Popeyes and a Parisi sandwich. I ate a sandwich I ate half a sandwich. And then I ate okay. You ate half a sandwich with fried chicken cutlet plus fried chicken after. We should link up Precey if they have a website. Pricey doesn't have a website. They don't even know what the internet is. I'm not we're not gonna talk about PreC here because I don't want to risk that somebody hears this and we all get killed for talking about PreC Yeah, can we just bleep every time we said Preese, can we just bleep? Yeah, let's great bleep the name of the restaurant, please. That would be unbelievable. But I did eat a sandwich from there, half a sandwich from there, which is the the weight of one and a half normal sandwiches. Yeah. It is the weight of a small children. It's a three it's three sandwiches in one essentially packed in. It's great. Um I wasn't hungry. I ate the sandwich, then I was like, Well, I'm already like in for a penny, in for fried chicken, so I went for fried chicken. In for a penny, in for fried chicken. I like that. And then Frank did the right thing, being a kind soul that he is, and he brought donuts and I had a couple pieces of donut. That's why we keep Frank around, man. I feel like his treats are always poorly timed. Oh yeah. I didn't need Frank picked the day where everyone ate fried chicken to get donuts. I didn't need that donut. And then I went I'm sitting in a chair comfortably, my feet are up as one does after he's consuming what I've consumed today. A lot of sodium. Mm-hmm. And I went to open the blind behind me and I swear I pulled something in my back. So that's where we're at now. Yeah. Alright. I could fall asleep. I'm tired. You're tired. We're all tired. I'm food tired. It's been a long year. It's been a good year. It's been a long year. It's holiday time. Sure is. I gotta finish my shopping this weekend. I haven't started. Still gotta buy things. Haven't bought anything for my mom and dad. Sorry, mom and dad. Uh but we thought it'd be a good time. We were kind of inspired by James, uh and Jason doing a gift guide on the Great NATO, which we'll link up here in the show notes. Uh and we wanted to do one for a hodinky radio too. So I figured I'd get the four of us together while we're all in fried chicken coma and we talk about the stuff we want to buy other people, which is secretly, let's be real, the stuff we want other people to buy us, and uh and do this uh do this this afternoon. So the thing we decided to do is to make this a little more fun. So it's not just four of us listing stuff to go buy and then linking it, uh which I could see getting kind of boring. Uh we're gonna make a game out of it. So anyone who's ever played uh apples to apples, cards against humanity. Excuse me. We're gonna do it that style. So what we're gonna do is Gray uh just sent me a bunch of categories uh like less than five minutes ago, so I haven't had a chance to look at them yet. And uh, we're gonna run through these categories in kind of a random order, and each of us has prepped a rough list of gifts here. So those are kind of like the cards that we have in this awful metaphor. Uh, and what I'm gonna do is read out a category and then we all have to figure out which gift from our list would go to that person. Then we'll discuss them and then we'll move on. Does that that make sense to everybody? That works. Yes. I think. Are we gonna have a full on like hoodinky fantasy draft situation here where like flex means six different things and like does everyone know what like a sister is in this situation? Everyone knows what that means? Everyone knows what a boss is. Mm-hmm. Alright, cool. I think we'll be I think we'll be here. I'm the boss. You're the boss. Alright. Gift to buy Kara. Alright, let's uh let's start this one off. Uh what do you buy your friend who hates gifts? Oh. We're gonna trim a bunch of silence here, by the way, too, because I don't think anybody wants to sit and listen to the four of us think for the next four minutes. Is there a budget? No. You can buy whatever you want. It's for a friend who hates gifts. I don't know how much money you spend on your friends who hate gifts, but that's that's your call. That's not my problem. Okay. And they're your friend, you like them. I don't know if you like your friends or not. I don't know. You know, you w so you would want to spend time with them in theory. In theory. Take 'em out to a nice dinner. Yeah? You're going you're going nice dinner? Yeah. What's uh what dinner are you go you going for? Uh it depends on what kind of food they like, but if I give me give me some recommendations here. Well I what are you buying your friend? I would take them out for sushi. Okay. That's a fun kind of dinner to get with friends, you know, and you can drink a little sake and have some nice sushi and it's a it's a fun way to sit down and have a casual meal with two people. Alright. Perfect. James, what are you doing? Easy. You get them a personalized message from Cameo. What do you get them? So Cameo is a web service that celebrities use and you pay them a amount of money and then they send you a short video like saying oh Merry Christmas. I hear you hate gifts. Well guess what I'm Gary Beusey. That that that example will cost you three hundred fifty dollars for Gary Beusey to record you a message. But act let's say you just wanted the guy that played the soup Nazi to say hi to your friend. That's sixty dollars. That's affordable. Will he say no soup for you on your birthday? It's gonna cost you more than sixty bucks, but yes. That's incredible. So you can go there's thousands of people that apparently qualify as celebrities. They're not all the soup nazi and or Gary Buseys, but reality TV stars are all over this. You can get like Chris Hanson was like thirty five dollars for a message. The real housework. I know friends have the that have been wished happy birthday for you. If anyone listening to this wants to get me something awesome. you can If get Lisa Renna to wish me a happy Hanukkah, I will die. Wow. How much could be like a sixty dollar property? That's a totally separate podcast, John. All right, CB, what are you getting? I think I'm giving him a hug. Oh wow. Giving him a hug. Wow. W we are on the first round here and so far we've got to be. What else do you I mean f how first of all, how can I top that?s You don'. a good idea And then the meal. I mean that's a pretty good experience. I guess like an apple gift card. Wow, hugs and gift cards, man. If you hate gifts, then there's nothing to there's nothing you want to buy for charities the human fund a hug and a gift card yeah a hug and a gift card nobody got that uh all right so uh I gotta give an answer here too. I'm gonna I'm gonna go with the nerdy the nerdy version of this. The nerdy version of John's, which is get him a membership to a museum. They don't like stuff. Oh get 'em a membership somewhere they can go. It's a good day. A hug is way better, let's be real. But yeah, that's that's gonna be my my recommendation. No, that's nice. Yeah. It depends on the friend. I mean, it really does depend on the friend. The Tate, I don't know get him a museum membership. If I'm talking about real friends, I would offer a night of babysitting. Ooh, that's actually that's a great gift. So I take mine back. First round, you offer a hug, then you take it back. I mean I usually hug my friends upon seeing them, so they get the hug anyway. So then I'll babysit. Alright. So I think collectively I don't know, maybe I'm speaking too soon. I think James wins this round. Yes. Yeah. Anything involves Gary Bucey wins. Setting the tone is what what's happening here. We're gonna link that up, I hope. Uh yeah. The fact that you have Gary Busey at front of mind is really pr special. Three hundred and fifty dollars? That's Gary Busey. All right. Good deal. What do you uh we're gonna move to the next category here because we could make this the Gary Busey c Every one of my answers is cameo. I'm just gonna pick a different celebrity at their price point. Guys, I think James is drunk on chicken. You decide. All right. So since we're talking about colleagues, uh what do you get the colleague that you only kinda like but who already got you a gift? Got it. Bottle of wine. Bottle of wine? What kind of wine? How much you spend on this bottle of wine? Probably like thirty bucks. Thirty bucks? Savi B or what? Depends on what kind of wine they make. By the way, you gotta explain Savi B to people. Yeah, Sabi B is an abbreviation for Sabi en Blanc. It's Kara's house drink. My poison of choice. Sometimes with ice cubes. Don't at me. Don't at me. Alright. James. Is thirty dollars a nice bottle of wine? I don't know. Thirty dollars is fine. Thirty dollars is a bottle of wine you drink immediately after you're handed it. You go like this is fantastic. I was thirsty. It's an expensive juice. It was thirsty. A $30 bottle of wine is an expensive juice box. It's cheap bottle of wine. Sure. If we're spending $50, I would buy, if it was a colleague here at Hodinky, I'd buy them something from ad patina. Uh like a framed watch ad. Cool. So it's like if they like dress watches, maybe an old Cartier if they like sport watches, pick up a Rolex, they got a ton of stuff. And it's like a like who wouldn't want that? Whether it's something small for your desk or maybe something bigger to hang up at home. They're cool. I think James is gonna do my shopping this year. What are you doing, John? I don't really have anything on my list that feels like it fits well in there, so I'll pick the least expensive thing. Just give them a hodinky magazine from your desk. I actually that that is on my list. John John John by the way is my list. A stack of these on my desk. John by the way is the keeper of the magazines here, so if you need a hodinky magazine, go bug John, yeah. Yep. Um so but the cheapest thing I have on here is uh big Bob Gibson original white barbecue sauce, the Alabama style barbecue sauce. Okay. And you can get a two-pack, like two pretty big containers of it for seven dollars on Amazon. Are they like bucket-sized containers? No, they're like, you know, sixteen ounces each. Okay. That thirty bottle of wine is looking pretty fancy right now. Although let's face it, like you got a new you got a new ad on your wall, you're drinking a bottle of wine, you're doing someone's barbecue sauce What's Stevie throwing in? Oh man, what's Steve there in a Stevie getting a subscription to a steak service? Yeah. Or ch just chicken. A raw chicken. A raw just a chicken. Nebraska steaks? Like a really nice guinea hen. Yeah. Like a really good one. Justery chicken. You know what I would give somebody? I would give uh uh I would give somebody Mark Bittman's new cookbook, uh Dinner for Everyone. Okay. Uh it's awesome. I've been cooking out of it a lot this year. It came out earlier this year. It's great. It's like every every recipe in it is done three different ways. So it's like uh you know a recipe for like casole, right? And there's three versions of it. There's like an easy version you can make on a weeknight, a James. There's a a James. There's a vegan version of it. An Aram. Uh, and then there's the super complicated version that you make when your friends come over for dinner parties. The Kara. The Kara. So it's it's awesome. It's a lot of fun. I don't know. Maybe I don't know. Maybe maybe I'm going full nerd on all these gifts. I have a great time. I have to cross mine off my list. I have to ask because there is a Mark Bittman restaur I know which recipe you're thinking of and it's it's it's so simple. It's the one inch thick steak that you literally just you salt the pan beforehand, get it screaming hot, and then you throw the steak on and you flip it every minute for like six minutes. And then it's done. But it's like six flips. Yep. But it's so good. Even a thick steak would be six minutes. It wouldn't would be it depends on how I like my steak very rare so you can steak enough. Yeah. I don't need steak enough either. Yeah. Dang. Smoky apartment if you do it that way though. Yeah, yeah. True. What? It's the only thing I cook. I like the book. I like the book idea. The book's pretty solid. I can tell Carrie's thinking really hard about this one. Forgot what you said, James. Add patina. A watch ad, uh vintage watch ad. Yeah, maybe the cookbook. Alright. Sweet. I'll take that one. Or my wine, depending. We'll go the other extreme here. What do you get a new boyfriend or girlfriend who you really like but who you don't want to seem too eager in front of. It's gotta be something that's so you haven't said I love you yet. You haven't said I love you yet. It's real it's you really like them. You want it to be a good gift. You want them to be impressed, but you don't want to look like you tried too hard. I think it's a pizza making class. Pizza making class. Okay. 'Cause that's an activity. Yeah, some kind of activity I think. So it's a date. It's a promise of a date. Exactly. Yeah. That's good. Basically a promise of a next date. Interesting. Or socks. I mean like Or socks. A date or socks. What are you going for John? Uh I don't wanna like copy Kara, but like some kind of some kind of c experience class, maybe cooking class, like Sirla Tab does them on the west side. I thought y they have windows and you can as you walk by you can see people doing them. I've always thought that that would be cool to do that. Yeah. Do something like that. You can like start a food fight. Yeah, I'm gonna actually take that too. I had on my list. But you guys I thought you can't do the same thing. I'm gonna take um it's similar. Uh Economy, this uh sushi place in uh Williamsburg does these really amazing sushi making classes. They're a ton of fun and it's like you know, only like eight people at a time. It's really hands-on. Oh, I've actually done that. The one in Brooklyn? Yeah, yeah. I've got a few other classes. I can I can recommend them as well. Yeah. That's what I would that's what I would recommend. Okay. Do I have to name a specific pizza making class? Oh, it's fine. Pizza class. There is one on the lower east side that's good. Those have been actually gifts from my my wife. James, what are you doing? I would I would uh I would suggest that you take your current paramore on like a tour of your ideal afternoon. So like you have a day off, nobody's gonna bother you, you don't have any responsibilities If your favorite thing to do is hiking, go hiking and then go to your favorite brewery. If it's if it's a museum, show them your favorite one. Like take them through what you would be doing if you were alone anyways. That way if it sucks, the day doesn't go that well. This is an early stage relationship. You're still having a great time. But also, they're going to feed off of your personality. You're going to be in a scenario where you're at your best because it's your favorite spots. You're going to seem like a local. Like, I think it's a win-win all the way around. And then you can obviously drop a restaurant somewhere in there or you can go cook something like whatever would be a good thing at the end they say I love you. I'm sure there's lots of places really good at giving gifts. I'm sure there's lots of places too where you could do this, but a town near New York that immediately springs to mind I of course is Beacon. Right. You've got D you've got Dia Beacon, Hudson Valley Hudson Valley Brewery. And then you've got some hiking nearby as well. A little Bear Mountain. Yeah. There's so I'm sure wherever you are in the country or the world you can find a place like it, but that's one nearby near us. Plus if you're on the train you do cold spring. That's like there's restaurants, there's antiquing. Honestly if you're in New York, if you're if you're based in the New York area, whether you're giving this as a gift to someone or not, you should do that day. Yeah, make it awesome. Give yourself a day. Yeah. You don't have that other person. Take them along if they're around if they're not around, give yourself a day. Yeah. Okay. A U day. So did James win again? I think James wins again. Yeah. Yeah. Um Kobe. Kobe of gifts. Alright, let's go uh let's go let's swing the pendulum the other way again. Let's go with a longtime friend that you're currently low-key beefing with. I mean no gift. You can't give them no gift, then they're not your friend anymore. I have I just have on my list, I just want to call this out. I don't think it fits here necessarily. I have on my list just cargo pants. Honestly, I think that fits perfectly here. Um Are we talking like old Navy cargo pants or cucinelli cargo pants? Old navy. Yeah, just like like like commodity cargo cargo pants pants you would tend to abuse. Okay. I would give them the Hodinky Wchesat book 'cause it's all about me. Oh, interesting. So you're like you're showing your value to them. I have a I have a follow-up question. Is the goal with this gift to bring you closer to them or to edge. No no no. It's a closer. You're you're low-key beefing with this person, but you like they're a longtime friend, you still want to do something nice. I got an answer. I got an answer. Yeah, like a gag gift. James? Uh yeah, so uh in the same span, just specificity. Uh it's a book called Crap Taxidermy. Okay. It's incredible. It's a collection of terrible taxidermy. Oh my god. It is like tears in your eyes at the bookstore funny. Let alone until you like you've had a couple drinks at home when you show it to this person that you're hoping will be you'll be tight with again. But it's uh it's it's something else. I mean crazy funny. It's not like a giant coffee that is like a normal size small book, but you can't imagine how bad some of the taxidermy is. Oh man. Alright. I don't think I'm good at this game. Crab taxidermy. Cryptaxidermy. What are you doing, Kara? Well, I these are all very specific. So it's like Are you giving them the book? It's soul of narrative. It's the soul of narrative. James is giving a master class on fiction writing uh today. That's his gift. I'll give him a giant bucket of haribo. All right, cool. Who's gonna be? There's nothing better for repairing a friendship than a bucket full of sugar syrup. John, what are you doing? Oh, some Swedish fish, I guess. You're doing Swedish fish? Yeah. Okay. All right. I might give them Huh. I have two things here I'm debating between, but you know you know what I'm giving them? I'm gonna give them a gift card to frame bridge. You know, pictures are an important thing. If this is a longtime friend, it's somebody you've probably made some memories with. I'm gonna give them the opportunity to take something that's important to them and put it on their wall. I think you know, we don't print pictures enough. I'm not gonna soapbox too much here, but like printing pictures is a nice thing, having pictures hanging on your wall is a nice thing. I think giving somebody the opportunity to like put something meaningful to them on their wall so that they see it every day. They think of you when they see it. I think that's a nice way. Nice way to build bridges. Yeah? This game is rigged. I think James wins again. Yeah. We don't even have to keep voting because I think James is gonna just mop the floor with all of uss.. U Alrig,ht you wanna you want to do something easier? We'll go with something that has a very specific category here. Okay. The bookworm. Pick a book that you're giving to somebody who loves getting books as gifts. The hodinky book. We can't all say the Hoodiki book. Yeah, not either. I said it. Did whatever. It's a good book. It's a great book. It's great. Yeah. We're biased, but also like so am I about the books I like. My mom said it was good. She's also biased though. Bear. Uh I'm gonna I'm gonna pick the Hodinki book as well. Alright. James? Yeah it's a book called Shadow Divers. Okay. And for a while I used to think this was like a more of an esoteric, like you had to like scuba diving or other things like that to get this. And then my mom took it to her book club and they all loved it. Um I think it appeals to anyone that likes like history and obviously there's a lot of it's about scuba diving, but it's about these two um New York, I mean New Jersey-based uh wreck divers that discover a U-boat, an unknown U-boat just off about sixty miles off of the coast of New Jersey that wasn't supposed to be there. This is a real story. Um and uh it's written by Robert Kerson and features John Chatterton and Richie Kohler as they go through uh seven years to figure out what boat it was and and the story behind and then find surviving family members of the sailors lost on that boat to let them know where their family members are. It's it's an incre like a a remarkable, incredible story. Um I've seen it for a dollar at lots of bookstores. So it's this is not going to cost you very much. I honestly think like if you enjoy the occasional like long form SF chronicle piece about a topic you're not normally interested in, it's presented in the exact same way. It's written like a giant magazine post. It takes you through the history of technical diving in a really accessible way that answers like a lot of questions as the you go. And then a lot of World War II history and mostly about U-boats, which is something I didn't know a ton about before I started reading it. It's fascinating. I can't imagine anyone hating it. And I think as long as you're operating at like a high school reading level, so like this as long as you're my my point being my point not not being that you might have an adult friend who can't read a can't function to read a book, but rather that you could buy it for a younger person on your Christmas list. Okay. Cool. Also just means it's an easy to read, right? It's awesome, yeah. Which is what you want in a gift. You don't want to be challenged to necessarily. If we're going uh fun, easy books, I'm gonna go with uh this book I just finished. Uh I actually finished it as an audio book, which I would recommend in this case, uh, because the author is so amazing and performs it himself, uh, which is John Hodgman's new book, Medallion Status. Uh I'm a big John Hodgman fan. I I think his weird brand of like sort of intellectual, sort of just like weird boy humor is really, really good. Uh and yeah, so this book is it's kind of about him being famous and about his weird brand of fame and what it felt like to unexpectedly become very, very famous amongst a small group of people for a very short period of time and then to become not famous again. Uh and it's all kind of told through the metaphor of having airline status and what that feels like to make it a little more relatable. And it's just a lot of really funny anecdotes from his life. He's hilarious. He's a great writer. Uh it's really relatable. You don't have to like know anything about him or know anything uh about the topics he's talking about. It's just like it it's a great example of a person who is just a great storyteller telling great stories. And I I found myself like I said, I was listening to the audiobook and I find myself like laughing out loud in public multiple times where I would have to like stop it and pause it because I was laughing like an idiot on the subway home. So uh I highly recommend it. It's also easy and it's the kind of thing you could definitely like read between the time it's gifted to you and like I feel like that's a tie. Yeah? Hodgman's books are all great. And that's who I was technically quoting with specificity as the soul of the book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's true. I think that's actually in this book. I think he says it multiple times, but uh all right, let's uh let's go for the friend who doesn't get watches. Like we all have that friend, you know, who we obviously love watches and we all do this professionally. So it's like, what do you get for your friend who when you're talking about what you do and that we do watches all day? They're like, I just I what? Like what do you do for a job? I just don't get it. What do you get them? I get 'em a swatch jelly watch. Yeah? Yeah. Start 'em off slowly. Which one? Oh the jelly ones. The oh the like clear one. Nice. Nice. And they're an easy wear. Yeah, that's true. Really easy wear. Uh Casio A500. So it's one of these little world timer Casio's with a Jubilee style bracelet. They're like 30 bucks. Uh they come in steel. If your friend wants to be a little bit flashy, they come in I'm air quoting at gold. It's not even steel, the case is plastic. Um it comes in steel color or gold color. Steel color or gold color. Um I I wrote one up. I wrote one up a while back. I think they're like they're like white metal. And you see you see people act I think there's stylish in that like hipster adjacent like you'll you'll go to you'll go to a brewery in Brooklyn and you'll see people actually wearing these watches, these and F91s and these like these other sub-25, sub-35 dollar Cassios. And I think like if you just want to teach someone that they could start wearing a watch and that there's a functionality there. Start them off with something digital, start them off with something cheap, start them off with something that's like seemingly stylish right now because the 80s have they like a bunch of the other aesthetics from the 80s are of course rolling back on us, and uh and I I think that's an easy one. And you can find them anywhere. Amazon or your local Walmart, like everyone will have one of these things or something similar to it. Sweet. John? Yeah, I'd get them like a Seiko five, but I'd put a nice strap on it, whether it's like like a a nice NATO or like like a nice leather strap. Just something to kind of indiv uh individualize it for them. Nice. Yeah, I was gonna originally go go swatch on this one, but CB uh beat me to it. I was gonna go with the uh swatch skin uh which I own. I love one. I actually bought one because my some friends of mine uh have them and I saw it and loved it and now I wear mine all the time. It's a cool watch. Yeah it,'s super fun and you know, you can get them on straps for under a hundred bucks or it's like one twenty-five on the bracelet. Um big fan of that. But if if we're gonna go with something else, uh I'm gonna do some shameless log rolling here and I would buy them the book that I co authored last year, uh, The Watch Thoroughly Revised. Um it's another kind of alternative to the Hodinky book. I think they kind of complement one another quite nicely. You need both. Yeah, I do think you need both. One, you know, the the watch thoroughly revised is really kind of like a breakdown brand by brand. It's more like specific on on models, on recent history, that stuff. Whereas I think um a guide to watch by Hodinky is much more uh kind of like culturally focused and more focused about kind of the long tail and the history. So you get kind of two two facets. So you buy one friend one book, you buy the other friend, the other book. What do you get the friend who has everything? We all have that friend. We all have the friend who just like has everything. You can't really buy them stuff because when they want something, they just go out and buy it themselves, which is super annoying. But uh what do you get that person? Uh you get them a fram |
| Unknown | ed memento of some sort. So like a matchbox from a restaurant that you went to or that they really like or like a menu from like a meaningful moment in their life. Frame that a lot of food related stuff. Um or you know, can be anything really. Could be like a pencil |
| Unknown | from somewhere, but you get a shadow box frame of that. Nice. John? I'd get them some kind of like uh s food subscription or something. I maybe uh Steak of the Month Club, maybe. Steak of the month. Or uh you know what looks really interesting is you know this restaurant in LA Squirrel, like the the breakfast place? They have a they have a bi monthly jam club. Nice. And so every I think it's every two months you get two jams. They send them like every other month. And uh it's like not cheap. It's 180 bucks for the top one, but like their stuff is awesome. Yeah. Dude, that sorrel uh crispy rice salad. I can't even talk to you about that. Uh okay. James? Uh I think we do do like a field note subscription. Okay. So that's like you'd get a field note every now and then and and have Okay. Nice. Uh I would get them a sort of combo. It's an expensive gift. I don't know who in my life I'm buying this for, but in theory. Uh I would get them a made to measure experience somewhere. Steve. It's a it's a big gift. Uh it's a very nice gift. I don't know who, like I said, I don't know who I'm buying this for, but I think if if it's in the cards for you financially, I think giving uh giving somebody the ability to have something made for them is a really special thing. Um I think, you know, to the first times I had like a jacket made. It's so cool and it's so much fun and you get it's like a thing, you go place the order, you get to pick everything out. So I would say either like you know, go get a suit made at either like Drake's or the Armory here in New York, or uh, you know, my buddies, uh, my friends over at Stofa can make you a nice like switch But that experience, whether it's something casual or something dressy, uh to have something that's made for you that you you pick out is nice and you can go do it together and chances are it's it's not something they would have would have thought of on their own. This week's episode is brought to you by Timex. When Timex started making clocks back in 1854 as the Waterbury Clock Company, it made the small New England town a hub for American horology. Now, 165 years later, the company is returning to its roots with the American Documents Collection, a set of watches assembled right there in Connecticut, just 10 minutes from the original Timex factory. These watches have classic mid-century inspired designs, with three hands and a simple date window, but in an updated 41mm profile. The stainless steel cases, brass case backs, and crown inserts, gorilla glass crystals, and natural leather straps are all made in America too. In fact, the only parts of the American documents watches not produced in the United States are the movements. These are high quality quartz movements produced by Rhonda in Switzerland. They're brought to Connecticut, where they're hand-assembled with the other Made in America parts, resulting in the final watches. The watches contain a number of touches that nod to the history of Timex. The most prominent is the brass coin that is set into each case back, plated in what Timex calls aged waterbury brass, a reference to their earliest clocks from the 19th century. Each watch tells the story of American watchmaking from the past through to the present and represents true homegrown horology. For more on the American Documents Collection and Timex's other families of watches, visit Timex.com. Alright, let's get back to the show. I'm assuming that Gray had uh hodinky Japan on the mind here when he wrote this, but uh what do you get your friend who's obsessed with Japan, who let's be real, all of us have. You mean you? It's not just me. And John. You and I. What do you what do you gonna buy me is what I'm what I'm saying here. What do you get your friend who's obsessed with Japan? I don't think any of my friends besides you guys are obsessed with Japan. Okay, so what are you buying John and me for uh Hanukkah and Christmas. Um Arthur Gerby from Mercy |
| Unknown | came in the other day and he had these really beautiful bags that were from j canvas bags that were made in Japan. I can't remember what they're called for the life of me, but I have it. I have a link to it so you can put it in the story. But they' |
| Unknown | re Is it from Porter? No. No. It's a Japanese name. Okay. He said it in Japanese. Okay. Cool. But they're like a waxed canvas. I trust Arthur. Like a accessories bag.. Okay Very cool. That's what I would get you guys. James? So I'm gonna split this up by gender. Okay. Or prescribe gender, if you will. Uh first would be this money clip. The money clip that I carry is from a brand called Picas, which I bought at a store in Vancouver uh called Out and About, which is a Japanese oddities store. And there's nothing really special about it. I think the color is beyond gorgeous, which is why I bought it. It's uh sort of OD green, but it has a little bit more blue in it than any military green. And uh yeah, I really love that. If you're buying for a woman or someone who wouldn't care for a money clip and might enjoy something closer to a candle experience. They have these entire these tiny bladed candles. I I'll find the name, I can't recall the name of them, but as they burn, they disappear. Oh cool. They come in there a little bit bigger than a matchbox, is what they come in, and then they have a little stand at the bottom of the box that you like stick them in and you need to light 'em, and by the time they're g theyone're gone,. There's nothing there. There's no wax, there's no killer. That's cool. Also, can we talk about how out and about is the most Canadian name for a store imaginable? Can you say it one more time? Out and about. No, it's not that strong at all. But it could that store pronounced by the right person could be Oot Naboot. For sure. I mean it's in Vancouver, so th that accent would carry harder in the east. But if somebody from the East went all the way to the west and saw that store, it would say Right. So the Canadian accent is stronger on the Eastern side or the Western side? Uh that that the hit on O's and U's is. There's an augmented A on the Canadian West Coast. It's gonna be our new segment, Talking Canadian Accents with the Talking Canadian with James Stacey. Uh what are you buying John? Oh I'm gonna I'm gonna buy them some kind of like Japanese ceramics or pottery for sure. Um I mean I have a lot of it at home at home actually. Um but I don't know like the names, so I can't recommend specific things. One thing you're going to Kyoto, so you gotta bring some stuff back for people. Oh definitely. Yeah. And one thing that I would recommend for people living in New York is there is a place and maybe we can link it up in the notes because I can't remember off the top of my head where you can take Japanese uh pottery classes. Oh yeah, very cool. Yeah, it is in midtown. I've looked into it. Togai. Yeah, Togai. Yeah, Togai. Nice. Sweet. Uh I'm gonna get somebody a bottle of Nika coffee grain whiskey. Um Japanese whiskey is amazing, uh, but it has become exceptionally hard to find and really expensive here in the US. Uh stuff that you you used to be able to pick up at like a neighborhood liquor store for fifty bucks is now impossible to find. And if you can get it is, you know, three, four hundred dollars a bottle. Uh stuff like Kabikis, stuff like the Yamazaki whisky whiskies, the Hakashu whiskies. But you can still find this Nika stuff pretty easily. And I think it's great. There's this bottle, it's called Coffee Grain, but it's C-O-F-F-E-Y. It's not like coffee. Um it's a type of grain. Yeah. It's a type of still that they use and it's mostly corn-based whiskey. So it actually it's like kind of a hybrid between a like Scotch style grain whiskey and a bourbon. It's a little different. I think it's unlike anything else. It's really delicious. And again, it's like you can find it, and bottles are like 65 bucks. It's not crazy. And there's a good chance that people haven't had it before. It might be a new new Yeah, it's really good. Yeah. Cool. All right. So I said at the top of the show that I still needed to buy gifts for my mom and dad. So let's do that category. Uh what do you guys give away when we're giving our moms and dads what would you recommend other people give their moms and dads? You can pick mom or dad. You don't have to do both, or it can be a gift for both of them. You can do separate things. It's your call. Uh like a really nice robe from restoration hardware or something. Okay. That's a good that's a good mom gift. It's a solid mom gift. James. I mean for my mom it's it's not really that difficult. She's a bunch of kids, I'm one of many. And so like for this year the whole gift from all the kids is to bring my brother from the west coast back to the East Coast. She just wants everyone together. Nice. Uh so it'd be that and or if like a if if that was not your scenario, just get a photograph of all of the siblings. If you have siblings or you, if you have kids, your kids with you just get a nice photograph, a family photograph. Nice. It's something that like your parents probably did with you that to like in my case we went to Sears and we have these pictures on the wall and then there's this like wall of time where you're an adult and you're like, I don't want to send a pitch picture like Yeah. And and that's what my mom would dig. So nice let's see. Uh for hypothetically for my dad, even though he already has this, if |
| Unknown | it were for someone else's dad, he's really into cooking, as am I. So |
| Unknown | I would give him either like Marcello Haz |
| Unknown | an's Italian cookbook. That is such a green cookbook, yes. I love that cookbook. Or like a cast iron skillet is always something good to give people that are into that. Um my mom is into gardening and dogs, so I would probably get her or |
| Unknown | hypothetically I can't give it away. Oh, you gray cut this.. Um so I would probably get her a book on gardens or something like that. Cause I think those are always really beautiful to look at. And it's kinda you know, moms are tough. Yeah, moms are tough. Because it's the same thing. It's like she just like don't get me anything. I just want to like hang. And I'm like, okay, well, you're getting the hang. See, that's the thing. So for for my mom, my move would be she never wants anything and she also she doesn't like cheat herself, but she also like doesn't splurge on stuff for herself. So I'd I'd take something that was like a thing she uses all the time and that she likes and get her like a really nice version of it. So like um like my mom loves to cook, so I'd get her either like a really nice apron, like there's this company, uh Headley and Bennett that makes really nice kitchen aprons. Um they're like kind of cool. They're like the sort of apron that you can wear like when you have people over and you're cooking dinner for everybody and you like don't look like an idiot. So like that or um So it doesn't have like a joke on it. No, it doesn't say like kiss the cook. Yeah. Uh no. Um my mom would just want a like a uh uh an apron with like Snoopy on it or something like that. Great. You can get your mom a Snoopy apron. Um yeah, I do something like that or maybe um my mom is a big like coffee and tea drinker. Uh maybe get her some like really nice coffee mugs from Heath Ceramics or something like that. Like a nice set, you know, the kind of thing, you know, I feel like moms want gifts that they like they can use and you know they think of you and it's like, oh my kid got me this. Like I feel like those are nice things to uh also Christmas. I said that so dismissively. Man, I I really didn't mean that to sound so dismissive. Love you, Mom. Uh yeah. If you celebrate Christmas, Christmas ornaments are also always good because then it's like years the next year too. Alright, so we're gonna do two last categories. Uh one since this is after all a watch podcast. Um, I'm gonna ask everybody to recommend their favorite strap from the Hodinky shop. Uh, those make great gifts. And then I'm gonna ask everybody to recommend their best all-purpose gift that's under a hundred bucks. Like if you gotta buy something for somebody, it's under a hundred bucks uh US and almost anybody's gonna like it. Those are gonna be the two questions. So let's let's do watch straps first. Uh let's start with John. John, what strap are you recommending people watching? S |
| Unknown | trong play. That is just such that is you put it on like almost any watch |
| Unknown | and it automatically just raises the the the quality of the of the package, I think. Nicely done. Yeah. C B. I'm gonna do the Sedona strap in blue |
| Unknown | . It's a light blue, which I think scares some people, but it actually looks really, really cool on l |
| Unknown | ots of different watches. Nice. I'm gonna do the Sedona too, actually. I'm gonna go ash gray though. Cool. Ash gray on the Sedona. It's really nice. It's kinda like it reminds me a little bit of the like taupe calf that we do, like the the really elegant ones, but it's it's a little more approachable. I find I can wear it on sport watches a little bit more. Um you love taupe. I love taupe. Ugh. My gift is just taupe. Just buy me taupe. Um box of taupe. Yeah, just buy me a box of like earth tones. I'm good. Uh neutrals. You can just give me a big box full of neutrals, I'm great. Um James, what are you uh what are you going for? Yeah, I'd do the read strap. It's the one that I wear the most on on any of my sport watches and I light brown or the slate gray like you can't go wrong. If it's kind of a I think if it's a like a higher key watch go with the brown. If it's like a really subdued sort of watch go with the darker gray. You wear the green one too. I wear the green one a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Alright, cool. So we got we got our watch straps. Uh let's go gift you buy anyone. Uh under a hundred bucks, something that like nobody's going to argue with. It's uh let's start with James. Magazine subscription. Oh, I'm gonna assume you know this person at least a little bit. Yeah. And the safe thing is is like ten years ago, you could assume that a household had a few magazine subscriptions. Almost nobody does anymore. No. And like like me, the one that I discovered this year and I'm just absolutely in love with is Road and Track. Yeah. And yes, it's mostly ads. Yes, the paper's like really light. It does it has nothing to hold uh for in in a physical quality against any of the prestige magazines of which you know Hodinky magazine is would stack against but it's like some of the best automotive writers in the world and Hearst is selling it for two years for fifteen dollars and they throw in two years of car and driver. It's basically free. Yeah. So they just want it showing up to your house. I I don't get how they make any money on it. I don't understand how they get the the part yeah with the ads. I mean it's mostly Weathertech ads, which is fine. Like but the the quality of the writing when you get between the ads and you hit the stuff from Sam Smith and Zach Bowman and and uh Brandon McAleer and these guys that have been reading for years and uh and they have a fantastic editor now and that they're just supported by Hearst, so they've got stuff they they can get done. Um I I would say like I don't know what I can list twenty other magazines if we want, but you can also just like go online and find out whatever else Hearst is offering because my guess is it's a similar scenario for a lot of those magazines. There's good housekeeping that like you go in a bunch of different directions and then it's something the person gets all year. And just make their name Merry Christmas from James in the subscription. And then every time the magazine shows up, it's Merry Christmas. Oh man. I like that. That's a good idea. Yeah. Uh people should subscribe to Nat Geo too. There you go. Nat Geo. That's great one. Nat Geo's an a incredible option. Uh I started subscribing to that like a year ago. Again, I used to subscribe a long time ago. And man, it is so much fun when National Geographic shows up to your house. It's amazing. Nat Geo's great. Popular mechanics is great. Joe Brown's running that. He's doing an amazing job. The magazine's incredible. If if you're listening to me, you know the type of stuff I like, like Sidetracked is crazy, Adventure Journals Rad, Avant magazine out of the UK is incredible. Some of these go into much more expensive territory, some less super alpines, crazy. There's a lot of really good magazines, but you can start at like $15 and then move up from there depending on what you want. And then it's a gift that they get all year. Nice. John, what are you doing? Uh you know what? I think some kind of like soap from ASOP or something, like that's never going to that's never going to be poorly received. It can always uh yeah, like the Aesop resurrection soap or something. Nice. I'm going in the same vein as you here. It's such a cliche gift, but I'm I'm buying them the uh foot de bois candle from diptique. No, I was gonna do by Redo the Woods. Ah, got you. No, you cut over me because you knew I was gonna do that. No, it doesn't. Hands down. No, it doesn't. You are wrong. No, you're wrong. Yeah. Okay. Alright, let's do it. Uh I'm still going with Byrade or the Woods. That's fine, you can. The uh I think foodabah is the best candle out there and it's amazing and I just want my house to smell like that all the time. And I'm yet to find like a lot of candles are really polarizing. Uh I'm yet to find somebody who doesn't like how foodabas smells. Foodaboys. Foodaboys. I'll say actually but I like Byreto the Woods better because it's a black candle with a black glass. It's cool. And it actually looks really great. And Byreto's awesome shallow I always do this thing where I leave mine burning and I have to go home and blow it No, they are fully aware. It's a running joke in my building. The smoke apartment. All of your candles are on a beautiful table spread that's entirely uh flame retardant. It's made out of Nomex. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for doing this guys. Uh I think we got a lot of good suggestions here. And uh yeah, let us know in the comments at hodinky.com uh on the story that goes with this uh this podcast. Let us know if you buy any of these things, or if you think we messed up, if you think uh we missed us missed something, if we slept on something, let us know. What are you laughing at? Just like how you're like on hodinky.com. Yeah, let's uh this article cut that. That was actually really awkward. Uh I'm gonna do the the clothes there again. Yeah, let's do that in the top. I'm like I'm sweating pretty hard. Um chicken. I didn't even eat any chicken. A lot of salt. Alright guys, I think that went uh pretty well. I think we got a lot of good stuff for people to buy, and uh let's go let's go have our holiday party now. Let's go. Alright, later guys. Later. Up next is Jax Conversation with independent watchmaker Joshua Shapiro |
| Unknown | . Well we're here with uh master dial maker and watchmaker Josh Shapiro. Um and uh Josh uh we'd love to hear um anything that you'd like to tell us about uh some of the stuff that you are currently working on and how you got into this. Making uh extremely refined quality guillet dials is a sort of an amazing thing to do, and it's certainly not the kind of thing the average So um I mean I know that you took um the BHI British Horological Institute's uh distance learning program, so I don't know if that's a good place for you to jump in and start the story |
| Unknown | . Yeah, well first off, it's a pleasure to be here with you, Jack. Uh I've always wanted to be on uh this podcast and uh it's really neat to be in Manhattan and it's definitely a different vibe than Los Angeles. The story of how I got into watchmaking is pretty humble. I really had an affinity for skeletonized watches, and I thought it was so fascinating to see the inner workings of a movement. So I bought movements and initially just started skeletonizing them taking apart. And eventually I had someone who wanted to watch uh for fun and they asked for a dial. And that kind of led me through a whole journey into engine turning and George Daniels and the BHI and where I am today. So your your first project, horologically speaking, was actually open working existing movements? Yeah. Ironically, I thought watches with dials were ugly. And uh I couldn't understand why anyone would want to cover up the inner workings of the movement. I thought Yes. Yep. Big time. But I have Sapphire case back, so you can see on the backside. So open working movements, what did you uh what caliber did you start out with? Well the the the caliber that everyone starts out with when they start with watchmaking is the ETA six four nine eight uh or six four nine seven. That's just a very hardy movement. It was used in pocket watches. It can take a lot of abuse and still keep ticking. And it's very open and easy to skeletonize. Many skeleton watches you |
| Unknown | see are are that movement. That was um I don't know if I'm remembering this correctly, uh, but that was basically the last um ETA purpose built pocket watch movement, wasn't it, in the 1950s? Yeah, they they purchased it from uh Un |
| Unknown | itas and yeah, that was its main function. Like the 6497 has the seconds at the nine, but that's really because it's a pocket watch movement. And the six four nine eight was used as a hunter uh pocket watch movement and so it conveniently had the seconds at six, but which is good for a wristwatch. |
| Unknown | And uh just in terms of technique, I mean how do you uh what what did you do mechanically or physically to uh |
| Unknown | to op to open work the movement Yeah, uh it just uh a piercing saw and uh a drill and uh files and going at it. And uh I I I broke a lot of movements kind of discovering watchmaking. |
| Unknown | I mean that's a very, very archa you know, when I started getting interested in this stuff, I started out repairing old um, you know, American-made pocket watch movements, which were dead easy to work on. Yeah, they were and you know, they were dead easy to work on compared to wristwat But the idea of starting out, like starting out by uh open working uh a movement is terrify |
| Unknown | ing. Yeah, so I uh I I didn't start off with brand new movements. I |
| Unknown | Even so though. I mean uh nowadays uh I think it's prop you can correct me on this also, but uh uh a lot of open working is actually done with spark erosion machines and you're not actually using um you know saws and |
| Unknown | files and all that jazz. Right, right, right. And you know, a lot of the finishing is still done by hand, but yeah, either CNC machines or wire EDM machines are cutting out a lot of the pr plates and bridges these days. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a completely different uh life when I was doing that. Like dials have taken over my life. |
| Unknown | Yeah, they certainly have. So the open working that you were doing pique piqued somebody's interest and uh you had a client |
| Unknown | . Yeah. Besides my my family that took pity on me. But uh Yeah. And that that really started me thinking from a hobby to a profession. And that was a big turning point when I |
| Unknown | made that watch. Interesting. So uh working on uh guillet and engine turning dials, when did that start to come into the picture? I mean I know that you worked with David Walter at one point. Yes, yes, I still do. Because clocks are a little bit less exposed than wristwatches, or maybe a lot less exposed than wristwatches, but he's one of the most renowned and revered American uh uh clockmakers |
| Unknown | . Yeah, in the in the world, really. And he also makes fantastic watches as well. Uh that's less known than the clocks and he's trying to change that. About five years ago, I got interested into engine turning guilloset. And when you get into that, it's more than just buying the machines and sitting down. You have to build a whole machine shop around it in order to support the machines. So it was a whole process. It was a whole building up the machinery, building up the skill to use the machines, and being able to support the engine turning machines. Another thing that people don't realize when you make a watch dial, a watch dial is actually one of the most complicated parts in a watch to make. The escapement is probably the most complicated, but uh a watch dial is extremely thin, has very tight tolerances, and so when you engrave on something like that, you're deforming the metal So you have to do it in a way that still keeps within tolerance so the watch still works, so that the case still fits, so that the hand's still clear. And so it's a very complicated watch part. And my dials in particular, have many, many different parts and layers to them, and that just adds an extra level of complexity |
| Unknown | . I mean, I think that probably a lot of folks who consider themselves even very serious watch enthusiasts, uh you know, aside from getting into some of the lingo that's surrounds um vintage watches, you know, tropical dial this and spider dial that. I mean y there's not a whole lot of awareness of how dials are actually made of, you know, what the processes are like. And it's not something that um you know I've visited a bunch of different watch factories, lucky enough to do that over the last, you know, 15, 20 years. And uh it's it's not usually something that you see a lot of. Um so when you say that your dials have a lot of different components and a lot of different layers, you know, I mean the complexity of your dials is off the charts next to |
| Unknown | just sort of a standard watch dial. Aaron Powell Right, correct. A lot of watch dials are stamped out and are flat and maybe indices are applied onto it, or maybe it'll have a recessed subseconds. Uh, and then it's usually whatever coating or lacquer or paint that's put on top of it. My dials have many different parts that are spot welded together or friction fit together or screwed in from behind. And that's all in coordination with the engine turning and guillotet. So yeah it's a different it's a different process. It's a you know, a lot of the value for my watches are the dials and that's where I'm spending a tremendous amount of time on the watch. Yeah, typical watch style is |
| Unknown | uh you know underc some sort of undercoat, coat of paint, then transfer printing, possible application of indexes. It's not a terribly compli it's not a lot of uh not a lot of parts. It's not a terribly complicated component. So for one of y your most recent dial, for instance, how many components are we talking about |
| Unknown | ? Yeah. So in my dials there are nine parts including seven hidden screws. And the screws are used to keep the chaptering and the subseconds ring to the dial, but make it so it's easy to take them off if refinishing needs to happen or if the customer wants a gold chaptering versus a silver chaptering. And it's just an elegant way to hold the dial together |
| Unknown | . I think one of the most to me, one of the interesting things about your watches, uh which are beautiful front and back, and we'll get to the movements in a little bit. Um to me one of the one of the most fascinating things about your your your dial specifically is that they really are intended to last the lifetime of the watch as opposed to you know I mean uh part of the reason that we see so many um poetic terms for what are basically um you know, faded. Fadeded or damag dials. Yeah, exactly. Faded or damaged dials nowadays. You know, is be is because these things really were not intended to last forever. They were intended to be actually replaced um, you know, as a part of, you know, just a regular service in order to maintain the sort of functional integrity of the watch. Right, absolutely. But yours yours are yours are are the they're supposed to be a |
| Unknown | round for a while. Yes, yes. I use a a special type of silver alloy. It's still sterling silver, but it's al anloy of sterling silver that doesn't tarnish. So we'll find out in about 30, 40 years uh what they look like. But even if they have tarnished even a little bit, it's not very difficult to take apart the dial and refinish the engine turn parts that are this matte white that I do on them. And any competent watchmaker should be able to refinish the parts or put it back the the dial back together again.aron |
| Unknown | Powell What what was the most challenging thing for you about actually learning how to do um really fine engine turning, really fine guichet work |
| Unknown | ? So it's interesting. It's it's actually the tooling, the the parts of the machine that need to be updated or modified in order to achieve the patterns. For instance, my Rose Engine machine uh is eighty years old and so the rosettes, the cams that actually give you the pattern on the machine were very, very, very worn. So I had to have new rosettes machined and I had to figure out all the math and geometry behind the rosettes to get the exact patterns I wanted. Oh |
| Unknown | wow. You know that never actually occurred to me. But yeah if the rosettes are badly worn and you don't act you don't have a spec for the original geometry you kind of have to reverse engineer it. That must have been a nightmare. Right. It's it's math. It's math |
| Unknown | . And so Which for a lot of people is a nightmare last time. Right. Right. Right. I mean it's it's not rocket science, but in the same vein, you know, whatever whatever that rosette, whatever shape it has, if it's not the right shape, then the pattern won't be correct. Or for my basket weave or infinity weave, it took me years to get the correct cam, the correct guide for the pattern. And it took a very long time to hone that in and be able to get to a point where I was happy with the results |
| Unknown | . Um you mentioned uh your infinity weave pattern. This is actually a proprietary pattern, it's one that you developed yourself. Y |
| Unknown | es, yeah. I wanted to do something new in the world of Guiche. Guiche's been around for hundreds and hundreds of years, well before Burgay. Many people don't know that. Uh and I kind of wanted to add something that really pushed me to my limit, that was humbling in a lot of ways, because it was so difficult that it took months to get to a point where I was happy with the final product. And something that a collector could look at and say, wow, I can't believe a person did that. That's so fine. That's so intricate. |
| Unknown | It's a strange experience looking at the basket weave pattern. You know, the first time I looked at your infinity weave pattern under magnification, it was uh it was rather like looking at your own reflection in an infinite uh hall of mirrors |
| Unknown | . Right, exactly. Uh Nick Minocis referred to it as a a fractal uh pattern and and I really like that description. Yeah, yeah. N |
| Unknown | ow um when you began, uh did you were you was it your ambition to create something of this level of complexity, you know, sort of right off the bat? When I started out |
| Unknown | , I wanted to create my own line of watches, and it took kind of it took a few years to really figure out what end product I actually wanted to release. And I went through a few different iterations and a few different dial designs |
| Unknown | . But you knew you were going to focus on uh sort of something original with dials right off or were you at that point still thinking about skeletoniz |
| Unknown | ing? No, I there was definitely a turning point when I bought the engine turning machines that I really wanted to show off those skills. There was a a point where I was thinking of kind of doing both, but as a business decision, I decided that I really wanted to focus on the dial and the hands and really knock those out of the park and make that the signature of my infinity series and then go back to movements. My my plan is to do in-house movements, in-house case. And I have all the machinery and we've started prototyping for that, but as as a business decision I wanted to do one step at a time. So I didn't take on too much, run out of capital, and be nowhere. Aaron Ross Powell |
| Unknown | And there and there you are stuck with an incredibly expensive uh engine turning machine you can't afford to do anything. Right, right. So the goal ultimately is to uh really have uh you, know, sort of completely made in California, made in the United States from the ground up, uh, watch uh movement case and dial |
| Unknown | . That's my dream. That's my dream. And I've invested in the machinery besides the engine turning machines I have an extremely expensive CNC machine, Swiss lathes, and many other machines purposely made for making watch components and finishing watch components there's there's a problem in America that we don't have the support industry that they have in Switzerland. So Well ye |
| Unknown | ah, no I mean not at all. And I think that that's something a lot of people who wonder why there isn't, you know I think people have forgotten just how big an industrial base it requires in order to sustain that. Exactly |
| Unknown | . And uh Switzerland has that. You can walk down the street and trip over a dial factory or I mean that's an exaggeration, but the everyone. Not much of |
| Unknown | one. Not much not much of one. I mean it's uh uh it is a major Swiss national industry. There's there are suppliers there that simply don't exist anywhere else in the world. Um and if they do, they don't exist as suppliers. You know, I mean uh Saico makes all of its own balance springs. Um but uh you know, it's not like that's part of a broader industrial base. That's something that's within the company. Right, exactly. Exactly. But you're using what uh visually it's a very beautiful movement and it seems like a pretty elevated construction. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about how you found your movement partner and what you liked about the movement. |
| Unknown | Yeah, so UWD is Urnwork Dresden. They are a movement manufacturer that specifically makes movements for for small brands. They made a uh made the movements for the SIN uh fiftieth anniversary watch and they caught my attention with that. And so I contacted the company and they were very easy to work with. They're a sister company to Longenhain, which is a independent brand in Germany. And now Langenhain has brought UWD, they've sort of merged together. So Langenhain is directly making the movements. And they don't make very many a year. And I buy a lot of them. And the quality of workmanship, the beauty of the movement, and the uniqueness uh really attracted me, and I'm very happy to have them in my movement, in my uh wat |
| Unknown | ches. It's very interesting. The architecture of their movements seems in some ways to reflect the kind of sensibility that got you into skeletonized movements in the first place. Right, exactly. Look at their movements and uh pretty much everything is exposed. There are no there's no sort of standard uh bridge work or three quarter plates or nine tenths plates or anything like that. Right. Exactly. Exactly, exactly. Um the train wheels are all under individual cocks. So you can you can really kind of you know see the action going on |
| Unknown | . Yeah I've always I've always been attracted to individual cocks for uh the set wheels. It's it's much easier to service and I think it same thing as skeletonization. It really lets you see the inner workings of the movement, which I personally really enjoy, and I think my customers do too |
| Unknown | . Yeah, I've often wondered just how in the world you know, I guess again from working on American pocket watches, but uh you know, I remember spending uh hours trying to get all of the pivots to fall into the right jewels on uh you know full plate movements. So yeah. I you know I I I hear what you're saying about watchmaker friend |
| Unknown | liness. Right, exactly. Yeah, it takes a special moving of the top plate to get the pivots to line up |
| Unknown | . Yeah. And I was usually trying to do it at one o'clock in the morning when the family was asleep, which is not an ideal time for watchmaking. Right. Right. Um so the you got your engine turning machine, you figured out how to um how to maintain it, set up a the machine shop necessary to uh to support it. And at at this point you're producing dials that look extremely um accomplished and soph |
| Unknown | isticated. Yeah, thank you. Really, my goal is I want my watches to compete with the best Swiss watches out there. Yeah, there's there's Roland Murphy in the United States, and there's many other micro brands. And if I'm just competing against them, that's at one level. But to really get the attention of the world and an international market, I have to go head to head with uh the Swiss and and the best of the Germans. And that's really my vision uh of the company and that's what I've tried to achieve with my watches and with the dials that, that when a person looks at it, they say, Wow, this is an amazing watch. Oh, and it's made in America. |
| Unknown | Right. Cool. Right. Made in America cannot be the primary reason that the watches are interesting in other words. Right. Exactly. So how have you how how have you been doing so far in terms of I mean this is a relatively new enterprise for you. Yeah. Relatively. Um how have you been doing in terms of getting actually getting your watches out there, getting people to see them? You know, it strikes me that this is the sort of enterprise where especially initially you're kind of selling watches one watch at a time to one person at a time and people want a sense of connection to the artisan who made them, a sen |
| Unknown | se of personal connection. Yeah, I I would say every single every single one of my collectors is now a good friend of mine. I I talk with them, uh I have very open communication. I give them lots of update photos and talk to them about their watch. And I really enjoy that. I really enjoy that human interaction. And I hope I can always maintain that because it's a really special aspect of making the watch. It's a very personal thing when I deliver a watch. W |
| Unknown | hen you when you put your watches out there on the internet for people to see, people to talk about and for people to criticize. You know, one of the things that you sometimes hear is uh these are two derivative of Brigade or these are two derivative of George Daniels. I mean and you mentioned earlier that uh briget is uh he's obviously his work is obviously strongly identified with engine turned dials, but engine turned existed before brighter, it existed after brighter, and he was not the only person producing these dials. So what would your reaction sort of be to people who who don't see the bigger picture in that respect? Aaron Ross Powell Right. I I |
| Unknown | think you know I actually spoke to Roger Smith about this and he gave me the advice of referring to them as engine turn dials. Right. And I I did research on that. And before Briget, there was Lapine who was making uh pocket watches and you know the thin calibers named after him but he also was doing engine turn dials and absolutely so it's it's first off there's engine turning or doing guillet on dials and second off there's having Roman numerals and guillotet on dials. And when that happens, people tend to think, well, other brands have done Roman numerals and guilloset. He's just copying from the other person, but that is a style in and of itself. It's a classic dial. You see it in many, many brands using Roman numerals on a silver dial with either machine-made, guichet, numerous brands. I even found an example of a Patek Philippe pocket watch in that same exact style. And so that's sort of what's lost there, that this is a style, not a copyright of George Daniels or a copyright of Brigade or a copyright of Roger Smith. So if you look at their watches, they were clearly inspired by those that came before them. They liked this classical aesthetic. And so do I |
| Unknown | . I mean how much of it do you think is an issue with well let me frame this a little bit differently. Um it is possible nowadays more than ever to do increasingly convincing uh imitations of traditional manual uh or manual and machine assisted um finishing techniques. Correct. I remember being in the factory of a company that makes movements at different different levels at the high end, they do very, very traditional. Uh hand done movement finishing, you know, hand polished bevels, nice sharp inner angles. And uh they said one one of their um uh movement finishers said that uh we should all we should all be afraid of the laser because now it's become possible to imitate just about anything. So when you're looking at an and what makes an engine turn dial so distinctive? Because these are these are uh the patterns can be imitated to some degree at least by by stamping. Correct. Correct |
| Unknown | . And also uh dials can be made on CNC machines. Uh the the very, very large brands uh do their dials that way. They don't talk about it a lot. But right. I I like to say if a brand is using a Rosen machine and a straight line machine to do their guillet, they're going to show it off. They're going to be proud of it. So if you see a watch and the company isn't talking about that process, they're probably doing it with a CNC machine or stamping. The way you can tell in terms of stamping is the the cuts on an engine turned or on using an engine turning machine are much brighter are much brighter. The the cutter is polished usually with a a diamond hone so the the cut is extremely bright. So that's one way |
| Unknown | . Yeah, you know, I've n I've noticed over the years uh looking at both um stamped and genuine engine turned dials, engine turning seems to produce uh a crisper surface and it's uh it's almost as if you can see the grain of the metal. You can see where the cutter passed through the metal of the dial. |
| Unknown | Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And and the truth is, on real hand engine turned guichet dials, you know you see microscopic mistakes and on a a CNC dial or a stamp dial, you won't see that. And it sounds counterintuitive, but if you look at a hand done bevel on the back of a movement and magnify it. You'll see the human hand there. And that's what uh adds value to the watch that a human being was sitting there doing this one at a time, one bevel at a time, one cut at a time, versus a machine that's completely taking care of it. It's it's the romance of watches, it's what intrigues us. It's |
| Unknown | where a lot of the value is.aron Powell It's very interesting when we first started on the watch internet seeing people publish the first you know highly detailed digital macro photograp macro photographs of watch movements. Um I remember people getting very upset at, you know, precisely these microscopic imperfections that they would see in hand finished watches, and it's because it was because of course that people had gotten used to seeing machine executed versions of what had originally been manual techniques where there was this sort of um uh cons you know machine consistency less uniformity. Uniformity. Yeah. Yeah exactly. And to your point, um while the Rosette is important, while the Rose engine is obviously, you know, indispensable for engine turning, there's still a manual aspect to the pro |
| Unknown | cess. Yeah, you have to put in what is it Malcolm Gladwell uh he says you have to put thirty thousand hours into something to be an expert. Is that the is that the right person? I think that's who I'm thinking of. I think you're probably right. Uh so if not we're both misrem misremembering the same thing. Right, right, right, right. So yeah, I I've put years and years of practice at this point into the craft. There's definitely a touch to it, both with the hand wheel of moving the machine, a feel for the machine, a feel for the cutter. I can tell when I need to sharpen the cutter by my thumb touch. I can see that it's not as smooth as it was when I freshly sharpened the cutter. I can see in the cuts themselves if something's wrong with the machine itself. If I need to change the belt, if I need to lubricate the machine. And this is just something that comes with practice and experience and it's the difference between good work and really great work. And another component of it is always sort of being humble and realizing that you can improve. That's I I feel the thing that's helped me the most. I never look at my work and say, ah, this is perfect. I'm a master. I always try to look and see how I can improve, how I can make the pattern better, how I can machine the dial better, how I can get it flatter, how I can |
| Unknown | get more perfect cuts. I mean, being able to unpack how some of these techniques are actually done, I think is uh of of tremendous, tremendous value because there really are levels of quality in things that I think a lot of watch enthusiasts don't necessarily think of in terms of there being levels of quality. Right. Oh at all. I mean I I mean I certainly didn't. Um and I was pri I've been privileged to be on the GPHG jury for the third time this year. Oh wow. And when the high jewelry pieces come out, I mean horological d high quality gem setting as a as a craft overall is something that I don't know a whole lot about in terms of how to evaluate it. Right. And horological gem setting is extremely challenging because uh especially if you're putting colored stones adjacent to each other on the watch case, the degree of color matching that you have to do is uh it's it's just extremely demanding. And I've been lucky enough I was lucky enough last year to sit next to a gentleman who knows a lot about gems, gem setting and horological gem setting, and I got the most amazing fifteen minute introduction. You know, to sort of what to look for. Um but I think that uh I think that engine turning is kind of like that. We see a lot of imitations of it. Um and we see a lot of mass produced versions of it via CNC machine. But really or Frederick Constant. Yeah. Yeah. Being able to actually sit down and look at a real engine turn dial and, you know, and have the leisure to examine it is something that a lot of us don't have a chance to do. Right. But you know, via this media of medium of communication, via the internet, I think people have a chance to become a little bit uh educated about it, which is part of the fun. Right, exactly. Yeah. So |
| Unknown | sort of um backtracking a little bit next steps. Yeah. So when it comes to movement manufacturer and how I'm drawing inspiration from my dials for that, there's a tremendous amount of machining skills that go into making a dial beyond the guichet, and those have been directly applicable to making the movement. On top of that, I'm really trying to brainstorm how I can bring engine turning onto the movement itself in a really unique classy way to accent the the movement and make it unique to myself without sort of overdoing it. And so th those are the things I'm working on. Prototyping and trying to get like trying to get an aesthetic that I'm very happy with that's sort of in line with the the DNA that I'm creating with my brand |
| Unknown | . You know um just a a little thought. Um there's a story about Aristotle that uh I forget who it was, some prince or potentate or king, uh told him that he wanted to learn geometry, but he wanted to learn it fast. And Aristotle famously said, there is no royal road to geometry. Um, you know, the idea being that some things are just inherently time-consuming. And it sounds like that's kind of the approach you're taking to not just uh building skills yourself as uh as an artist, but also to your watches overall. Like that it's not it's not quality is not something that happens fast |
| Unknown | . Correct, exactly. My whole goal with the Infinity series is to build my company so that I can have the time I need to do research and development and make the watches the right way. So that when it's done, I'm happy with the final product and that I don't feel rushed. I have customers that have already committed to my American series of watches when they're they're in-house and I've been very clear with them and they've been very accommodating to this that I'm not in a hurry. I I want to do it right and I'll let you know as it things progress and uh when the watch will be ready |
| Unknown | . Well I was very excited to see your pieces when you brought them into the office uh for the first time and uh it's great to see them again and I'm really, really looking forward to uh to what you come up with next. All right. Thank you so much, Jack, and thank you, Hodinki. Thank you very much for joining us. And I also want to thank Mr. Nick Manusos of the Horological Society of New York, who was kind enough to introduce us and who's in the room with us today. So thank you also, Nick, and thank you, HSNY |
| Unknown | . This week's episode was recorded at Hodinky HQ in New York City and was produced and edited by Grayson Korhonen. Please remember to subscribe and rate this show. It really does make a difference for us. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next week. |