The Grey NATO - Ep 90 - A Chat With Paul Scurfield Of Scurfa Watches

Published on Thu, 26 Sep 2019 06:00:25 -0400

Synopsis

The podcast is a conversation between the host and Paul Scurfield, a UK-based commercial saturation diver and founder of the Scurfa Watch Company. They discuss Paul's diving career, the challenges and technicalities of saturation diving, the use of watches in this profession, and the founding and philosophy behind Scurfa Watches. Paul provides insights into his journey from being a recreational diver to a professional commercial diver, the rigors of working at depths over 100 meters, the need for helium release valves in watches, and his motivation for starting his own watch brand catering to divers.

Paul also explains the design and pricing considerations for Scurfa watches, keeping them affordable yet functional for diving applications. The conversation touches on the history of dive watches, the challenges of manufacturing customized components, and Paul's approach to running Scurfa as a passion project alongside his diving career.

Transcript

Speaker
Host Hello and welcome to another episode of The Grey Nado, a Hodinkee podcast, a loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving, gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode 90, and we thank you for listening. Today's episode is a conversation I had with Paul Scurfield, a UK-based commercial saturation diver. For some, Paul may be familiar from his other job as the founder of the Scurfa Watch Company, a brand he started in order to make tough, affordable watches he and his fellow divers could wear on the job. But Paul isn't just a micro-brand champion. He's collected Tudors, Rolexes, and the odd Patek Philippe over the years, and remembers his teenaged years looking longingly at Comex and Military Submariners in the Army-Navy shops in Newcastle, England, before their prices got to where they are today. Paul talks to me about his work in commercial diving, the nature of this arcane kind of work, his history collecting and wearing watches, and he explains why older iPhones were more helium safe than newer ones. We also talked a little bit about running his own small brand and the philosophy behind Scurfa. A note, this recording was done several months ago via Skype between Paul's home base in England and mine in the U.S. At the time, we didn't have a specific intention of using it for the Graynado. So the sound quality isn't quite up to the standards you've come to expect from TGN. But I think the content of my chat with Paul is worth it, which is why we decided to run this as a full episode. I hope you enjoy it. So you're, you're, you're on dry land for a while?
Paul Scurfield Yes. Um, I should be here another, maybe two weeks before I go back. So just getting busy with, I come home and I have a lot to do when I come home. I'm trying to tone it down a bit. I had all sorts of plans to, to make all sorts of new designs and automatic watches but at the minute I think I'm just going to mainly concentrate on the quartz diver one watches. Oh sure. And the bell divers that I've already done so it just creates too much too much work.
Host Well I can imagine I mean the the diving work is full-time when you're on and then when you get home you probably don't necessarily want to dive into another full-time job. What's your typical schedule? What's your typical on-off schedule for the diving?
Paul Scurfield Pretty much, it works out about a month away and a month at home. Up to 23, 25 days in the chamber in the dive system.
Host And where do you live?
Paul Scurfield I live in Sunderland, the tiny way up, but I'm originally from Elk's Hills, which is right next door.
Host I was intrigued because you had written that post on Watch You Seek about helium valves. Everybody's very interested in helium valves, of course, and nobody ever really talks to a to anybody who would even remotely come close to using it.
Paul Scurfield I don't think anybody fully understands the complexities of what actually happens in a dive system with the pressures, the different gas mixtures, the different depths. There's a lot that the watch could never be tested. It's impossible.
Host It's interesting, last week I was out in Colorado with Oris watch company Oh yeah. And we were doing a little ski trip and they introduced some new watches and they have a new addition to their pro diver line that they call the Dive Control. You know, one of their ambassadors is a Swiss commercial diver. I guess he's one of very few Swiss commercial divers. And his name is Roman Frischknecht. So he came on Skype, did a video chat with us, with our group there. But he was describing the name Dive Control as a role in the in the diving system? Is that the case? Maybe he's the guy who's got topside?
Paul Scurfield Yeah, dive control. It's like the Starship Enterprise. How is it anyway? I'll send you a picture of it. I'll take out the picture because it's quite impressive. It is literally like, it's more complicated than the bridge on the ship. Oh wow. You've got to cover every eventuality. I'll send you a photograph because it does look like the Starship Enterprise. Our new one. The old ones are just cobbled together with sticks of Wages here and vows here and there dotted about, no rhyme or reason. But obviously now, we've got it a bit more perfected now. You know, it's more organized now.
Unknown Yeah.
Host Where are you doing most of your diving these days?
Paul Scurfield All the North Sea. I just work in the North Sea. Okay. It's pretty unionized. It's safe. So we'll get set wages and they can't really change them. Yeah. Go to different parts of the world and earn half the money. Oh, sure. So it'll be like, yeah areas in uh nigeria places like that which you can't have a bit risks involved oh okay um uh piracy oh right right yeah sort of the inner dive system yeah right last thing you want is your boat to be overtaken by pirates yeah crashed into somewhere like the dew sunday wow those guys must get hazard pay Well, they still get good money, but they don't get what they should get.
Host So how did you get into this? How did you start commercial diving? How did you get into this career?
Paul Scurfield Well, I first started being interested in diving from obviously being a kid with the James Bond films, Jack Cousteau, and coming from a shipbuilding town would have all the Comex vessels come in. So obviously a lot of the lads from afar worked on the vessels, so we all knew about it, we knew about the diving. We knew they gave you a Rolex when you worked there. So I got to hear about Rolex diving watches at an early age. Started scuba diving, doing that. We've got a lot of wrecks off South Shields. Not very interesting now, they're pretty much rust heaps now. Started doing that and got to see all the Cormac's boats. As soon as I was old enough, I was away at Fort William, Scotland to do a diving course.
Host Wow. When was this?
Paul Scurfield Yeah, I'm 46.
Host That was 28 years ago. And you've been doing it a long time then, yeah.
Paul Scurfield Well, well on and off because it's not an easy industry to stay into. I first started off doing jobs, inshore jobs, mainly on scuba and then worked my way up into sort of excellent jobs. It took us a long time to get on a vessel like what I work on now. It's not easy. Oh really? Yeah, it's very, no, no, it's not easy. It's not easy to stay. You may get the odd trip on vessels, but to get to stay and work on one a long time, very hard. Yeah. Is it a seniority based system or? Well, it's, there's a lot of pitfalls along the way. You need to be quite, you need to be switched on and you need, you need luck on your side as well. Oh yeah, yeah. You need to make the right friends along the way and you need to get on with everybody on board, everybody. Some people who upset the crew, you know, they tend to get moved about to other boats. That's, that's not good for, you know, your career really. Right. By being lucky I was, I started on a boat called the Osprey about 13 years ago, which was an old Comex diving vessel. So that was good to work on. It was old Comex equipment and all the staff were ex-Comex divers. All the older fellas, the supervisors, a lot of the divers. So that was interesting to start on a boat like that and manage to stay on a boat like that. But that boat's since been scrapped, so a year and a half ago, which was a shame. I wonder where all the equipment's gone. It may have been used again. The Comet Spell, you might have seen it on some of my videos, that was the one on my videos was the Comet Spell. They're a bit funny about you shooting videos now, so I've never, companies aren't keen on you making video footage of subsea assets and things, so I haven't made any for a while. The contract one now, I don't really want to say rock the boat by trying to make any more footage, so it might be a thing of the past.
Host I mean, you've been doing this for a very long time. And is it something I was going to ask, you know, having started out as sort of more of a wreck diver, recreational scuba diver, is it even remotely close to scuba diving? Is it enjoyable? Would you call it an enjoyable job?
Paul Scurfield It is enjoyable. It can be, it's not very glamorous, but it's very enjoyable. You get to go to places people have never seen. The visibility is good. It can be brilliant, a brilliant job. I really look forward to doing it and I do miss it when I'm not there. That's why I've got no intention of stopping, just concentrating on watches. I'm still going to dive until they tell us to stop. I don't do any, at the school that I'd intend to stop as soon as I started working as a diver.
Host What, uh, what, what's kind of the, uh, what depths are you working at? Uh, what's kind of the average depth or what's the deepest you've been?
Paul Scurfield Part of the year, the weather's good, but we'll work shallow, which will just be swimming over to an oil rig. And that may be like 20, 30 meters. Um, we don't do many of that, many jobs like that. It's called a mid water job. Um, but the seabed, North Sea seabed, mostly 80 to 184 meters. Yeah. Averaging 120 meters. The last job one was 152.
Host And what type of work is that then? Are you, are you, I mean, the, the cliche is you're, you're welding pipe or you're fixing broken valves. And I mean, is that the kind of work you're doing or what are you doing?
Paul Scurfield Well, mainly we do a lot of inspection work, checking the thickness of metals. We also do maintenance jobs. We make refit valves or small little jobs like that. So full on construction jobs where you'll be building a new oil field, putting a huge pipe in and that's quite interesting.
Host So it's quite physically challenging work. I mean, not only is there the depth and the cold and the dark and the technical aspect of it, but you actually have to know how to do all these other aspects of the work?
Paul Scurfield Well, not so much welder for us. We'll have a specific welding team and they do hyperbaric welding jobs. They might do one or two a year, maybe. They're quite rare and quite expensive for oil companies. So we'll try to find another method if we can. But the jobs we do, the non-welding jobs, they can be physical. If you're putting pipes together, you've got to hammer nuts off and you could be going for a full six hours working. it's it's not cold we've got hot water suits so it's always warm yeah you've got your helmet which means you can talk to the surface on you talk to the other diver it's very comfortable i guess the burning question that uh watch nerds uh would love to know is i mean do you actually wear a watch while you're in the water working well sometimes i do depends what the job's going to be um it's not always but you don't have too much of a use for a watch in the water. But you do occasionally wear it, but there's always a chance, you know, you're going to smash it up with the physical jobs, hammering, banging jobs. You get jobs with high magnetism, inspection jobs, and you use magnetic coils to do testing for cracks. So, you know, you pretty much, you could destroy your watch wearing it, doing that job, or make it go faster. So really, your watch is mainly used, you have to have a watch by lowering the diving bell. Okay. In case the bell gets lost, you need to know the time, so you have to have the watch for that. And obviously everybody, and you do pretty much need a watch in the dive system. Yeah. Because there is things you need to do at a certain, they expect you to do them at that time. All the time you know it's time to go and check the bell, you know it's time, you know, it's not your turn to dive unless you're told otherwise. So you do need a watch in the dive system. Yeah. A lot of lads do wear watches in the water every day.
Host Outside the suit or under the suit sleeve?
Paul Scurfield Well the hot water suit's quite big and bulky so it goes under the suit. So it just goes on your wrist and the suit covers your wrists and you can pull your glove aside and you can say that's how we would wear a watch. Over the suit you would definitely smash it.
Host I always wonder about the earliest days of, you know, there's been some debate as to whether or not the Sea-Dweller came about because of the work with COMEX on the commercial side or with the U.S. Navy with SeaLab on the military diving side. I could understand why you would need a watch if you were, say, a military diver in the SeaLab program, but I've always wondered why Rolex would have put in, or any dive watch company would have put in the trouble to develop a watch if it's not maybe necessary
Paul Scurfield to use while you're working in the water you know like a rotating bezel which is great for scuba diving at least in the old days before computers uh you know is what's the use you know unless you're just sort of timing you're right yeah the bezel for a saturation dive watch is pretty much irrelevant you don't really need to use it because you're not ever going to work out your decompression times and they're going to last for days and days anyway yeah um so i did consider making a dive watch without I've got a bit of a design for one, which is in two parts, believe it or not, so you could put the bezel on and use it. That might come about one day, I don't know. But I think it's the style of dive watch that people like. The bezel on it, it fits perfect. I do know about the trials with Cormex and Rolex because a lot of the guys I used to work with, most are now retired, were involved. I used to spend hours chatting to them about it. Oh really? Yeah, yeah, because they also had the Omega. I think they went down the road of trying to make it resistant to helium, which meant the pressure involved on the watch obviously, you could never unscrew the crown in just the time if you need to do. That's why I've never considered watch resistant to helium really pretty much any good for the dive system. The pressure put on the watch is incredible. It can cause damage to the keyless works. Also we've had You have a Seadweller or two in your collection, don't you? No, no, not anymore. The only Rolexes I have in my collection at the minute are an Explorer from the 50s. I've got a Midas First Sub from the 60s and a brand new Submariner. I have had Seadweller's, plenty of Seadweller's. I've seen the Cormac's watches I've had. I wish I'd kept them but it's a good idea to get rid of them and get something different. Right, right, right.
Host So have you experienced, have you actually, I don't even know what it would be seem like if a helium release valve opened. Have you witnessed that occurring? Or would you even know if it happened?
Paul Scurfield No, and it must be so fast. What I've tried to do, when I was working on the bell dialer, I had to make sure obviously it worked. The glass has got to be secure, and the valve has to work before the glass pops out. So the gasket I put on was really tight on the glass, and the valve will work before the glass will pop out. So the way of testing this for me, it works. We have a lock where your food comes into. So outside opens the door, puts your food in, shuts the door, pressures the door to the pressure we are, and we open the door, take the food out. So a way of testing the watch, is to let the pressure in, screw the crown down tight, put it into the lock from inside, let the crew outside to take off the pressure, and then obviously it hasn't exploded because it's done in maybe a couple of minutes instead of six days, so you know it's fine. I've tried to capture this with an old iPhone, put an iPhone in the lock, videoing this, and I still Studied and studied and studied and I cannot see. Really? I cannot see it. Yeah.
Host Wow, that's amazing. It must just be microseconds.
Paul Scurfield It is. Yeah. First, every time it needs to do it. You see, I've tried many times now to do it. I mean, the pressure's gone. The lad outside will open the valve because I did quite a few empty cases first. Yeah. The crew outside will open up and see if there's nothing in it. That's came out and I still couldn't catch it. I thought it would be good footage.
Host You said that not many people understand what is involved in a saturation dive. What do you call the entire time that you're on a project? Do you call it a mission, a project? What do you call that from the time you leave shore? A shift? Is the entire thing called a shift?
Paul Scurfield The day I was entering SAT, you go on to a project. You get project briefs before you go in. You know what the job's going to be. You get all the paperwork that you can study to see what you're going to be doing. try to do as much as you can before you go in because obviously you speak completely differently and you're only talking pretty much on the telephone or on the seabed. So you need to be prepared for what's going to be done. An average project could be in there 24-25 days but in that time The jobs could change and the projects could change. So from the point of view of your watch and yourself, you could go in, or could be put under pressure to say 50 meters, do a job for four days, and then be blown down on a new job, it would move to a new part of the North Sea, and it would be 120 meters. You'd spend so much time there, you could come back to 8 meters, then maybe go down to 150 for your last job, and then decompress out of the system. But in that time, the pressure's changing all the time, the gas mixture's different, so the different variables involved with different projects you could be on are endless. So a watch could be perfect for years and years and years and then all of a sudden something could happen because it's experienced something it's never experienced before.
Host So it's interesting if most guys are not taking a watch in the water then the watch is really still under a tremendous amount of pressure constantly inside the chamber even though it's dry. Oh yeah. Which has implications on the seals and the glass and the crown and the threads and all of that in a watch.
Paul Scurfield Yeah. you Last trip and I noticed it felt really rough. And I've opened it up and there's loads of dirt around the keyless works. That's the payment date. And that's just two years. That's just muck getting pushed inside. Yeah. It's a rubber. Sure. It's a little black gunge inside.
Host Yeah. Did you start collecting watches? You said you were aware of the Comex Rolexes way back when you were a teenager. So you said that the diving and the watches sort of were a mutual interest from the beginning. When did you start getting into watches and was it always dive watches and was the earliest collecting with the Rolexes or?
Paul Scurfield Well mainly Rolexes. There's a row of shops nearby. There's a lot of second-hand shops, a lot of shops servicing the boats and the windows were full of Cormac's Rolex watches. Oh my gosh, unbelievable. Yeah. Wow. I spent years, well I spent hours Wanting to buy them. I mean army navy shops had the milsomes.
Host Oh my gosh, unbelievable in tanks.
Paul Scurfield Oh my gosh But I I got one. I was never a big fan. I didn't like the NATO strap. I didn't like Skinny arms. Yeah, it looked huge. Yeah The fixed bars, I mean a lot of people got rid of the fixed box. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, but yeah, that was that gives the mean interest in Rolexes and Cormac's and and I'd be going to the Jewellers in Newcastle looking at Rolex watches. I remember one of the guys gave us a Jewellers catalogue, because it had Jewellers in. And to be honest, as a dive watch, I did prefer the Jewellers as dive watches. Just mainly the bit more visibility on the dial. You could see the hands much clearly. And obviously, the way I keep my watch, why I'm in a Rolex. Because I've always had been, for a large part of my life, pretty much out of reach. It's only really been the last 20 years since the internet and, you know, earning more money and getting to learn more about them. I started collecting and buying and selling parts to pay for them. That was what I used to do when I first started 20-odd years ago with eBay and things like that. Helped us build my collection up. That's pretty much how it's come about. I think it's happened to a lot of people who've had interests in Rolexes.
Host especially the old diving ones you couldn't find any information out about until the internet really and then all of a sudden that's it really it's gone mad i'm guessing the army navy shops and the and the jewelers in newcastle aren't selling uh military submariners and comex watches anymore are they no i don't have them anymore i think that ended a long time ago yeah yeah yeah kind of going back to the diving a little bit so so can you describe a typical project i mean from start to finish like Do you go out to the boat on a helicopter? Do you go out on a ship? Do you leave from shore on the ship that you're going to be diving off of?
Paul Scurfield If it's a new project, the boat will be alongside mobilizing. So we fill in the boat with all the equipment needed for the job. And then we'll meet the boat, get to see all the equipment. We'll go into the dive system, start the project. But if the project's already underway, you may have to get a helicopter to the boat. Not very often. Maybe it's once a year. I think I should get a helicopter on that. It used to be exciting, but now it's... Yeah, right. It's not as exciting anymore now that I've had to try and find some. I've fell out the sky. Yeah. It's not... We prefer to go alongside. Yeah. Step onto the board.
Host Yeah. And so then when you get into the dive system, you go into the chamber, they lock you in and then blow you down to the depth that you're going to be working at. Is that correct?
Paul Scurfield Yeah, that's correct. Let's see if the seabed's 100 metres. it would blow you down to 90 meters and then when it's time to go to work you transfer to the diving down which is then sealed off, trollied out as they call it, trollied out, you move it away from the dive system then they lower it down through a moon pool in the boat, in the center of the boat, down to 90 meters. So when you get to that 90 meter point the door will open on its own because the pressure is then equalized. So we'll open the door and we'll get our dive gear on and we'll drop down so we'll only really We're only really adding an extra 10 meters to the pressure, what we're stored at, if you follow. Because if you notice some of the video clips that I've taken, they're taken on a little camera that might only be waterproof to 10 meters. That's because we'll leave it open until we go down to the bottom to 90 meters, and then you can feel the camera up. And then when you drop down to the seabed, it's only really got 10 meters of pressure on it. Interesting. Yeah, right. Yeah, extra pressure. Yeah. It's a little bit. It's a bit tricky to get your head going. But if you can see, it's not you only had behaving at 90 as it knows it's still working. Yeah, yeah. And if it is, you shut the where the batteries go in. Yeah. So the pressure is then trapped and it's now waterproof. Yeah. And then you take it to the seabed. It's only having an extra 10 meters added pressure. Yeah. So it will still work. Which is pretty much like the watch really.
Host Yeah, yeah. So then you, you go, you exit the bell, um, and you do the work. How long is it, how long are you in the water and do you get like a breaks every hour or two or do lunch break after three hours or?
Paul Scurfield Yeah, well, we used to work a solid six hours without a break. Oh my gosh. Yeah. But a couple of years ago, when you had to come back within a certain time and have a 20 minute drinks break. What's for a break and then back to the job again. Trying to defeat the object by having a break. It's quite physical. But that's something we just have to live with now because the rules came in, which we are trying to change it so we don't have to have a break. But the rules are there so we do have to come back, which is a bit of a painful mid-water job. But on the seabed, yeah, it's great. It has made a big difference to the dive.
Host So then you take the break. So shifts are about six hours total, you said?
Paul Scurfield Yeah, six hours. So that means two diving bells. One will be down you'll only be prepared to come down at the end of your six hours shift. Meet you on the bottom, get a dive, I'll come over and you'll show them what you've been doing. Then you leave, go back. And then six hours, four teams, the three people, that covers the 24 hour period. So that's how it works.
Host So it's continuous diving. So you're six hours on, 18 hours off. Yeah. And the downtime, The bell gets hoisted back up through the moon pool onto the ship, locked onto your habitat, the dive system. You exit into the dive system. How comfortable is that for you? Is it a comfortable environment? Is it humid? Are you always having to equalize your ears? Is it warm? Is it crowded?
Paul Scurfield It can be crowded. The new chambers are quite good compared to the older ones, some of them are tiny. The new ones are good, you've got quite a lot of space. You've got a different chamber for your dive kit to get ready. You've got another chamber which is like a shower and toilet. That's separate. Then you have your living chamber where you would eat your food and just sit and watch TV. And then you have like part of that is sort of a bedroom with your bunks in. But it's quite crowded. You can imagine it's only about two metres across, round. You may have six guys in a chamber that's only maybe four or five metres long. You just get used to moving around each other. Everybody seems to have their own seat and everybody gets on. There's no friction. and everything everything in that chamber would have to be pressure tested so even a television if it's if the chamber is pressurized to 90 meters that that that seems like it would put a bit of a strain on electronics and yeah yeah well we've started using projectors now from the port wall um that's what we've started using now so that's safe outside yeah we used to have special tvs uh in the dive system but after a while they just get black spots on them so you can only partially see the heat. But what iPads work, and my iPhones, iPhones work up to an iPhone 6. The new ones are allergic to helium. And they're waterproof, so they'll get crushed. So I've got a stack of iPhone 6s. Keep on top of with new screens occasionally, new batteries if batteries tend to stop charging. We'll have to send them out to be charged, you'll see. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, every time you send it out, you risk burning it, so I have two. Two, and a spare one outside.
Host And you have internet access while you're in there, is that right?
Paul Scurfield Yeah, the internet's good now. It used to be pretty poor, but now I've got a new vehicle. The new vehicle's called the Kestrel. And that's great on there. So you can surf the web and see what's going on and check emails, stuff like that.
Host So let's, we can wrap up here shortly, but I wanted to kind of talk a little bit about Scurfo, the watch company that you founded. Scurfo is your nickname, is that right?
Paul Scurfield Yeah, yeah, it was just the name I wrote on my dive kit. And to be honest, what had happened all of All the guys at work started selling off all the Comet Rolexes and Bell Subs and we would cash them all in and a lot of them hadn't been serviced at all and they'd only wear them at work. Pretty much leave them in the lock up, wear them at work, take them back in the lock up, go home, wear a different watch at home. But obviously once they all started selling the work watches, they didn't have a watch to wear for work, so the dive equipment supplier, Divex. We started wearing them at work. I wore mine for a few years, a nice solid dive watch. And I thought, you know, I could make something myself. I did look, looked about, took a while to find a manufacturer who'd make them in small numbers. And I found one and I sold most of them at work. The lads were wearing them and things were happening to the early ones because the quality obviously wasn't with the price of them that wasn't fantastic. So, you know, I just thought I'd make some improvements and then just had a bit of a quiet period at work, so I thought, you know, I'll try and sell some of these on the internet.
Unknown Yeah, yeah.
Paul Scurfield I didn't realize there was a follower of Dive Watch, a watch company, I had no idea. Yeah. I put the website on Oceanic Time, a friend made a website for us, it was That wasn't a very good way to say it, but it did the job. I put it on all she had time. I spoke to him, he went, oh yeah, I'll do that. And then I started getting emails off people saying, oh, I'm on From What You Seek, come and have a look at this thread on there. And I'm thinking to myself, what the hell is it? I didn't have a clue. So I started having a look, joined all these forums, and then obviously For the past six years, I've listened to what people have said, what they've wanted. I've been lucky, I've sold quite a lot, so I've been able to pay for all new, better quality models. I've designed bracelets to fit them, which is making us no money at all because they cost so much to be manufactured from scratch in your own design. A lot of the money I'm getting back from the watches just goes all back straight into the watches. with newer models or improvements. I think the latest one to be honest is pretty much crafted with that for the quality.
Host So tell us you've got two models basically you've got the Diver 1 and then you have the Bell Diver and under each of those categories you have it looks like the Bell Diver is now only in automatic is that right?
Paul Scurfield Yeah, the Bell Diver is the automatic watch. Everybody was asking for an automatic. And it's got the helium valve in that one. The Diver 1 is pretty much an everyday, scuba diving, water sports, grab and go watch, which is pretty much what I want to concentrate on, to be honest. I think there's room in everybody's collection for a holiday watch, grab and go watch.
Host And what's the MS-18? What does that refer to?
Paul Scurfield The MS model is, I followed the Royal Navy military spec. The MS model, I just try it every year. I based it on the Tudor mil sub. Oh sure, yeah. If you notice the MS on the back, it's pretty similar to the MN. Oh right, right. On the Tudor models. And in a year, obviously, the 17 was the first one. I've got the 19 being made now, which will probably be out July-August time. And it'll be on the NATO strap, the Toxic NATO strap I've been using, which is a good quality strap. And the spring bars, I don't know if you've noticed on the dive bar, on the spring bars I've just used exact copies of the old Submariner 2mm shoulder spring bars. Oh, with the drill blues. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. It's the same size spring bar, So it's the same one and that's when you've got that on the watch on the NATO strap, it's solid. Yeah. It's not going to pop off. Yeah. Yeah. So that was that was partially why I wanted that and that did cause a bit of trouble for the manufacturing point. The spring bars are so hard to get. People sell them for six and seven pound a pair because they're basically aftermarket Rolex spring bars. Right, right. Trying to find a reasonable price for a cheap quartz watch. Yeah. Yeah. Proving difficult. The manufacturer I used for the watches couldn't locate them. I had to get them somewhere else. Interesting. Yeah. if I wanted to use them. So that was there. I've stuck with it. But it's also caused a problem for the bracelets I'm having made for Daryl as well. Everybody's crying out for a bracelet. I want bracelets, I want bracelets. I've been designing this bracelet. It's literally, the amount of money it's costing. I could have another two watches in the line I think for it. It's just so difficult getting a bracelet manufactured to your specification. Oh, I can imagine. And the quantities involved as well. Yeah. And for a watch with a 20 millimeter strap as well, a bracelet. As you know, there's bigger watches and bigger bracelets. I had a bracelet made for the bell diver. It wasn't as hard to find that one and find the pieces. Yeah. Which when I wanted to replicate that bracelet for a diver one, Well then I had the problem, so each part's machined individually. Oh wow. They'll be ready in about April I think, and I'll be selling them. I might have to sell quite a lot to recover the money for that.
Host You're a one-man shop, right? I mean, do you have boxes of watches that you ship out yourself when you get orders?
Paul Scurfield Well, no, I do everything. I make the boxes myself. When the box, the watch comes in, I have to cut the foam. and put all them together. I have so many ready. I put the stickers on the top and made up the cardboard boxes to go with them. But my wife, Alison, she does the shipping and the custom documentation and the, you know, deals with all the emails and stuff. I was doing everything myself and it's just, it's impossible. Yeah, yeah.
Host Well, your watches, I mean, you sent me an early Diver 1 years ago when I was writing for Gear Patrol and um that was gosh must have been 2014-15 somewhere i don't remember but it was uh yeah it was you know it was a great watch i passed it on to a photographer dive buddy of mine who still wears it a lot my dad wore it i wore it for years and uh it's still going strong i changed the battery just once so far but um the watches are great and i think for the price point i mean i'm looking at your even the bell diver which is an automatic with the miyota movement you know, outside of Europe. So here in the US, I mean, it's 336 pounds. I'm not sure what that exactly translates to dollars, but it's, it's a very affordable watch and you get 500 meters of water resistance, a ceramic bezel insert, the Miyota movement. So it's, I mean, that's a lot of watch for the money and you have the adjustable clasp. So, I mean, it's, you've been able to keep the pricing down and, and I think, you know, over the years I've kind of seen your presence on Instagram and I've just seen your watches pop up with more and more people. So, You know, for someone who started out just selling to your dive buddies, it's grown into a nice little business for you.
Paul Scurfield Yeah, and I have kept the price down because I'm not really running it as a business, if you know what I mean, because of my job as a diver. It's more like a hobby to be honest. I used to get a big kick out of buying a new watch or even restoring an old vintage watch, looking for the parts and then finishing it and then the novelty wears off and then you move to the next project. It's a bit like an addiction. But now I'm getting the same satisfaction from designing new watches, new models, new colour schemes, new ideas, get the factory to help make a sample of this. I'm getting more pleasure now from my own watches being delivered. The excitement started to wear off. Collecting watches, I think I must have, I don't know how many I've got now, 25? Yeah, yeah. Maybe 15, two of them. Yeah, right. I still enjoy them, they're not as easy to find now. Yeah, yeah. So working on my own and then when a new design turns up and I just think, oh that looks really good. I know it's going to turn out well. I'm starting to get satisfaction from that. It's more of a hobby and a pleasure than a business. I think if it was a business, I would probably have to charge more.
Host Yeah, which I think you could. I mean, I think you're definitely in that kind of same status as a lot of what what are called the micro brands, you know, I think, uh, that sub thousand us dollar price is, uh, it's a competitive market, but you've obviously, uh, been able to stay, stay successful. So, um, well, Hey, Paul, I don't want to take any up any more of your time. And, and this was great. I mean, this was a really fun chat and, uh, I learned a lot and, uh, you know, I, uh, wish you all success and, um, I'll let you know what becomes of this interview. It might end up on the gray NATO or. on a Hodinkee article or both or something, but I appreciate your time. Okay. Take care. Thanks a lot. All right. Bye. Well, I hope you enjoyed this chat episode of the Graynado. I want to thank Paul Skirfield for taking the time to talk to me. For more information about Skirfo Watches, you can check out his website at www.skirfowatches.com and be sure to follow Paul on Instagram at skirfowatches. As always, thanks so much for listening and a big thanks to Hodinkee for supporting the show. Hit the show notes via Hodinkee.com or the feed for more details. You can follow us on Instagram at Jason Heaton and at J.E. Stacey and follow the show at TheGreyNado. If you have any questions for us, please write TheGreyNado at gmail.com and please subscribe and review wherever you find your podcasts. Music throughout is Siesta by Jazzar via the Free Music Archive. And we leave you with this quote from the famous French free diver Jacques Mayol who said, I'd rather lose myself in passion than lose my passion.