Episode 146 - Watch Finishing 101

Published on Wed, 11 Aug 2021 21:40:33 -0700

Synopsis

Andrew and Everett discuss watch finishing techniques, including polished, brushed, and blasted finishes for cases, as well as various decorative techniques like anglage, Geneva stripes, perlage, and guilloche for movements. They explore different methods of applying gold finishes like plating, vermeil, and gold filling/capping. They also cover the history and significance of techniques like black polishing, parkerizing, and Seiko's Zaratsu polishing. Throughout the discussion, they examine the costs and values associated with different levels of finishing from affordable to luxury watches.

Transcript

Speaker
Andrew Hello fellow watch lovers, nerds, enthusiasts, or however you identify. You're listening to 40 in 20 The Watch Clicker Podcast with your host Andrew and my good friend Everett. Here we talk about watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like. Everett, you animal, how are you?
Everett I'm doing so well. I'm getting ready to drink some booze.
Andrew Pisky, we're not gonna talk about it right now because it's gonna get saved for the other things segment of our show and I look forward to telling you about it. Okay.
Everett Well, I'm just letting you know I'm getting ready. I don't get it. I just always press the wrong ones. Just take your best guess. I just reach over and push one. The only two I know are the intro music and the outro music. Well, that's fair. Yeah. I'm doing well, man. It's uh, you know, middle of the week. Uh, It's a trial week. So it's always like kind of crazy. Uh, although it seems like more and more every I've had a trial, like every other week. So I'm in this constant state of just that he's making the, the making it rain, making it rain sign, which is true. That is part of having trials. Uh, yeah, no, I mean, good, really good. My knees still terrible. Uh, but it's fine. I get my MRI tomorrow. Nice. Finally. Uh, And then they'll tell me what's wrong with me.
Andrew I hope more than anything, your MRI comes back with absolutely no issues. Did I tell you I had a bad dream about that?
Everett No. I had a bad dream that the doctor was like, yeah, everything looks clear. And I was like, that's impossible.
Andrew Am I just this big of a weenie? Right.
Everett It's like some subconscious thing happening there. Yeah. No, I had, I literally had that dream where it came back negative.
Andrew Well, that'd suck because then it's like, well, what's wrong with me? Yeah. Did I create like, am I, am I manifesting hypochondria?
Everett And then I remember, oh yeah, I ran every day for three years without missing a single day. And I'm actually kind of tough. Well, I mean, relatively. You are, I know. Yeah, relatively. So I'm also a weenie, but, uh, so yeah, uh, that, that is something that is, I've been become aware of pursuant to my dreams. Uh, but yeah, no, there's something wrong. We'll, we'll figure out what it is. Hopefully this week, hopefully by next time we record, I'll have a treatment plan. That'll be good. Yeah. I started looking at like post-op recovery, you know, based on the, the prevailing theories about my injury. And it's like, yeah, two to four weeks, no driving, uh, four-ish weeks of crutches, uh, you know, two to four months with a cane or and or a walker.
Andrew Yeah, I'm gonna get you a walker with some tennis balls on the bottom.
Everett You know, I imagine these are all super conservative. But like, I can't imagine I'm going to use a walker. Well, maybe shit. I don't know. But now you're using a walker, right? I you know, the the like it that was the first time it occurred to me that I'm not going to be able to drive for upwards of a month, maybe you drive with your left foot. It's risky. Like shit, man. Yeah, so I don't know. We'll see. Maybe, like you said, maybe it's nothing at all. Maybe it's gonna come back totally clear.
Unknown Okay, man.
Andrew Here's a referral to an excellent mental health clinician. Andrew, how are you? I'm good. Coming along the tail end of a weekend. I'm doing the new boat owner thing. Never having owned a motorized boat. which means I'm learning things as I must. So for example, I learned about batteries today and I learned that my normal charger is not going to be effective on my marine battery. Like your, your trickle charger for your car. Number one, it's not safe cause it will overcharge and can cause it to explode. But number two is that it does, it's not efficient at charging the type of battery that it is. So I spent, um, We spent about an hour and a half getting the boat out to the lake today, uh, to have it crank once and then show low voltage. I'm like, well, that's troubling. So anyway, it prompted some, some more learning and now I have an appropriate charger because my battery has a little view window on it. That's got color coded like good battery, charge battery, replace battery, and it's in the charge battery zone. So. I've got a deep core Battery charger coming in on Friday.
Everett You still don't know that that Motor runs.
Unknown Yeah, dude.
Andrew I've been on this boat. Oh, that's right.
Everett Yeah, that's right. Yeah, okay Yeah, and how did he charge it?
Andrew I think he just put it on a charger like normal people like the people who know these things take that knowledge for granted But like you have to teach kids which foot to put said shoe on even though they hook the same direction as your foot And for years, they will put them on the wrong feet.
Unknown Yeah.
Everett I'm always amazed when I see a little kid with their shoes on the wrong feet and they're just rolling with it.
Andrew I'm amazed like little kid. Okay. That tracks Mark six. Like, dude, your shoes are on the wrong feet. He's like, Oh, I guess that makes, Oh no, I get it. Yeah. Your feet hurt.
Everett Dumbass put them on the, they, they, Oh, well, so that's now two trips to the lake to failed attempts.
Andrew But my trailer backing abilities are getting dialed in. Into my driveway is a, it's not exactly a right angle, but it's damn close. It's a little bit of an S curve into it. I did it today with only a ground guide to prevent me from hitting the garage. Got into the water. Sam was out there flailing her arms about. I did not pay attention to what she was instructing me to do. Why was she flailing her arms about? She was thinking she was ground guiding me, aiming the trailer down the ramp. But I did it without paying any mind to what she was doing. And I think if I had, it wouldn't have gone as smoothly. She was like doing the YMCA dance back there. And I was like, what are you doing? That there's no way that I need to be going in that direction that she's like, give him, tell me to stop. I'm like, what? I get out. And there's like this little pothole in the transition from the ramp to the asphalt. I just don't want you to run over the pothole like you were you were trying to get me to swerve around this like dinner plate sized small pothole i mean what on that note so yes i'm uh i'm getting good at backing up the backing it up getting it loaded up it's down to a science so next time we're gonna get out on the water fire it up spend the afternoon on the water and just thoroughly enjoy ourselves just like nasa man yeah yeah Yeah, dry run, dry one, dry run, dry run, damp run, wet run, go flight. Fortunately, the boat's gotten wet every time it's gotten in the water, just hasn't left the dock.
Everett Well, uh, lest our listeners become concerned, we are in fact talking about watches today. This is as appropriate a time as any to make a move in that direction.
Unknown Yeah.
Everett We're talking about watches, right? We're talking about, as per usual, every single aspect of a watch is going to be touched in today's topic. We always be touching. We're touching them all.
Andrew And this is a topic that we maybe should have talked about a long time ago because we talk about it about every episode. I can't say for sure. Well, no, I can say for sure. There's one episode that we did not talk about it. It's when we talked courts movements where we certainly did not talk about this topic.
Everett I don't know that that's true. I think that we talked about the first Swiss courts movements that were very highly finished. Okay.
Andrew So we have talked about this in every single episode.
Everett And, and spoiler, if, uh, if you did not read the tile, uh, today we're talking about watch finishing, watch finishing. Lest you think we're going to be constrained by any sort of parameters or rules, please be warned that we are going to talk about all sorts of watch finishing. Yeah, we went big. We're not going to follow any sorts of rules. We're not going to constrain ourselves. This is going to be a little bit stream of consciousness. A little bit. Although we're relatively prepared, I'd say. We did some... Yeah, we're prepared.
Andrew Some serious work to prepare for this episode. I think, though, there's enough to talk about that this is going to feel stream of consciousness because things kind of flow into one another. We're going to be doing some circling back. We're talking about methods. We're talking about finished end items. We're talking about processes. We're talking about equipment to accomplish said processes. There's a lot packed into this all in the name of discussing finishing, which I think you would agree with me. is the biggest differentiation between a $300 watch and a $3,000 watch.
Everett Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I a hundred percent agree with you. Yeah. And, and the biggest differentiation between a $3,000 watch and a $60,000 watch. Yes. It's also finishing and, and we're probably not going to get balls deep in
Andrew the differences between a $3,000 and a $30,000 watch today, but... I've never touched a $30,000 watch, so I don't think I could really appreciate the finishing.
Everett But we'll touch on that. We will touch on that, those issues, yeah, for sure.
Andrew So, with that, can we kick it off with the basics of the textures of case finishing? Yeah.
Everett What do I see? Right, so just before we go into there, you said the textures are case finishing. So we're kind of going to break this in, not into two equal halves, but the first part of this episode will be case finishing, and we'll later transition to movement finishing. But for now, case finishing, the basics of textures of case finishing, what you see, Andrew Go.
Andrew Yes. So we talk about this all the time. We talk about a polished finish. We talk about a brushed finish. and we talk about a blasted finish. And there's a few others that we're going to talk about, but those are the three that we primarily see and that we primarily talk about.
Everett Yeah. I think generally all watches fall basically into one of those three categories from the outside. Aesthetically speaking, they all fall more or less into one of those three categories. Yeah. And sometimes in multiples of those.
Andrew Yes. Yes. Oftentimes it's weirder if it's just a single texture throughout, and I'm gonna use texture I think when I'm discussing this because I think that's appropriate. I like it so first we're gonna start with the original most common and Origin finish yeah, probably traditionally the most common Polish a polished finish watch and it's super simple It's just sanded until it gets smooth and bright And there's a little bit bigger than that. So you're going to use very much the way you would sand any other material. Increasingly finer grits of discs, paper, beads, brushes, take your pick. There's a variety of ways that this texture is achieved. Just an incrementally finer grades until you get down to a mere polish. And there's different, there's, there's quality differences in polish. And you can see it when you're comparing well-finished watches and not as well-finished watches. The mirror polish, though still a mirror, is cloudier. It's not that same glassy polish that you get out of a really well-done, really well-polished thing. It can be repaired. It can be restored. But that's where we're starting. We're starting with a mirror effect on metal, regardless of metallurgy.
Everett And so traditionally, the most common I'd say probably the hardest to keep in its intended state of these three of these three initial ones that we're talking about dressiest and with that maybe the most fragile finish that there's some benefits to a polished surface that I know I kind of knew but hadn't really occurred to me till we were reading this. The biggest one being corrosion resistance. A polished surface is resistant to oxidation because it's got fewer facets. Uh, it's impervious in some respects.
Andrew It's one solid slab. There's no texture to it. There's nothing to grab corrosive materials. There's nothing to hold corrosive materials. It is a sheet of glass. It's also the easiest to refinish. Yeah, that's right. It's, it's the easiest to repair. So though it is the most fragile, the most delicate because fragile's not in, metal's not gonna break. It's a delicate finish because you can very readily and very easily see imperfections in that mirror polish. It's the easiest to fix.
Everett Because it's set at infinity and you just bring it back up as close as you can to infinity to bring it back. Next up, brushed. So whereas polished was probably traditionally the most common method, brushed is probably today the most common method of finishing watch cases. Yeah. Um, and, and we all know what it looks like. What, what really to say about it? Um, uh, a brushed finish is a series, uh, a pattern perhaps of parallel lines. They can either be straight lines or they can be curved lines. Most cases have curved brushing on the bottom side of the lugs, if not on the bottom side of the case back. Lots of variety in terms of quality. I'm going to use quote unquote quality for this. But generally speaking, I think a finer brushing, a smaller grain, closer together, and more homogenous, more consistent in terms of length and spacing is going to look better.
Andrew There's good brushing that looks almost like polish because those, that grain is so tight. It looks almost polished.
Everett And so benefits of a brush surface. It looks sporty, right? Which we all know. Um, it is probably second easiest to repair. Cause again, you could do it at home. As long as you've got a grain that's similar to that of the finish that you can, you can get this back, right?
Andrew You also need to repair it less Because it's not as easy to see blemishes in it because there is unless it's you're going cross-grain.
Everett That's right Those those blemishes blend into the grain that already exists of these three options I'd say it's probably the most blemish resistant or at least camouflages.
Andrew Yeah Okay, last up we got blasting and Blasting is the newest most recent Circa 1865.
Everett Yeah, I think 1870 is when it was actually patented. I thought this was interesting. This fellow, a Union Army soldier named Benjamin Tymon is how I'm going to pronounce that name. Ben Tymon. Oh, Ben Tymon. While he was fighting in the Civil War, noticed this phenomenon of sandstorms pulling the paint off of cannons and revealing the substrate underneath, which was both maintained after the sandstorm, but also had a finish that was impervious to the elements. And looked good.
Andrew And looked good. So he patents this first iteration. Since then, there are nigh on a dozen iterations of blasting.
Everett Yeah, different materials, different methods.
Andrew There's tumble, and what we see commonly is we see a lot of tumble blasting. We see a lot of slurry blasting and we see a lot of glass bead. And I think those are really the three primary ways that we're seeing within the watch industry specifically. Uh, but there are still yet a dozen more methods that are used. I mean, there's pure sandblasting, there's variable sizes of beads that are used, there's glass, there's, there's all of it. The slurry is the most interesting to me because you just basically put it in quicksand and then shake it.
Everett yeah that's right uh which which is in my opinion better than a tumbler because you're gonna you're introducing less opportunities for imperfections and i think a tumbled finish is maybe a little bit different aesthetically than a than a true blasted finish i think with a true blasted finish you're gonna get a little bit uniform a little bit more uniform texture and maybe a little bit more just decorated look that tumbled appearance has sort of the It's it's a Swiss Army knife that's been in your pocket for four years.
Andrew Yeah, it kind of creates a fotina on it. With that, one of its original applications was in military watches within watches. Yeah, yeah, I think that's where they first show up to reduce the glare and the camouflage ability. It's a little less scratch resistant than say brushing more than polish just by the nature of the texture that is achieved by One of my favorite parts of blasting is the different textures that are achieved. You can find really, really smooth, almost brushed texture varying all the way to asphalt.
Everett Yeah, super coarse.
Andrew It achieves a really cool and really unique texture that inherently is different from unit to unit.
Everett You know, I think that there was another, uh, there's another interesting aspect to this that, uh, I discovered maybe not discovered, but, but occurred to me as we were researching for this. So the original blasted military cases, um, really not. So if you want to know more about this, these Vietnam era military cases, you can listen to our, uh, episode from a few weeks ago, but, um, the original. application for these wasn't blasted at all. Rather, it was parkerized or passivized, which is really an etching. It's a chemical process by which the metal is chemically changed to make it impervious to elemental concerns. So like, for instance, the original Benrus military watches that look blasted weren't blasted at all. They were passivized, uh, passivated perhaps. Um, and a lot of people will refer to that as parkerizing. Parkerizing is essentially the same thing, but you can't parkerize stainless steel. Um, but if you hear that term, they basically means the same thing.
Andrew One that I wasn't able to find in use in the watch world that I found interesting is, uh, electroplating. And that's effective. What it is, is a bunch of ionized materials are dumped into a vat. And then the piece of material that you'd like plated is dropped into it. And these ionized materials magnet coat this material that went in there. And because they're melted, I assume, just from my understanding of it, or at least, uh, Ooh, what's the word I'm looking for? They're not quite, they're not melted exactly, but they're, uh, malleable. They will electroplate through an electric charge going through it, plate it electrically.
Everett Well, certainly that is how most gold plated watches are done is through electroplating, as well as any Timex that you bought in the 90s or the aughts that looked chrome was nickel plated, probably brass or some other base metal. So yeah, super common, super common finish and nickel plating is a really effective way to turn shitty, cheap metal into a really effective corrosion-resistant material.
Andrew I want to see companies doing that with multicolor ionized metal. I don't want a polka dot case, but I think a multicolor, not Invicta multicolor plated, but splotted multicolor plated case would be really fucking cool.
Everett Well, and that's, that's a good segue because our next, uh, our next topic is, uh, maybe the other side to this conversation, this brushed blasted polished conversation, but that is PVD coding or DLC coding, um, which are not the same. Although DLC is a type of PVD coding, PVD being physical vapor,
Andrew Deposition. Deposition. Deposition?
Everett Yeah, I think so.
Andrew And what it is, is vaporized metals get pumped into a vacuum and sucked onto the surface of the watch. Yeah. And because they're vaporized, they then seal together, harden, and create a coat, which is why when you see old PVD watches, there's not much PVD left on them. They wear away because it's a, it's just a coating that can eventually flake and wear away through normal everyday wear and use.
Everett Just rubs, rubs off at the edges.
Andrew And I forgot, I was looking at a watch the other day on eBay and it was a, like a seventies PVD or maybe a little later PVD watch. And the picture to demonstrate that it was in fact, the watch that was for sale was on the underside of one of the lugs, there was still a little bit of PVD visible. That's hilarious. That's fucking Sharpie, dude. That's not this isn't you are not selling.
Everett The PVD was all gone for us.
Andrew Totally. It was a polished steel case.
Everett That's crazy.
Andrew It was. I mean, it's banged up, but it was a polished steel case with a speck of PVD left on the other side of the lug.
Everett So DLC is actually a type of PVD. But the difference being that instead of using an amalgamation of metals, they use carbon. They use carbon. And the trick to DLC coating is you apply it generally the same way, but then it's rapidly cooled. And we're talking huge changes of temperature. And as it's rapidly cooled, it becomes very hard, diamond-like even, DLC meaning diamond-like carbon. This is the same basic method that they use to make synthetic diamonds. They harden steel. I mean, yeah, that's right. So rapid cooling. Um, I think that the common belief and probably truth of the matter is the DLC is generally tougher wearing than, than a basic metal based PVD. That would make sense. But I also think that modern manufacturing techniques probably make certain applications of PVD very good and very close.
Andrew Yeah, you're probably not going to have a totally stripped bare PVD watch.
Everett And so to your earlier point, PVD, metal-based PVD, can be done in colors. Yeah. An increasingly wide number of colors. There's still colors they have trouble with, but certainly they can do gold. Oftentimes gold-plated watches today are not gold-plated at all, but PVD, gold-toned PVD. Rose gold, like a deep coffee browns, black, dark gray, blue, all of those are very stable colors for PVD and they can be used in watches.
Andrew And because they're easy to achieve in metal. Yeah, that's right.
Everett Just the metallurgy can, it's easy to achieve. Exactly right. And increasingly you have folks doing, with the ability to do reds, oranges, colors not in the spectrum, but I don't know that we're seeing anybody really effectively do those in watches yet. Not on scale at least. And I'm not sure what the limitations are, but there are some sort of stability limitations to that. Just your imagination. I think the thing I like about PVD is that it's such a thin coating that it will match, conform to the finished surface of the watch. So one of the things that hadn't occurred to me is prior to sending a watch out for PVD coating, it has to be finished all the way. All your chamfers have to be 100% polished because PVD is not going to fill like a powder coat or a paint. It's going to reveal. So if you have a scratch in your polished surfaces, a scratch is going to be on the PVD surface. So they have to be finished a hundred percent before they're coated.
Unknown Yeah.
Everett So if you want a fully polished PVD watch, you can find that. I mean, maybe you can have both.
Andrew You just won't be able to see the fully polished for some time.
Unknown Yeah.
Andrew I've seen some really good, really well done like PVD Explorers and like the full kit, the bracelet and the watch.
Everett I really like PVD watches that have big, flat, polished chamfers. I really like that transition from brushed to polished in the PVD.
Andrew I'm a fan of it.
Everett I like that transition no matter what. Well, me too, but especially with PVD, I think it looks pretty neat. Yeah.
Andrew We're going to talk briefly on plating. Not a very similar process, but a similar idea to the PVD that we've just talked about, wherein your finished case is plated or filled with another metal or another color of metal.
Everett Yeah, I think for this, we're mostly talking about gold methods for gold plating. And I'm using plating as a colloquial term there, because really it could be or any of these different methods, gold plating is something is specifically electroplating with gold, which of the things we're going to talk about today is probably the worst.
Andrew Yes.
Everett So gold plating being a very, very thin layer of electrically applied gold to the outside of a base metal watch, probably, probably, uh, steel or maybe perhaps a baser metal.
Andrew Yeah. To give it the, illusion of being a precious metal watch without the coin with a very low amount of precious metals such that you probably couldn't even sell it for any value. You could scrape all of it off and have nothing.
Everett That's right. That's right. But it'll look good. It'll look good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean for a little while.
Andrew And inherently the problem with gold is that in that process is you're going to lose some chunks of gold like quick.
Everett So So the second method, I think this one is pretty cool. The second method for applying gold to a non-precious metal case, uh, and I say non-precious, but actually, usually in the method called Vermeil, spelled V-E-R-M-E-I-L, it's Vermeil, Vermeil, Vermeil, is they take a precious metal like silver often, if not always, and they actually apply a electroplated gold coating to the outside of it. It's a thicker coating than standard plating. But what you have is a fully precious metal watch with gold on the outside and silver on the inside. So you're going to get that heft of a precious metal watch. I think it's a really cool idea. I asked our good friend Evan, staff writer for Watch Clicker, I asked Evan, who's kind of an expert on gold watches, about vermet watches because I just didn't hadn't heard of any. And he said Cartier in particular, in the 60s and 70s, I believe was really doing a lot of their precious metal watches with this vermet method. And I was like, man, how cool would that be to have a sterling silver vermet plated Cartier tank?
Andrew Ooh, that'd be dope. Dope. Yeah. Especially with the way silver prices have gone up in the last 50 years.
Everett So next up, gold filling.
Unknown Yeah.
Everett gold filling. Um, it's not plated at all. It's the dental procedure. It's not plated at all. Rather they take gold and they bond it to your watch often stainless, but maybe brass or something with heat. It's, it's heat bonded. So it's actual gold. Maybe not, maybe not as much as, millimeter, but certainly more than electroplating would produce. Yeah, like TIG welding it to it. And gold-filled watches, when you pick them up, if you didn't know the weight, are for all intents and purposes going to look and feel like a solid gold watch, which I think is maybe both a good thing and a bad thing. It's not. It's a thing. It's a thing. Yeah. It's not going to wear like a plated watch would. The gold is going to stay on top of the watch. It's not going to wear through unless you're really thrashing it, but it's still not a solid gold watch. It's a good alternative though. Maybe so. Yeah. It's a lot of gold. And finally, this was a method that I, I think I'd heard of in the past, but Evan also, um, turned me onto this today is a method called gold capping. Do you know what this is Andrew? I've never seen this before. So gold capping is where they actually take a sheet of gold, anywhere from a millimeter to two millimeters, and they mold it to the shape of the watch plus a dimension, right? And they literally set it on top of the watch. They cap the watch like you'd put a cap on your head or a tooth. And oftentimes when you see these watches, I looked at pictures of these today, they're either the division happens on the case side so you can see the division, where it happens right at the bottom. So when you turn them over, you can see the stainless on the bottom. Um, I think it's the neatest method. I think you a get the most precious metal, you know, short of a solid gold watch.
Andrew That'd be really cool for May, like a Sterling watch body with a capped gold face.
Everett Yeah. And I don't think that would be technically for May, but yeah, I know what you mean. And yeah, I agree with you.
Andrew That's the coolest one.
Everett That'd be super cool.
Andrew Sounds like we have a business model. So the 40 and 20 Vermeer capped watches will be available next summer. They will be $18,000.
Everett Yeah.
Andrew NH35. 14 millimeters only though. So now we should get into some shaping. Yeah. Because these are things we talk about a lot. Yeah. We're going to talk about, we're going to go beveling first because it's number one, it's the most common thing that we see. encased design, beveled edges. Yeah, what is a beveled edge? Well, a bevel is a 45 degree angle, but we use it to describe any hard angle, rounded side, cut to an angle. So, ooh, anglage.
Everett Anglage, yeah, I think that's a real fancy. Another word for beveling.
Andrew Chamfering.
Everett Yeah, all mean the same thing.
Andrew All mean the same thing.
Everett Englage, chamfering.
Andrew We don't use englage here, but we use beveling and chamfering quite often.
Everett I'm going to start using specifically englage.
Andrew And that is a what was previously either a right angle or a hard angle transition cut down to meet it. And you see it mostly on lugs. You see an englage cut along to create three flat surfaces as opposed to one hard angle or a rounded transition, it creates a third plane that is oftentimes a different texture finish from the top and side.
Everett We see a lot of polished in between two brush surfaces or even blasted surface.
Andrew Yeah, we see a lot of them. And, and I've, what I think it does to serve it, it looks good. And one of the reasons I think it looks good is because it flashes light. It gives you a third plane that actually makes that lug seem rounder. Yeah. Because it flashes light off of it as opposed to just being a rounded long cylinder. It's got an extra flash of light and I think it makes them seem more round. Yeah. And by adding that third plane as opposed to just the two
Everett And I think it just creates really interesting visual appeal. It can often add a little bit of dressiness. You know, the watch that I think about, um, as being, I mean, there's lots of watches that have great anglage, but I think one of the most, uh, notable, I'm going to do it. I'm committed. One of the most notable watches I think of is that Serica, the original Serica field watch, as it were, um, you know, that's such a, That's such a classic design, but we usually see that watch with 90 degrees, oftentimes brushed by way of really heavily chamfering that case. Not that the chamfers are heavy, but they just have chamfers everywhere. Polish chamfers. It's just all of a sudden, this really attractive dressy blingy sport watch. And you know, we see that in so many watches, but that's the, that's the one that pops into my head. Cause we know that watch. We just don't often see it quite that dressy.
Andrew Right. And, and I think this is a good kind of set, not a segue. We're going to, we're going to a tangent here for a minute to talk about that specific process. We're going to, we're going to dive into milling really quick. These bevels, chamfers, angulage, these tight, tight tolerance angles, are another huge disparity between affordable watches and luxury watches. One of the reasons is because of Swiss CNC machining, which is not to say it's exclusive to Switzerland. That's just what it's called. Them tools originated in Switzerland. Their CNC machines can achieve repeatable tolerances superior to that of many of their global competitors, such that Chinese companies are using them. Japanese companies are using them. These Swiss CNC machines that can produce a lower volume, but are so much tighter in their tolerances, create a significant difference in those cuts, in those angles, because you can see when you handle a $150 watch with bevels and with chamfering on the case throughout, and you handle a, even a thousand dollar watch with those same style of cuts, the tolerances are noticeably different.
Everett And Swiss, Swiss CNC is an industry term as opposed to a term that refers to the country of origin, right? I mean, I think you, you said that.
Andrew It's a Swiss lathe machining. It's, it's a, it's just a process.
Everett Okay. That versus standard CNC.
Andrew Yes. Yeah. And it's a lathing process and it, I can't go into the full details of it because I don't fully understand what happens inside that machine or why it's necessarily better, just that it is objectively better. It's tighter tolerance. It produces a better end result and must be because it's slower and makes more and more precise cuts.
Everett I think it's got something to do with the tools being a tighter dimension, bringing the bringing the machine, the turning parts of the machine closer to the work piece. There's a whole bunch of stuff. But yeah, it is interesting that you've got this designation. We all know Swiss watches are the best watches. Everybody, of course, knows that. We all assume it and believe it because it's 100% true. It's written right on the dial. There is this, for maybe obvious reasons, this system that was developed So, yeah, no. And even more than that, you have, you know, standard CNC, you know, these higher end, quote unquote, Swiss CNC.
Andrew And then you've got hand finishing and multidimensional CNCs. And yeah, there's there's a lot that goes into the manufacturing process that affects the end product.
Unknown Yeah.
Andrew And the more you're willing to pay for that manufacturing product or manufacturing process, the more expensive the product is going to be just inherently.
Everett And that's why we're talking about three hundred three thousand. $60,000 watches or even more, right?
Andrew Yes. Cause those are the worlds that manufacturing lives in. You can, you can have an affordable, you can have a semi luxury to luxury and you can have an obtainium. Yeah. So we're going to get back into the shaping of the case.
Everett Yeah. Cause I mean, we're talking about these beveling, these chamfers. Englage. That's the word you use now. Englage, right? Uh, these things are pretty simple to do, right? We see, we see $300 microgram watches that are coming out presently with chamfered edges on the case sides. Um, I think that by and large, these $300 watches look great, but when you get closer, you know, that starts to fade. And I think the reality is that in order to do beveling chamfering really well, it quickly gets. exceedingly expensive.
Andrew To the point of prohibitive for an affordable watch brand.
Everett The finest watches are doing this all by hand. And you know, you're all of a sudden in that, you know, you know, extremely expensive luxury car territory.
Andrew Yes. Diminishing returns. And yeah, where is it? I don't know. I like well finished watches. I like really well finished watches. I like looking at the finishing, at the shapes, at the cuts. As one of my, when the Relio review is up right now, the, the, the relief cuts and the blasting on the inside of it were just super fun. It's good finishing. Yeah. It's using the tools at your disposal to do cool shit.
Everett And it may not be extremely high quality finishing, but it looks good.
Unknown Yeah.
Andrew Yeah. They used the right tools for the right application and kept it affordable.
Everett We should talk about black polishing. should. Do you know what black polishing is? I mean before we we researched this did you have an idea what black polishing was? Just in the way of boots. I always assumed the black polishing was a type of polish that they used. They're using black polish. I always thought it was heat applied. Yeah it's neither of those things. So the black in black polishing actually refers to the finished state of the material in that when light hits it from a perpendicular angle, it has a tendency to look black.
Andrew Even though it's not black at all. It's just that perfectly polished.
Everett That's right. So the black has nothing to do with the process, the materials or anything. It's rather the finished result of the material itself.
Andrew And what's required of that is zero imperfections, not even one, because any imperfection will distort that mirror polish and fail the black at perpendicular.
Everett And so true black polishing, I believe, almost has to be done by hand.
Unknown Yes.
Everett And when we're talking about true black polishing, depending on the part, it can be incredibly time consuming and thus expensive. For instance, a bridge on a mechanical movement with black polished chamfers may take as much as three hours to finish.
Andrew I want to be that guy. I want to be the guy who just gets tiny piece and has my workbench up at nose level, where's my loop, and just scrapes away on a disc, polishing tiny parts. I want that to be me.
Everett Yeah. And so yeah, they're doing these on like zinc plates.
Unknown Yeah.
Everett Completely imperfection free, 100% flat zinc plates with diamond pastes. There's a dude, there are lots of guys and gals that do exactly what you've just described.
Andrew For money.
Everett Probably not an inconsiderable amount.
Andrew And they probably have great benefits. So we finished the top of the watch and we've worked our way.
Everett Can we talk real quick about, sorry, I just remembered something on black polish. Also, we hear a lot about Seiko's method of Zoratu polishing. Zoratu polish. So another one, no clue what the name means, It's a Japanese company. Seiko is Japanese. It's no. So Zoratsu is the name of a European company that supplied the machines by which Seiko did its very earliest, extremely high-end polishing projects with. And then Seiko named the process Zoratu polishing internally, and then it's just been adopted. And now they have people who do that. That's what their living is. So that versus black polishing, Zoratu polishing is done by machine.
Andrew And it's also fabulous.
Everett Which is not to say that it takes less time, less training, or that it's any less good. As we all know, Zoratu polishing is some of the best polishing in the world. But by mechanically doing this, Uh, they're able, you know, if you've never heard of the Seiko grammar of design, one of the principles were these flat surfaces. And that's where this sort of becomes Seiko's thing. Now they do multi curved surface, Zoratu polished watches, but this whole thing was part of Seiko's original. And so it really takes a long time to master the pressure and what, and anybody can get a quote unquote mirror shine. on any material. If you go get some mother's mag polish, you too, at home, can do it. With these machine Zuroutsu polishing, though, they learn how to take all the perfections out. You get an utterly imperfection, wave-free surface that's completely flat, completely perfect, completely mirror polished.
Andrew Will sent us a selfie of his reflection in that Grand Seiko and his face was distinguishable. Like not just, not just like, oh, it's a reflection of your face. I was like, that's your fucking face inside your watch.
Everett Just as if it was a mirror. Yeah.
Andrew With a weird curve because it is a curved lug that the picture was sent on.
Everett I'm sorry to interrupt you, Andrew. Movement finishing. We can blast through this.
Andrew We've got on the black polish, which means we're getting into the underside of the watch.
Everett This is going to be more of like an index. Yeah. I think. Yeah, because there's all these terms.
Andrew Anglage, see above, that's an iron oak sheet. And this is important because anglage in movements is, again, very often hand done because of the complexity of the pieces that are being anglaged. See it a lot on rotors, on bridges, on, I mean, take your pick of pieces. And there's a bucket load of pieces that go into a watch movement.
Everett A lot I've heard.
Andrew And that's, so when, when you have an exhibition case back.
Everett 51 according to Swatch.
Andrew Flip it over and look at the pieces of your movement, the components and see how many of them have beveled edges or any other kind of decoration that we're going to talk about. That all adds time, money, cost. Value? I don't know. Yeah. It looks cool when you know about it and you look at it. But I was noticing it the other day. I was looking at, I don't know which watch. I was like, that motherfucker's got a beveled edge on it.
Everett Yeah. They can do this by machine, but it's oftentimes not.
Andrew Yeah, that's right. To add that value. To add the value of the Swiss parts into the Swiss watch to make it a Swiss made watch.
Everett So besides Anglage, what kind of, what kind of finishing techniques are we going to see in a movement?
Andrew So I think one of the most common ones, I don't know, maybe not most common, but a really common one. We're going to see Geneva stripes. Cote de Geneve. Cote de Geneve.
Everett Cote de Geneve.
Andrew Cote de Geneve. They're lateral.
Everett AKA Geneva stripes.
Andrew Curved or milled relief cuts in pieces of your movement. Originally was kind of pitched as dust catchers to keep the pieces from, to keep the debris from getting into your movement. Is that right? Cool. The, you know, the, the functionality of that is up for debate because at this point it's a, it's a moot point and they're now just used as purely decorative kind of heraldric. Like this is the tradition. This is the thing we do regardless of whether or not the functionality or the necessity still exists. Cause they look awesome. They do. They look good. I'm trying to, I don't know. I want to have a bunch of these things in front of us.
Everett So that's where you take, like you literally take a mesh, a mill and you run it across in stripes.
Andrew Yep. Just cut chunks out of it to gather dust that doesn't accumulate inside your movement anymore.
Everett And so then there's perlage, which is a similar thing, but instead of running it across, you just stamp it down and you make an overlapping pattern.
Andrew Yes. Very, geometric pattern across it.
Everett Also, also see your local restored fire truck with the big gold letters on the side probably has a similar technique and those that gold leaf lettering. It's probably hammered. Yeah, no, they take brushes. They take brushes and do they? Yeah, it's cool. I've seen them do it.
Andrew I have not. Speaking of hammered. Same process, but with a hammer and some kind of tool and all of a pattern machine, a force implied, force applied imprint.
Everett And I was actually looking for, for examples of this hammered finish on movements. I know these are usually, so it's like a really fine peened hammered texture and it's usually in the relief portion of like a raised polished text from what I could tell. Sort of giving contrast to that polished text.
Andrew On the underside. So you see the dimple, not the indent. Often is what I saw. Yeah. Yeah. The dimple, not the indent. I'm not sure that's true, but yeah, maybe. I saw a lot more dimples.
Everett Either way, something we don't see a ton of. Yeah. Guilloche?
Andrew I think guilloche. Nope. Okay. It's French for guillotine.
Everett It's just an engraving. It's a mechanical engraving. Yeah. Actually, I talked to our friend Darren Tiffany about this today, because I was trying to make sure we had our terminology right. And I said, I think the question I said, is gyosh and engine turned the same thing? Are those synonymous? And he said, well, yes, kind of, but not necessarily. They can be. They can be. So engine turning, whether that be a Rose engine or a straight cut machine, is going to produce a guilloche finish, but you can also guilloche cut a die and use that die to relief guilloche into another material. So which that would not be engine turned, that would be guilloche, but stamped. So even though the die was engine turned, so that's the one distinction, but generally speaking, guilloche and engine turned are synonymous.
Andrew But not just like all the stupid nuances and watches. Yeah, get your terminology right, world.
Everett I think that I think that finishing is often associated with Breguet. Mm hmm. But our notes here say, but also see Deon Tiffany. Yeah. The modern master of fucking hobbyist garage working, hobbyist garage, dope handmade engine, engine, rose engine machines that he made himself.
Andrew That's right. Literally that he can't find one. I'll make one. God, what a dick.
Everett I'm not good at anything. And then finally you get engraving, which is maybe something we don't see a lot in watches today. Although I know our friend Nick Harris at Orion is known for releasing his watches in engraved versions. You see the meteorite? Yeah, I saw his meteorite dial today. He's releasing these meteorite dial Hellcats and they look amazing.
Andrew Those are closer to obtainable for me than the unobtainium full engraved masterpiece.
Everett You know, I don't know if he's got any left. I think he only made 10 and I think they might already be spoken for.
Andrew I'm sure they are. But I'm just saying that's still like it's not quite unobtainium, but that fully engraved.
Everett You know, when he released those engraved Hellcats earlier this year, I think it feels a little awkward, right? Because it's this affordable watch. with this really incredible hand done. We had a conversation with Mike Razak about whether that makes sense to engrave a $500 watch. I think it's just a totally wonderful premise.
Andrew I think it makes more sense than engraving a $5,000 watch.
Everett I don't know if I agree with you there, but I think that regardless, engraving's cool in my mind because there's no faking it.
Unknown No.
Everett Engraving is done exclusively by artisans, by hand, maybe not exclusively, I'm sure that there are chemical and machines that will CNC engrave, but by and large, engraving is done by hand, by master, master, literally master engravers, but these incredibly skilled craftspeople. So it's an expensive, time-consuming art. It is universally art. Yes. And to me, that's cool. It's always going to be custom. Yeah. You can't, you can't repeat. It's always going to be unique. I love it, but we don't see it a ton probably because of those reasons.
Andrew Cause cost prohibitive. I mean, you think a, a, a fully engraved Hellcat was cost prohibitive for the normal consumer. How much were they? Do you remember? I think they were like 4,500 bucks.
Everett That sounds right to me. Yeah. That's the number I had in my head too. So that must be.
Andrew So that's gotta be, it's gotta be close. Yeah. Um, But I think people get hung up on it. I'm like, well, I don't want to pay 500. I don't pay $4,500 for a $500 watch. When you're not, you're paying $4,000 for a custom engraving and $500 for a watch. And that's why I say it makes more sense to me to get a $500 to $800 watch fully engraved than a $5,000 watch engraved. Because then it becomes a $10,000 proposition as opposed to a $4,500 proposition. And you get the same fucking cool, totally hand engraved, totally one of a kind work of art on, you know, the, the baby of a, of an evil genius. So knowing what we know now, can I, can I add two things? One of the things we talk about in watch movements that are considered a decoration that I don't think are given appropriate respect, blued screws and jewels. And the reason I don't think they're given appropriate respect is because I think they're treated purely as a flourish. Blued screws are very similar to any of the finishing methods we talked about. Blued screws are hand-heated and blued to be hardened and corrosion-resistant. Assuming they're not chemical-blued, yeah. But regardless, so chemical-blued, they're just blue. They're harder, and they're still more resistant. Hand-blued, hand-heated, and blued harder and more chemical resistant.
Everett And usually better, prettier colors of blue.
Andrew Yes. And the jewels you see in a watch movement are the lube. So you don't have to lube your watch. And I think that that kind of gets missed when we look at our movements, at the little things that are almost pedestrian. How much development and research and trial and error went into these super cool, things. I think about the 1901 that you have in the Seagull. That's a beautiful movement. Gorgeous, yeah. And purely functional. Yeah. And still not great.
Everett Yeah. You know, it's a good place for us to kind of, I think, wrap this up. Maybe briefly, can we just talk a little bit about whether any of this shit's worth it today? Is any of this stuff, are we talking about things that make a better watch? Some? Yes. Yeah. Well, we should be really clear too, in that everybody has different, um, everybody comes to this from different places, right? So, you know, financial capabilities, financial, uh, comfort to spend. So they're going to be, there's no clear delineation, which where the diminishing returns happen or where the value is. Um, because I spent, I think an hour looking at Seiko Ichi, Creed or Ichi watches today that are like 60,000 bucks, right? Which is not to say I'm going to buy one of those. I'm clearly not going to buy one.
Andrew He's going to buy two and we're going to get a matching set.
Everett But so, so is it worth it? Is any of this stuff today worth it? When you can get a $300 GM Lang that looks very much like a $2,000 Monta Triumph, is there any value there to slightly more precise chamfers? And speaking of $3,000, $2,000, $30,000, is there any value to the $30,000 analog of that watch with hand filed chamfers?
Andrew I don't know. I think at some point there is. And I think it comes down to, my hope is that And this is, I think, incorrect. I think people who are buying that $30,000 watch with hand-filed chamfers are really less interested in the, and this is a gross generalization, and I think I maybe owe a preemptive apology for it, but I think generally they're not interested in the orological aspect of it. They're not interested in the technology behind it, the craftsmanship, the artisanship, everything that's gone into making that watch what it is. I think people like us are the people who truly appreciate the masterpiece that those watches are. I think people who are dropping $30,000 on that watch just want it as a status symbol.
Everett Yeah, I mean, I think that that's kind of a reductive way to look at it.
Andrew So for me, I'd love that $30,000 watch. Curb your judgment, bro. But I'd also love a GM Lang. Yeah. And I think they just all fill these really unique places. And I think of watch collecting very much like a toolbox. You should have a number two Phillips in about six different shank lengths. Yeah. Because no one of them performs the same task as well as, like, any one task as good as, say, its partner, you know, between a one and a six inch, 12. I think all these tools have a place, and I don't know, I don't know where, like, for me, the diminishing return is. Because I like the GM Lang as much as I like the Atlas.
Everett I think looking at these things as tools is maybe missing the point for me, at least, which is to say, sometimes it's not a tool, right? Sometimes it's a piece of art. You know, we talk a little bit about movements on this show, right? What movement is better than that movement or whatever? You know, we've got, we've got, you know, for instance, the omega coaxial movements probably almost exclusively machine made, very highly refined. You know, you've got the coaxial escapement. These are really, really top of the line, perform better than anything on earth type movements. And you compare that to a longer hand finished, hand anglage, bridging, and gold printing. And it's a more expensive movement. Is it better? Maybe not mechanically. So probably not, you know, historically better finished movements, you know, teeth, lower friction, they were better. But today with modern techniques, it's not going to be a mechanically better movement necessarily. But it is going to be the the longer in this in this hypothesis, or excuse me, in this hypothetical, is going to be different. It's art. Yeah. Omega coaxial movement is not art. It is though.
Andrew It is in the way of what was done to achieve it. It's not in its finished form side by side. The two pieces are not art. The, the, the movement itself, the existence of it, the engineering, the engineering.
Everett Yeah. I hear what you say. And, and then to sort of bring this back full circle, you've got the absolute meshing of these two worlds in the creator Aichi.
Unknown Yeah.
Everett Which is, the most technically advanced movement on earth in the Seiko spring drive, met with Seiko's, I can't remember what they call their micro hot factory, but met with the finest craftsmen in the world. And I don't think there's maybe anything better in all the watches. It's perhaps not the best of both worlds.
Andrew Yeah. And, and I think, I think what it comes down to is, is finding where that value is for you is the value in the performance of the machine. Or is, or do you find value in the craftsmanship?
Everett And it's a little old Andrew with his loop over his... No, do you find it in the artisan?
Andrew Yeah. Do you find it in the, in the artisan? Like is that, is the, the Hellcat hand engraved a $4,500 watch to you? And I think the answer is yes. I mean, yeah, I could see the value there. And I think that's what comes down to what, where are you going to place your value? And I think you need to place your value. You need to know why you like, you ought to know why you like XYZ.
Everett As you say, Andrew, you make the value.
Andrew You find it, assign it. I think the Ichi is a $60 watch. I'm going to send them a check and they're going to send me the watch.
Everett Andrew, other things. What do you got, boo?
Andrew I've got a little whiskey that we've been drinking on tonight. Yeah, we have. And it is called. Monkey Shoulder, Batch 27, Triple Mall. It's seen some proliferation in the last 10 years. It was hard to find and it's gotten to be very easy to find. The moniker Monkey Shoulder was given to distillery employees who were using their big ass snow shovels to shovel grain. and they got these just yoked ass arms shoveling grain. And they got all hunchbacked because they were shoveling all day. So they were just like looking like gorillas bent over and yoked all at once. So it is a, it's a Speyside Whiskey, which is a well-known distillery group.
Everett One of the regions of Scotch manufacture.
Andrew Yes. So this is a no date mark. blended scotch whiskey from 27 hand-picked barrels of three brands. The brands consist of Glenfiddich, Balvini, and Kenevy. Kenevy? Kenevy? I find that I don't say a lot of scotches out loud. I just look at them like, oh yeah, I like that. Um, I think it's Kenevy. Is it Glenfiddich or Glenfiddich? Uh, so, As I understand, I've heard people from the region in their accent call it Glenfiddich. I will not do that. I've heard Glenfiddich. Glenfiddich scent. Yeah. Ooh, now we're on to something. I've heard Glenfiddich. I've heard Glenfiddich. I go with Glenfiddich.
Everett I'm all about the Glenfiddich scent.
Andrew So 27 casks are chosen between these three brands to make this blend. It tastes familiar.
Everett Super, super easy to drink.
Andrew You know all the flavor profiles that are there.
Everett Not super peaty, but also not unpeated.
Andrew Yeah. It's it's big, malty, a little bit of sweetness. It's terrific. And it's about thirty dollars a bottle, which is less than any one of the three bottles that are going into the blend. It's terrific. It's got a fun name. It's it's got a I mean, for those of you familiar with Pendleton, it's got the same style of bottle, three kind of embossed plastic monkeys on him. It kind of looks like a rum bottle with the monkeys.
Everett It's pretty good too. I mean, I was surprised when I poured it. It's just how pleasant it was to drink.
Andrew 86 proof. It's very good, very affordable. And if you're looking for a blended scotch whiskey in the affordable category, give this a try.
Everett You know, at 30 bucks too, I like it every bit as much, if not a little bit more than my favorite dirty bird, famous grouse.
Andrew So yeah, well then you can get famous grouse. So for like 30 bucks for a handle.
Everett Yeah, no, I think it's like 25 is what I pay for a fifth of that. So yeah. Yeah. Great. That's good drinking, good drinking. So I went camping this last weekend, which I'll just, if you ever, uh, blow up your knee, um, don't go camping, maybe cancel the camping trip. It was pretty difficult. But with that said, being a man.
Andrew And the dutiful father and husband that you are, you went.
Everett And with that, I also took on cooking duties because I'm a man and we're outside. And men cook outside. Men cook outside. I also cook in the house as well, primarily.
Andrew We're both the primary cooks for our families. My wife does not cook and I don't like it when she does. I don't even like it when she grocery shops.
Everett We went camping with three other families, total of four families, and we were all sort of co-located. We were all sort of co-located. And these other families, everybody's pretty outdoorsy, so you've got a pretty wide range of outdoor culinary capabilities here. Lots of fancy stuff. Right tool for the job, though? Right tool for the job. Of these four families, I had the biggest stove. I had a Coleman 414 dual fuel powerhouse stove that I've owned since about 2002. Yeah. It is the classic green Coleman stove that your dad had. And you probably haven't used. And that you probably haven't used. Uh, these other families had any number of stuff. One small Coleman two burner, like sort of a modern propane based. Okay. Um, several single burner things, some, some jet boils. What is that called? Jet boils? Jet boils, like coffee maker type things. Like for their primary cooking device? Not for primary cooking devices, but for making coffee. So what I found is we're car camping, right? You're hard in sight. There's hot showers. There was a minivan 10 feet away from the place where I was cooking, right? So throw the fucking 414 in there. Um, I could, so it's a, it's dual fuel, so it runs on white fuel, which cooks incredibly hot. So good. Really effectively. Also it's dual fuel, so it could run on petrol if you needed it to.
Andrew Cause of America.
Everett That's right. Um, I've not done that. Shouldn't. Don't. I run it on just white fuel, standard white cooking fuel, which is so cheap. It boils water incredibly quickly. Yeah, white fuel is super cheap. It boils water incredibly quickly. What I found is that on this one stove, I could make my coffee. I could take my coffee off, start making my bacon, and then make eggs. A whole family of four in about 20 minutes. Coffee, bacon, and eggs. Meanwhile, everybody's fucking around with their little... having a hard time not making as good of meals and taking about twice as long. And I was like, like you say, Andrew, have the right tool. Right tool for the job. Have the right tool for the job.
Andrew If you're in a hardened campsite, the only thing you're missing is a generator and like and like convection top hot plates. Because if you go hard camping, you bring a fucking generator if you have one or just buy one.
Everett You know, you know this, but we have a number of cooking stoves when we backpack. We use something different. I wouldn't take this thing backpack for car camping. Like, man, I don't know why you'd have anything different for car camp. It just does so much so quickly and so well. And it's big surface. It's easy to operate. That white fuel tank is so, I mean, you pump it, turn it, you light it and you're good to go.
Andrew I use something different primarily for my long car camps. And it's one of the stand up two big-ass turkey burners on like a big-ass propane tank. On propane, yeah. Yeah. But that's just because it's better equipped for where we are.
Everett You know, I think a lot of people like propane. I think I prefer white gas. It burns hotter. Burns hotter. It just cooks faster. Yeah.
Andrew It's also a little bit easier to determine if you're in an emergency.
Everett Yes. With that said, Liquid white gas, man. My other thing for the week is a Coleman 414 powerhouse stove. Get yourself one if you don't have one.
Andrew Your hard site camping. That's the answer. If you're using a jet boil, you're wrong.
Everett You're just wrong. Andrew, anything you want to add before we let these fine folks go for the night? Don't be wrong. Don't be wrong. Hey, you guys, thank you for joining us for this incredible, I'm going to say it, it was an incredible episode of 40 and 20 WatchCooker podcast. I'm pleased with our behavior today. Check us out on Instagram, uh, at 40 and 20 at the watch clicker. Uh, if you, if you, if you like, and, and I hope you do check us out on our website, it's watch clicker.com. That's where we have every single episode of this podcast, as well as weekly reviews and articles. If you want to support the show and the website, you can do that today, right now at this very moment, unless you're driving. by going to patreon.com slash 40 and 20. Look, that's where we get all of our support for the show, including hosting, hardware, software, and Andrew's increasingly large shorts collection. They're getting shorter and shorter. Don't forget to tune back in next Thursday for another hour of watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like. Bye-bye.