You live you learn

We get asked to make special watches by customers fairly regularly. Unfortunately both because of the long timescale involved and because of the cost, it's rarely something we actually follow through. Also if i'm totally honest I don't really like the idea of doing it - generally someone starting a conversation with "I've got a great idea for a watch" is my nightmare!

However we did on one occasion produce a unique piece: my cousin wanted to make something special for his Father's 70th birthday. We worked things out early enough and he obviously benefited from the Mr Jones family discount, so we were able to make it happen.

I thought that he wanted something that said basically "Happy Birthday Dad", so I mocked up a version of this (with slightly gritted teeth). I was nicely surprised when he said that what he really wanted was to place a phrase that his dad uses all the time on the watch hands: "You live, you learn". This seemed a far more interesting watch and also in much more sympathetic to our brand.



As a note the case for the watch in the sketches was intended to be the production case for the fourth series. You can see there is a kind of cut through on the lugs, these would have been made as four separate pieces and screwed into the back of the main case.

Unfortunately the production of the case turned out to be way more expensive than expected. So at short notice I did a revision of the Series 3 case (Cyclops, Everyday Special), with slightly thicker lugs with more pronounced ends. When we received the samples (including this watch) I didn't like how it turned out - it felt too chunky and crude and I didn't like the curve of the bezel area. For this reason we opted to produce the fourth series in the third series case. So this watch has both a unique face and a unique case!



We kept two pieces of this watch as spares and my Uncle has the other one (and as far as I know enjoys wearing it!)