My Denim Journey - Dr. Denim to A.P.C.

The Dr. Denim Snap was my first pair of rather expensive jeans, but it was just that; a pair of jeans to me, and nothing more. I never thought much about jeans anymore at that point of time until I came across a forum known as superfuture one fine day. It was there that I was introduced to the denimhead culture and of course, I had to get a new pair of jeans after some surfing around on superfuture (try surfing some superfuture for yourself!).

I wanted to try out raw jeans for my next pair, so I decided on the Nudie Thin Finn Dry Stretch as I saw that it had great potential for evolution. Unfortunately, I made a mistake with the sizing on the Nudie; it looked painted on and was quite uncomfortable, not to mention really unflattering! I sold it off shortly after.

 

I was back in the hunt and decided to give A.P.C. a try. I was finding a pair that gave me that classic slim-fit look and A.P.C. seemed to have exactly that; in the form of their Petit Standard cut.

Fast forward, I've owned the Petit Standard for close to a year now. I'm not exactly hard on my jeans so unfortunately, I have to disappoint if you were hoping for some insane evolution. Still, there is enough for some pictures! They're all close-ups as it's really hard to take good photos of denim with artificial lighting. I'll take pictures of the entire thing soon but for now, enjoy the pictures and thank you for reading!

 

Tag is nice and simple

Button is nice!

Early signs of whiskering

Fading on the back

Threads coming off and fading on back pocket

Dear Getat...

The more I look at these Getat Panerai homages, the more I want one. These watches are just dead sexy, and I should add that they come at a very reasonable price too. I don't think I'll ever buy the real Panerai even if I could afford one; why when there's Getat!? 

Jokes aside, I don't think I'd blow that kind of money on a watch, at least for now! Recently, I've been thinking of getting a G-Shock DW5600E-1V as my next watch but it looks like that'll have to wait until after I get a Getat homage. Of course, pictures of the watches in question shall ensue.

First, one of the G-Shock DW5600E-1V:

And next, a couple of the Getat homages:

 

(Pictures credit of various Watchuseek members)
 

Hopefully I'll own a Getat in the coming months. That's it for today, thank you for reading!

Wrist Check

Red.

Lume Junkie

I love lume, so naturally I have a preference for dive watches where lume is present in copious amounts. Here is a comparison of three of the lumiest watches I own or have owned before. It's a pity I couldn't own them all at the same time, so that a better comparison could be made. Luckily, I did take lume shots of them all before!

BG W9

C1

LumiBrite

In terms of brightness, the Seiko SKX009 takes the cake easily, although it may not seem very obvious here. There are many variables that come into play such as how long it took me to take the shot after charging up the lume, and how long did I charge the lume for so the pictures may not be the most accurate representation of the brightness.

The Seiko is the only watch out of the three in which I could see the lume glowing even in the daytime. Still, aesthetically speaking, I love the lume on the Kemmner Turtle the most, and I think it's not hard to see why.

Where does that leave the Steinhart? It's neither as bright as the Seiko nor is it as cool looking as the Kemmner. It is a little disappointing if you love your watches to glow like a torch but honestly, we're comparing it to watches which perform really well in the lume department. It will fare well if lume is not one of your primary concerns with a watch. So that's it for today, thank you for reading!

Trip to Botanic Gardens

Let's begin with a non-watch related post today (OMG, what!?). I went to the Botanic Gardens recently to take some photos. I found myself quite limited by my creativity and limited know-how of using a DSLR while I was taking these photos, I guess I have much to improve on. Regardless, enjoy the photos and feel free to comment on how I could have done it in a better way!

 

 

And to end it off, here's a picture of Lana Del Rey simply because she's awesome.

Review of the Kemmner Turtle

School commitments have been keeping me pretty busy lately, hence the lack of updates. Finally I have some time for one now, so let's start with the long promised review of the Kemmner Turtle.

I've owned the Kemmner Turtle for a little over a month now, and over the course of the month, the overall impression has been excellent. Let's start with the origin of the watch case itself; the Kemmner Turtle case is manufactured by Fullswing Industrial, which is based in Hong Kong. Roland Kemmner then sources these cases from Fullswing and sells them on eBay under the moniker 'erkahund'.

The Turtle is quite the substantial watch. The watch case is very solidly built and the entire thing weighs in at in at 198g with an unsized bracelet; quite a hefty piece to say the least. The watch case has a brushed finishing all over, and the overall finishing of the case qualitywise is very good. I wouldn't say it is fantastic, but it is very good indeed, especially at the price level we are talking about.

There is however, something which is fantastic about this watch; the crown action. The crown tube has really chunky threads which minimizes the chances of cross-threading. The crown itself is really solid and instills a real sense of confidence.

It is signed with a deep engraving of an attractively stylized 'K', in the same font as the one printed on the dial. Not your usual puny laser engraving, the engraving is really deep and adds to the quality of the watch.

 

Bezel action is really good too, if a bit loud. Very precise clicks with nearly no bezel play at all. One of the best bezels I've ever came across actually. It did start out a little stiff, but over the month loosened up slightly and is the tension now is just perfect.

 

The signed crown

It features a flat sapphire crystal with underside AR coating, which I hope its scratch resistance never needs to be tested. After a month of daily wear, the crystal is still flawless, which is the norm for most of my watches as I don't really bang them around.

Unfortunately, my example of the Kemmner Turtle (which is powered by an ETA 2824-2 movement) fared rather poorly in timekeeping (sometimes us WIS get so distracted that we care more about features such as whether the crystal is sapphire or mineral than whether it performs its primary function well). I believe the watch somehow got magnetized which is causing poor performance, leading it to gain one second every hour.

I will comment on this further when I have solved the magnetism issue (or whatever else it may be), but right now at least it's gaining the same amount daily, which indicates some measure of precision.

 

Shine Bright Like a Diamond

The lume on this watch is quite good. I would have preferred Super-LumiNova C3 lume as I'm a bit of a lume fanatic and I prefer my watches to shine as brightly as possible. I'm not really disappointed though as this watch has performed admirably in the lume department considering it's Super-LumiNova C1 and I'm really quite pleased. The indices, while they aren't applied, do give the impression that they are because the lume is applied quite thickly and gives the dial a textured feel.

 

Beautifully engraved turtle on the caseback

The watch feels great on the wrist, thanks to the solidly built bracelet. It is composed of solid end links and solid links, which are held together by screws. It comes with half links and four micro adjustment holes on the clasp; no trouble sizing no matter your wrist size. Completely brushed finished, which I always prefer over polished links of any sort, so that gets big points with me.

 

The caseback engraving is beautifully done. Once again, very deep engraving which adds to the quality.

Overall, I am thoroughly impressed with this watch. What I'm really impressed with is the quality of the products that Hong Kong case manufacturers such as Fullswing Industrial and Longio are capable of.

I haven't actually came across a German case manufacturer's watch such as Fricker but I did read on certain issues such as considerable amounts of play in the bezel from Fricker cases. Do consider that Fricker cased watches are easily in the $1000+ range and still issues like those exist; I think I'll be sticking to Fullswing for now.

 

The Kemmner Turtle is available every now and then from Kemmner's eBay web store and will set you back by about US$500, excellent value in my opinion.

 

 

To end it off, here's my favourite picture of the watch. Sorry for the recycled pictures! I've been a bit too busy to take new photos. So that's it, hope this review was a good read for you!