Long time viewers know me as a fashion icon. I am well put together and never
once have I been described, as greasy, wet, or looking like shit. Not once. A nice consistent
beard, perfect teeth, and full head of luxurious hair, or in one word gorgeous. And on a long
enough timeline the chances of a channel like me not reviewing a watch is about zero.
(Baton the watch cuck) People notice my fine wrists, and want to see hot shit timepieces on
them. Those people are pretty cool because they don’t focus too close on my moisturizing game,
or are just gosh durn polite. And on the wrist today is the 1918 Trench Watch from a small
maker of bands, and watches- Vario out of Singapore. I’m going to be quite honest I’ve
resisted watches for years, and don’t know much about them, or the sorts of people who like them.
I have a watch already named iPhone, that rarely leaves my person. That doesn’t mean
I need people in the comments to give me tips though. But I’m reading, watching videos, and
asking questions lots of questions to Levon and Eugene. And I have even bought a Seiko off Eugene,
so I didn’t look like a total chump. Another thing you should know is since I’ve written
that last sentence I bought a Vostok Amphibia, and it’s on the slow boat. Oop Ok, I also just
bought a Seiko 5. So let’s dig into it, and if the comments aren’t too mean and this gets some views,
I might do a few more. I’m going to treat watches like I treat knives. They got to look cool first,
and then I might nitpick some stuff as I have it- and I will overlook stuff if I love it.
So Vario makes two automatic watches from the 1918 line, the Medic and the Trench that retail for
a around $350. I chose the Trench over the Medic, because while I do practice medicine as a side
hobby and I’m getting better at it- the Trench was a little more my style. Both the Medic and Trench
are automatic mechanical watches. That means they got gears and shit, and have the ability to self
wind if your body stays in motion. The medic has some extra marks for measuring pulse and is based
off the Seiko NH38A, and the third party movement in the trench is a Miyota 82s5 Gilt movement.
Gilt means it’s a gold colored variant. Some info online is unreliable on the 8000 series Miyota,
saying there is no hand winding, or hacking- but there is at least on this variant. Hacking
is being able to stop the second hand to sync the time accurately. This comes in handy for measuring
how many seconds a mechanical watch movement loses every day for your Youtube channel. There’s
a pdf linked below from Miyotas website about this specific variation of the 8200 movement.
Let’s look at the case dimensions, using the exhibition caseback. There is a 37mm or 40mm case
diameter dimension variant, I chose the larger 40mm. I have shitty calipers,
so keep this in mind. Vario says 48mm lug to lug for my 40mm model, I get
46.7. 20mm inside the lugs. You see it here. I’m the presenter who reads his powerpoint slides.
The exhibition casebook for what it’s worth appears to be nearly the same thickness as the
stainless steel one. So they should wear the same. Since the crown is in the 4 o’clock position here,
the case diameter measured across the 9 and 3 is still 40mm. Ok good talk
Mine came with the crazy horse bund strap and the passthrough, not made from dead horse just
regular green dead cow. You can go full bund, which is not my thing. It’s hard to pull off,
for the non vest, Irish cap, and twirly moustache crowd. I think I just described my brother,
helming pulls it off. You can take the that part off and use the band like this,
however the underside of the screws will dig into your wrists if you’re going for a tighter fit
because you’re doing it wrong. This is how I wore it at first and Levon lol’ed,
which is Levon for stupid man. So I used the passthrough made from crazy horse leather
which is pliable and comfortable, but not flimsy. It comes in a variety of colors,
and it starts to break in easily and conforms to the wrist almost immediately. The leather
is designed to look distressed and pick up wear with minimal use. I have about a 7 inch wrist,
and the bunds can handle up to a 7.5 inch wrist, if you have to bar tend at the tent wedding.
Loooking at the case, it comes in brass or stainless steel 316L. Brass reminds me of gold,
and gold watches remind me of the only thing an old nudist would wear.
There’s nothing wrong with old nudists, I’m just old fashioned and ashamed of my naked body.
I chose the 316L stainless steel case with optional exhibition caseback. If
you look up trench watches, this is a pretty faithful recreation of the WW1 era watch.
Elgin and Waltham seemed to be two of the most popular manufacturers of those here in the US.
No need for fucking with spring bars here, since the wire lugs are built into the case.
Although I will miss the ritual of a sore neck and looking for them in the carpet for 20 minutes.
The standard caseback is 316L with an engraved picture of a memory best described by your great
grandfather as something he didn’t want to talk about. I chose the exhibition caseback so I had
something else to put on video and look at when I’m avoiding reading emails. The Miyota
movement over the course of day, having synced it with the night before lost 3-4 seconds maybe.
At the 48 hour mark we were about a total of 5 or 6 seconds ahead on the Miyota vs iPhone. 58
hours ahead about the same… ahead on the Miyota. Personally I treat wrist watches as way to get
within a minute or two of the time and use iphone if I need it precise. A person had mentioned
on the Instagram if I found the particular Miyota movement noisy. And I’d say in a completely still
environment where it’s just the sound of you and your lunch working it’s way through your
intestines, you can hear some light winding of the rotor, which is this part. I rarely hear it though
because I don’t have a lot of peace and quiet in my life. It’s less audible than the rustle of the
sleeve of your dress shirt, or your heartbeat during paragraph three of per my last email.
There are different dial color combos, I went with orange letters and cream dial face.
The letters are a non radioactive swiss lume c3. The orange arabics according to vario take longer
to charge and aren’t as intense, and to me it’s a standard glow in the dark material. I noticed it
will last the entire night. I have been sleeping while wearing it and I am able to barely make out
the hands and numerals. Here it is sitting next to the popular seiko 5, and the SARV001 model.
I charged it with a flashlight and let it run about 10 minutes. My camera is set to an ISO
that makes it a bit brighter than you’d see in real life. All of these are visible throughout
the night in a completely unlit room with night adjusted eyes. It’s just standard watch lume.
I am particular fond of the look here. Maybe I could have went with the white and orange, for
slightly better readability, but this is good. The crystal is a double domed shatter and scratch
resistant sapphire with a little bit of curve to it, and undercoated with antireflective
coating. It’s readable even when it picks up some glare and I haven’t scratched it in the
month or so I’ve been wearing it. The crown is in the 4 o’clock position, and it’s a screw down.
Doesn’t seem to poke me in the wrist. I guess the are different options on crown location,
but it’s most convenient for winding or setting while on the wrist. Counter
clockwise to unscrew, a few full turns then you feel it release, you get maybe a half
turn or two clockwise when the winding engages. Pull it out further and the second hand stops and
you set your time. Push back in and press and screw, and it winds until you screw the crown
back in. It feels slightly awkward as it winds when you go to screw it back in. It has a reserve
of 40 hours before you need to wind. I have wound it but really haven’t needed to. The ape-like
swinging of my arms as I walk and the moderately sedentary lifestyle I lead seems to keep it wound
pretty well. The watch is water resistant to 10 atm, or 100 meters. That means water rain pee,
or showering I guess. I tend to not shower with a watch on, Southern California doesn’t get much
rain, and I don’t walk in it when it does. And I’m not a surfer so I’m not in the water in the
winter. And it doesn’t make much sense to get a strip of leather wet when you don’t have to.
Wrapping it up. I envisioned this as shorter I apologize to the viewers. I’m
sorry for making videos. This is my first foray into modern mechanical watches on my body
but I have some older quartzs from my youth hanging around. Like this Nautica. Levon hooked
me up with Vario, and he is ultimately responsible for wherever this winds up going. For the past few
weeks all I’ve been doing is looking at watches, and buying some, watching videos about them,
and dreaming about them. Normal things. I have this Japanese Market seiko SARV001 from Eugene
that I have been alternating on the wrist- that I also really like. That one wears thicker, but has
a dressier look. I think I prefer arabics instead of the baton indices for readability alone.
There’s your batoning. The green strap might not be your thing but you could dress it up by going
with a white dial or a tan strap. If you care to there’s a website devoted to trench watches
and the guy seems to restore them and sell them for about 800 bucks on eBay. This looks
like those a whole lot, and I have linked it below. Levon kinda got me started a few months
ago when he bought a strap for an old watch of my grandfathers. You may have seen that Instagram
post, and if you’ve seen that watch please let me know. It was on my desk the last time I had it.
Vario provided this watch for review, so check out their website and follow them on Instagram.
I will be reviewing some of those other watches I am buying in the coming months in between the
regular bullshit. Say Hi to the patrons, they are responsible for my mediocre 4k video-
because that money goes directly to my financed camera and new iMac. Like subscribe, comment,
follow me on Instagram. Thanks for watch-ing. Ha ha ha. We have fun.