Drawn before it was made.
Every line on Ref. 1908 exists on paper first. Forty millimetres across, 12.9 tall, which is as thin as a 300-metre rating allows without lying about it.
Ref. 1908 · Automatic diver · 300 metres
40 mm · 904L steelCalibre H-01 · 72 hAberdeen$4,200
Descent is gravity. Ascent is arithmetic.
Ref. 1908 is a 300-metre mechanical dive watch, named for the physiologist who worked out how to bring divers back up alive. Anyone can go down. This watch is for the slow part.
Scroll to open the watch
Nine parts. Nothing decorative.
Each one is here because the watch would fail without it. Read them from the crystal down.
It only turns one way.
A dive bezel that turns both ways can be knocked into lying about your remaining time. Ours ratchets against a steel spring you can feel through a glove: 120 clicks, half a minute each, and the pip always lands on a mark.
Twenty-eight thousand eight hundred.
Beats an hour, which is eight a second. Seventy-two hours on a full wind, so a watch taken off on Friday night is still right on Monday morning. Assembled and regulated in five positions in Aberdeen.
There is no light down here. There is this.
Indices, hands and the bezel pip carry the same Grade A luminous compound in the same blue, applied in six coats. Nothing on the dial competes for your attention when attention is what keeps you alive.
One object, twelve hours of finishing.
Two hundred bar of test pressure, five positions of regulation, and one person's initials on the caseback before it leaves the bench.
02 — Specification
The numbers, without adjectives.
- Movement
- Calibre H-01Automatic, 26 jewels, 28,800 vph (4 Hz). Hacking seconds, bidirectional winding, free-sprung balance. Regulated in five positions to +4/−2 seconds a day.
- Power reserve
- 72 hoursMeasured from full wind to stop, dial up, at 20 °C.
- Water resistance
- 300 m · 1,000 ftScrew-down crown and caseback. Every case is tested individually to 375 metres before assembly.
- Case
- 40.0 × 12.9 mm904L stainless steel. 47.5 mm lug to lug, 20 mm between the lugs. 14.2 mm to the top of the crystal.
- Bezel
- Unidirectional, 120 clicksZirconia ceramic insert, engraved and lume-filled, on a coin-edged steel ring.
- Crystal
- Domed sapphire, 2.2 mmAnti-reflective coating on the inner surface only. Sapphire display window in the caseback.
- Dial
- Matte black lacquerApplied polished indices, printed minute track. Also in Fathom blue.
- Lume
- Grade A, blue emissionSix coats on every index, both hands, the seconds lollipop and the bezel pip. Charged, it reads for eight hours.
- Strap
- Three-link 904L braceletSolid links and end-links, 20 to 16 mm taper, milled clasp with a 5-position glide extension. FKM rubber strap available.
- Weight
- 148 gOn the bracelet, sized for a 17 cm wrist. 96 g on rubber.
- Guarantee
- Five yearsIncluding one full service, and a bezel spring for life.
A note on thickness
Twelve point nine millimetres is the honest figure for a 300-metre case with a ratcheting bezel. Brands that quote eleven measure to the top of the case and not to the top of the crystal, or rate the watch to 200 and say 300. We would rather you knew.
03 — Materials & finishing
Everything you can touch was finished by a person.
- I
904L steel
More chromium, more molybdenum, harder to machine than the 316L most dive watches use. It costs us tooling. We use it because salt water does not negotiate, and because it takes a brushed finish that stays sharp for decades.
- II
Brushed, then polished
The flanks are brushed in a circle, so the grain follows the shape of the case. The chamfer between flank and bezel is polished by hand, one pass at a time, and it is the only line on the watch meant to catch light.
- III
Ceramic and lume
The bezel insert is zirconia ceramic: fired, engraved, then filled with luminous compound and fired again. It will not fade or scratch. The lume on the dial goes on in six coats and cures between each one, which is why the indices stand a little proud.
- IV
Sapphire, coated inside
Coat the outside of a crystal and you will scratch the coating off within a year. Coat the inside and it lasts as long as the watch. The dome adds three millimetres of depth to the dial and a curve that a flat crystal cannot fake.
04 — Reserve
Made to order. Eight weeks.
We build 500 pieces of Ref. 1908 a year, numbered, in the order they are reserved. Choose the dial and the strap. Everything else is already decided.