The kickstarter adventures of Sólás - solaswatches.com

Happy Friday everyone - I always think it's more important to see what a brand does when (not if) things go wrong as 100% perfection is impossible.

A customer found a piece of lint on the dial that escaped my eye (see second photo). On sending it back to me at my warehouse I:

1. Identified the lint,

2. Extracted the object (it seems almost like a piece of rubber rather than lint) - see the black dot on the q-tip,

3. Recased the watch,

4. Re-regulated the movement (0s/d is lovely but to be honest that is by luck rather than what one can expect from a movement at this price point),

5. And performed a water resistance check.

A large brand with service centres may have taken a few weeks to get this looked at (instead of my 3 days) - Bulgari had me waiting 6 months(!!!) for a turn around and wouldn't even tack on additional warranty time after eating into my 2 year warranty :/ ), a Chinese factory might not ever go into as much care and detail...so I think microbrands like Sólás definitely have an easy to understand appeal to watch enthusiasts - arguably service far faster than large brands, and more care and attention than factory brands.

Funny you mention that - there's progress being made on the tungsten clasp - I got a photo of the raw unpolished clasps today - I'll share it publicly once we're finished processing the clasps and bracelets.

The SW300s are delivered too so it's a matter of getting the other components made and ready for assembly.

The Equinox will have the world's first tungsten diver clasp (with microextensions) ever - one of the firsts we're happy to bring to people.

A testbed repeater model was purchased recently - something I can use to test concepts on the aural level over the next few years while not breaking the bank in terms of cost. Once that arrives and tests out I'll be sure to send some photos/videos of what a repeater sounds like and why it fascinates me as a complication (and how you can buy an "affordable" repeater watch right now if you're willing to make some compromises).

Methinks come model 3 (chickens before they hatch I know) - I will offer custom colour hands for customers - because in my eyes red/yellow steel and purple steel are more interesting to the eye than traditional blue.

Above is a dslr photo with bounced flash - should give a more accurate representation of true colours.

Don't mind the slightly uneven colours - proper polished hands would be cleaned to an inch of their lives vs a box of practice nails 😁

Hey Blue - no chemicals involved at all (except for white spirits to clean the steel) and the alcohol for the flame itself.

Link above has the video of how it's done - apparently the thicker nails wiIrish l be a lot easier to do than thin hands which require a lot more finesse.

Alcohol lamps can burn up to 400+ degrees and thermal blue is reached at 320 roughly (I was looking at an oven and proper temp controlled ones can run into thousands) - the blowtorch method would probably by shot down by MsThirdfox so the traditional alcohol stove method works out best in these circumstances.

The brass shavings help distribute the heat evenly - otherwise you'll get splotches on the steel.

It was funny - most of the steel screws/nails in Woodies would be zinc plated and thus be unable to be blued - practically zinc/nickel plating would be "better" for rust proofing steel - but horology isn't always logical - and traditional bluing/yellowing/purpling definitely has an appeal.

Just in terms of what you're describing with the iron - is that annealing rather than tempering i.e. the opposite of what we're doing here (just going by the colours you mention which is the reverse of what I see as I temper the steel - straw yellow, bronze, peacock, blue, light blue, grey).

On Irish iron that sounds really cool - let me get in touch about that 😊

Ha I can imagine what MsThirdfox will say if I apply to start playing with electricity as well as fire…

I've used the "trust me" card in getting approval to build the Starlight in the first place (when I should just be a good little lawyer and stick to legal contracts 😁)

I did float electricity to MsThirdfox and she reckons that's safer than 400 degree fires.

Yup we do deliver to Australia - in fact have 4 customers from there already.

Ha - well so that you mention it - someone actually did make a music video to go with the Starlight:

"Levitating" by Dua Lipa - a good choice since Starlight actually gets name dropped in the lyrics - and from my time on Instagram I know it's a pretty popular meme song 😁

Something that's due to come to me from the UK in the next while (had sent it back to get it officially engraved as testbed model 00) - you can see that it's definitely a chunky piece (not technically a wristwatch) - but I'm hoping to learn some things from it as I work on the rest of Lir in the background ☺

@banie01 All's well in the Fox family - I'm learning all about the joys of "tummy time" and sleep deprivation management.

Something that I'm currently looking into (maybe for model 4) - Irish "mined" (from the bog), and smelted iron - from one of our long time posters here on boards too... I think if we can get enough of it made - while a steel dial might not be traditionally something that is often seen as a dial material - having this as an Irish forged material and built into a watch could be very interesting... we still have a long way to go but their furnace makes my little alcohol stove look like a toy 😁

Currently you can see the pieces are a bit too small to be cut into dials - I'm looking at commissioning a large piece to be made - closer to when model 4's R&D begins (which isn't too far away actually - model 3's R&D is ongoing while model 2's is in the physical prototyping stage) - got an updated rotor design - we're not quite there yet but getting close now.

A long time since an update but as we're getting closer to the public reveal of the finished review units here is hopefully an interesting smorgasbord of info on the Equinox:

1. Dive bezel:

Here is the dive bezel - You can see that green and black are the signature colours of the Equinox. One thing that marks out the Equinox as something I want real divers to use are the two no deco markers on the bezel - one for 18m (PADI open water dive limit) and another for 30m (PADI advanced open water dive limit) - just in case of a dive computer failure novice divers will be reminded of the maximum dive time allowed (if it's their first time that day). The key details (no deco indicators and dive pip) are in C3 X1 lume whereas the rest is in BGW9 since C3 lasts the longest (and X1 is superior to the grade A BGW9).

2. Bracelet:

Slightly less grainy photos now available:

You can see that tungsten has a deeper colour than stainless steel - and with tungsten it will keep that high polish finish much, much longer than steel. I can't wait to see the final product - you can see the edge links are bevelled too - those bevels cost a pretty penny but gives the bracelet an extra nice bit of higher quality finishing... bevelling tungsten isn't as easy as bevelling steel.

3. Ogham

A simple design graph of how the ogham for Sólás Cónocht will look as the teeth on the bezel - it's interesting I think that because of the use of the ogham you will only see teeth on the topside of the bezel from the 12h to 3h and 6h to 7h areas.

4.Rotor

A 3d render of the custom rotor - it will be in a dark green (similar to the bezel) with gold highlights for the Sólás logo. This rotor's unit cost costs more than a Seiko NH35 movement (nevermind the thousands for base R&D) so people might be interested in getting an idea of what everything costs within the Equinox. The triquetra fractal (each arm of the triquetra is a triquetra in itself) is something I'm quite proud about designing - hopefully the cost of this pays off 😁

5. Pieta

Here's the custom caseback on the "one of a kind" Pieta unit that will be raffled off:

Ó dhorchadas go solas - while 2.5k was raised for Alone (for a 500-ish watch) - hopefully more can be raised for this 1000ish watch in the Equinox - though I do realise that amount raised is probably more dependant on the charity chosen than the value of the prize itself. Having had more time to speak to Pieta it means I can add their logo to the Equinox too at least for the caseback.

Equinox's public reveal should come in at end of October/beginning November - then comes the harder job of getting some of the larger watch publications to agree to cover it. There's an expanded budget for marketing this time round as it's quite a bit different trying to raise money for a 300 euro KS watch compared to an 800-900 euro (price to be confirmed) one.

I'd like to think that people can see the bargain that this is for all the design...and then in tungsten not steel :D

More reveals to come - still some special ones to show off ;)