Straton Curve-Chrono

I Last Friday, the Straton Watch Company launched a Kickstarter campaign for the Curve-Chrono, a 1970's style racing chronograph, and a line of two-tone leather driving gloves. In the past five days, it has attracted 255 backers and is well on its way to exceeding its $15,000 target by a factor of ten. Straton clearly has a good thing going, and I'm sure many faithful readers are pondering a purchase. I can see you now, finger poised over the "Back this Project" button, asking such questions as, "is the Curve-Chrono as good on the wrist as it is in the photos," "is it worth my hard-earned cash," and "will those gloves make me look sexy?" Lucky for you, Time Bum has got a set of prototypes in hand, and I am ready to answer all of your questions.

Kyle Schut, the man behind Straton, is a dedicated gearhead with a passion for vintage sports cars. His first watch, the Vintage Driver, was a big chronograph inspired by the dashboard of his beloved Alfa Romeo Alfetta GT. For the Curve-Chrono, he once again looked to the disco era and this time drew up a colorful race timer with shades of classic Heuers like the Carrera, Montreal, and Autiva Viceroy. The watch is a barrel-cased, two-register chronograph with an internal timing bezel, two screw-down crowns, a double domed sapphire crystal, and 100m water resistance. Each comes in a very nice, rust colored leather watch case. That's the easy stuff. Now it gets complicated, because, in order to achieve all of his design goals, Kyle has offered an almost bewildering array of options. I can't imagine the headaches this will create for order fulfillment, but it it a veritable candy store for the buyer. 

Let's start with the selection of movement as this drives the price. Buyers may select one of two Seiko units: the VK64 MechaQuartz starting around $289 USD or 45% retail, or the NE88 automatic starting around $703 USD or 30% off retail. (Note that as of this writing, these early bird offers are already gone but the unit price can still be had as part of bundled watch+gloves rewards.) The NE88 is a 34 jewel, column wheel automatic with a smooth 28k bph vibration rate and a 45-hour power reserve. The VK64 is a hybrid movement utilizing a quartz timekeeping unit coupled to a mechanical chronograph module, resulting in a high accuracy movement with 1/5th-second timing and a crisp fly-back reset. The registers on both movements are horizontally oriented: 30-minutes and small seconds on the NE88; 60-minutes and 24-hours on the VK64. Both are excellent so the buyer's decision will likely come down to a personal affinity for mechanicals or a practical consideration of cost. The NE88 is mighty tempting for the price, but being the Bum, I'd probably go MechaQuartz and spend the $400 I saved to buy another watch. 

vedere di piu repliche rolex e Breitling Others