Reply With QuoteLovely watch Ollie, congrats!
Can I ask the backstory about why it was your grail?
So . . . I finally got my grail and I love it.
This thread is only partly about showing off my new baby but is mostly about asking for some strap advice.
I'm not a Bonklip fan and I've got an NOS black leather open-ended strap on its way to me but in the meantime here are my options:
Brown 18mm perlon with brown Phoenix leather bund pad
Black 18mm perlon with black Phoenix leather bund pad
Grey 18mm RAF strap and matching bund pad from Phoenix
One piece (RAF-style) 17mm green nylon pull-through
One piece (RAF-style) 18mm green cotton canvas pull-through (this is as close as I could get to the Def-Stan 3 webbing strap)
Pictures, I hear you cry, we need pictures!
So, without further ado, behold the watch and all the strap options:
Lovely watch Ollie, congrats!
Can I ask the backstory about why it was your grail?
Crazy watch!
Hi Jon
I grew up in and around Cheltenham and was born the same year that Smiths stopped making their own movements (1971). I could probably bore for England on the history of Smiths watches (and I'm by no means the most knowledgeable or the most boring person, either!)
It has always been a dream of mine to own this model, having had a W10, an Everest, an Astral diver, various versions of the civilian De Luxes, the 16j Benson "Tropical" and other classics from the heyday of Cheltenham watchmaking (which for me was the 1950's. Hell, a company that makes their own hairsprings on site is a true manufacture. Why have something from the Swiss Alps when you can something from the Cotswold Hills?)
This model, the GS De Luxe, is arguably the rarest (outside of prototypes etc that do turn up from time to time). In the c.1949/1950 Smiths were commissioned by the govt to make a "GS" (General Service) watch to "DEF-3" specifications that could be used across all branches of the armed forces. As a result, an order was placed for 300 pre-production samples.
Oddly, they were issued in 1954, '55 & '56 (to the RAF) and then again in 1960 (to the DOS) but not in '58 or '59 . All are marked with a "fat arrow" (a broad pheon on the dial).
It seems the MoD didn't want or like the 300 examples and no more were made. The cost to Smiths for design drawings and tooling-up was £23, 000 -- all that for only 300 watches! That makes them over £76 each. In the early to mid 1950's that was a lot of money.
Happily, in 1961 it seems that 600 were made and sent to Australia (to the RAAF). These ones are marked with a "thin arrow" on the dial.
So in total there was 900 of these made. (Reducing the cost per watch to "only" 25-and-a-half quid each; mind you that doesn't cover parts and labour for the Aussie watches, only the start-up R&D costs.)
Either way, I believe these watches are housed in the same Dennison cases as the contemporaneous 6B RAF Omega -- although I may be wrong about that.
I believe there are about 15 "fat arrow" and 10 "thin arrow" examples known to exist, plus a four or five others. There may also be some "frankens" out there (possibly cobbled together at an MoD service bench or by a Smith watchmaker after being sent back for repairs; possibly done by dealers and collectors after the watches were sold by the govt.) and some may have wrong casebacks, crowns, hands etc. (again, whether inadvertently swapped at an MoD multi-watch service bench or done by dealers and collectors to supply missing or damaged parts is hard to tell.)
It looks like Smiths went to a lot of trouble (and cost, remember the cost!) to tool-up for a watch that *could* have been used across all three services (hence "GS") and could even have been made in the numbers later seen for the W10 (i.e. tens of thousands) and yet which looks like a project that never really delivered the desired results. They didn't even use the parts and plans in that later order as the W10 movement, dial and case are all different.
So, all in all, it looks like the GS De Luxe was a failure, which is odd given that the government wanted a British-made Mil Watch to reduce dependency on foreign (i.e. Swiss) imports in the case of war or civil emergency or other disaster and that the resulting watch, this one, the De Luxe GS is a really great bit of kit. Smiths even uprated their shockproofing and overcoiled the hairspring.
It seems that with the "W10" of the late 60's (1967-70) it was a case of third time lucky for Smiths with regard to govt orders for a mil wristwatch: the 1940's RAF one never took off (forgive the pun), the 1950's GS De Luxe totalled only 900 examples and then, right at the end of 1960's they at last hit the jackpot with the W10 and resulted in >20,000 being made, probably prolonging Smiths' life -- and English watchmaking -- by several years.
Last edited by Rev-O; 26th February 2015 at 23:06.
Very nice example and an interesting read on the origin of the watch.
Terry
Thanks Terry
I do have a question as to whether Smiths developed the 27CS movement (17 jewels, centre seconds) for this watch and then went on to use it in commercial, civilian lines OR whether it was an existing movement that Smiths modified (with better accuracy, shockproofing and overcoiled hairspring) to meet the MoD's "DEF-STAN" requirements.
If the former, then the cost (£23, 000) of designing and developing the movement for the MoD was at least spread over all the retail models subsequently made and sold; if the latter then twenty grand seems like a hell of a lot of money to simply tweak a movement already in production (especially as I think it's in a Dennison case so they didn't even need to tool-up and machine the housing).
Personally, I reckon the 27CS movement first appears in c.1953 which suggests to me that it *was* designed for the MoD to go in the GS watch, with the added advantage of being a good new addition to the Smiths lineup -- bearing in mind the "1215" movement was introduced in 1947, was already looking dated even then and Smiths may well have wanted to develop a more modern, centre-seconds for the 1950's.
I also suspect that the govt paid all or some of the £23,000 R&D costs, making the whole thing a rather good proposition for Smiths and not the failure that it might otherwise seem.
Anyway, like I said, I could bore for England on the subject of Smiths . . . . .
If you are talking of boring for England on the subject of Smiths, then you just might like something I wrote recently:
http://www.intlwatchleague.com/showt...eger-leCoultre
That is a lovely watch. I have some Smiths W10s but would happily swap for a GS. Thanks too for the background info, interesting stuff.
Thanks RABbit.Originally Posted by RABbit
Alas, you'd need to swap a fair few W10's for a GS. Current market price of the former is anything between £300 - £600 depending on condition; for the latter you're talking £1,500 - £2,500 and they very seldom come up for sale. But then it's a production run of 20,000+ vs 900 so I guess supply and demand is the issue.
That said, the W10 is a fine watch and very wearable.
Wow, what an article! Good work that man.
Have you read "A Long Time in Making: The History of Smiths" by Dr James Nye? It came out in December last year (2014).
The "All British Escapement Company" (1928) and then the "Smiths English Clocks Limited" (1931) did indeed make clocks (with platform escapements) -- but not watches.
Dr Nye is adamant that Smiths did not make any watch escapements in-house until after the war (c. 1947) and that all wartime clockwork for watches that was badged as "Smiths" was in fact Swiss, smuggled in to this country via the diplomatic bags out of Lisbon.
It was, presumably, easier produce the larger, less accurate clock ebauches and escapements and these would be made at an earlier date (pre-war) but the smaller, more accurate movements needed for watches required tighter tolerances and finer specifications and could not be made until after the war -- and even then, at first only with outside help.
There's also, Chris Elllis' book ("Smiths Industries at Cheltenham", 1990) and another one by Barry Jones but the name escapes me. I'll dig it out later.
I'm assuming none of the three movements pictured in your post are from Spitfire clocks? (Didn't they use an 8-day movement? Also these are much later and date from the 1950's and 1960's)
EDIT -- I've more or less completely re-written this twice! I think this the final version!
Last edited by Rev-O; 27th February 2015 at 12:00.
Well done getting one of these, they are one of my favourites.
What make and where can I get one of those canvas straps?
Roger
Superb watch & a great write up, didn't know much about that model so thanks for that. I like that type, the chunky looking case is uber cool.
For me I'd like it on a brown perlon but without the bund.
I've really started to get interested in these older Smiths models, still a bit gutted I passed on getting any of the ones for sale recently !
Have a good weekend
Dave
Hi Roger, it's this one here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/18mm-Canvas-...item2c9790c57c
I "circumcised" it (removed the NATO flap) to make it a one-piece pull-through RAF-style strap!
Thanks, might have to have a look at one of those.
Roger
My grandfather would probably have been able to comment definitively on this. He worked at Smiths in Cricklewood during WW2 and had expertise in watches and clocks. It is uncertain what exactly he did during the war but it may have been working on clockwork bomb timers. Sadly he died before I was born.
Last edited by markrlondon; 2nd April 2015 at 13:46.
Shame he's not here any more.
I know the Cricklewood works made fuses, many time-delayed for (e.g.) ack-ack shells so they would explode at the right height.
Very nice. I think pigskin straps go well on watches of this kind.
James Dowling has a radium dialled one on MWR at the moment.
http://www.mwrforum.net/forums/showt...eluxe-For-Sale
A beautiful watch Olly, it would be just up my street ;-)
Jimmy
Found the right strap!
NOS 17mm military strap still sealed in its original greaseproof paper wrapper.
I think it's from the 1940s or '50s, maybe French and are probably as close as I'll find to a Def-3 or AF.0210.
Design-wise it's a sort of proto-NATO with the double understraps. Keepers are fabric, overall length can be adjusted by a clever second hole for the buckle tang (which shortens the fold-over section). Width seems to be a true 17mm. Colour is sandy green khaki (not captured the exact tone that well on my camera)
I gave mine a quick wash with some fabric softener as the cotton canvas had gone very stiff (cardboard-y).
Pics, I hear you cry, we need pics!
Well, Ok.
If you'll forgive the terminology in my opinion it looks "the dogs bollocks" on that strap.Found the right strap!
NOS 17mm military strap still sealed in its original greaseproof paper wrapper.
I think it's from the 1940s or '50s, maybe French and are probably as close as I'll find to a Def-3 or AF.0210.
Design-wise it's a sort of proto-NATO with the double understraps. Keepers are fabric, overall length can be adjusted by a clever second hole for the buckle tang (which shortens the fold-over section). Width seems to be a true 17mm. Colour is sandy green khaki (not captured the exact tone that well on my camera)
I gave mine a quick wash with some fabric softener as the cotton canvas had gone very stiff (cardboard-y).
Pics, I hear you cry, we need pics!
Well, Ok.
Superb, well done.
Dave
Very pleased with my strap from Ollie, it suits very well. A quick iPad shot of one on my RAF Hamilton.
I can't keep away from this thread; fantastic watch. I really do like the strap. Thanks to the op
I hawe Kenya Smiths and I love it!
Your strap is crazy!
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