Timor Heritage Field
Timor Watch Company creates classic watches by blending traditional British military watch design and ethos with the latest manufacturing techniques from Switzerland. Their latest timepiece, the Timor Heritage Field pays tribute to the legendary military watches made by the brand during World War II.
Timor is a great watch brand with an impressive history. It proudly belongs to the so called Dirty Dozen club of 12 watch brands assigned by the British Army to supply wrist watches during the beginning of the Second World War. The other brands selected by the British Army during this period were Buren, Cyma, Eterna, Grana, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Lemania, Longines, IWC, Omega, Record and Vertex.
The Timor Watch Company was established in 1923 in La Chaux-de-Fonds by Mr Bernheim and Mr Luthy. During 1930s it became a popular watch brand in Britain, Germany and France. In 1940s, Timor started creating wristwatches for troops. During WWII, the British Military issued a new strict specification for the first watch that could endure the rigours of the battlefield. This specification is known as W.W.W. Twelve companies fulfilled this order and became immortalised as the Dirty Dozen.
During 1960s, inspired by fashion trends, Timor began manufacturing stylish minimal dress watches focusing on precious metals at an affordable price. The 1970s Quartz Crisis led to the collapse of many mechanical watch brands including Timor.
In 2000s, under the ownership of Mr Bolzli, the brand revived its watchmaking legacy by offering pocket watches inspired by the brand’s heritage designs from the 1940s and 1950s. In 2015, Timor began work on watch designs based around the brand’s most iconic watches from the Second World War, the W.W.W and A.T.P watch issued to British troops. In 2018, respecting its historical ties to the UK, the brand relocated its headquarters to the Newcastle upon Tyne in the North of England. This year, Timor celebrates the 75th anniversary of their legendary military watch by releasing its new creation, the Timor Heritage Field.
The Heritage Field watch was designed by a British Army Veteran, and crafted using the latest Swiss manufacturing techniques. This modern and versatile military grade watch evokes the spirit of Timor’s legendary W.W.W watches created for British troops.
The Heritage Field watch features a durable 316L stainless steel case measuring 36.5mm diameter and 11mm thickness. Its case has a bead blasted finish. The case has 18mm lug width and 45.5mm lug to lug length. The watch is fitted with a scratch resistant sapphire crystal glass on its front side. Water resistant to 50 meters, this timepiece is equipped with a heavy duty, easy to adjustable screw-in crown.
It houses a legible, military style dial finished in black color. The dial features white 11 Arabic numerals indicating hours from 1 to 12 except for 6h. Surrounding this layout, a railway track styled dial ring features dots or rectangular indexes corresponding to the hour markings.
The hour and minutes hands are centrally placed and at 6’o clock you can view the small seconds dial. The hour and minute hands as well as dots and rectangular hour-markers are embedded with luminous material to assure night time visibility of the dial indications. The lume used is Beige Superluminova 155C, which radiates a vintage style glow.
The Heritage Field watch is available in two versions: Mechanical automatic and mechanical hand-wound. Both timepieces are equipped with Swiss-made mechanical movements built by Sellita. Each manual version is equipped with a Swiss Sellita SW216 hand wound movement featuring 24 Jewels and capable to provide 42 hrs of running time. The automatic model houses Swiss Sellita SW260 automatic movement with 31 Jewels and 38 hrs of power reserve. Both movements are modified to remove the date function.
The Heritage Field watch comes with a modern seatbelt NATO, and a vintage inspired AF0210. The soldiers of WWII often wore their Timor watches on an AF0210 webbing strap, and this was the predecessor to the modern NATO.
To raise funds for the initial mass production of this revival collection, the brand launched a Kickstarter crowd funding campaign on 21 Feb 2020. The campaign will be run till 21 March 2020. Pledges available from £750/ US$980 (The Super Early Bird offer of £650 is no longer available at the time of publishing this article) for one watch. The price remains same for both automatic and manual-wound versions. Future retail price will be £950. Delivery planned in November 2020.
