Ocean Diver Watch Blog

Below is the most recent version of the watch design specifications. This is the working drawing that I was asked to create and provide to the brand owner and manufacturer so that they could take my design and translate into mechanical drawings and eventually a prototype. Can wait to see how it works out.

I've been working directly with the watch manufacturer and sponsor/owner to fine tune my design and I have to say that I am very impressed with what I have heard and seen thus far. I just received the technical drawings for the 20-jewel automatic movement that will be powering the watch so that I can make sure that my dial design aligns perfectly with the day/date display wheels. I get to choose the model name for the watch too and so far I still like the original name I came up with "Ocean Diver" but have a few more days to think about it and come up with something better or different - my wife has been providing a lot of suggestions, most of which are combinations of our kid's names. Lots for me to do in getting my original design ready for the manufacturing team to create the technical/engineering drawings. I'm also looking at suitable straps for the watch and I'm currently leaning towards a black kevlar strap with white accent stitching. More to come...

For a very long time I have toyed with the idea of being a watch designer and some day having my own watch manufacturing company and seeing my ideas put into production. I've always been passionate about the design of watches and have a nice (some may say too big) collection of watches that I have put together over of the years. Well I don't have my own watch company yet, but as of this past weekend I have taken a step closer to realizing my dream - one of my favorite watch designs will be going into production! I have been sketching out my own ideas for watch designs for several years, based on all of the individual components that I like about the watches I own. My collection has gotten quite large because of my constant quest for the "perfect" watch - a watch that encompasses all of the required elements for a very functional and practical watch. An opportunity presented itself recent to submit some of my designs into a competition to have the winning design put...

I thought I'd share some of my lessons learned while attempting this project. Here are some of the steps that I took but deliberately omitted from the 'How To' because they were stupid, potentially damaging, and worst of all unnecessary. So to be very clear - DO NOT DO THIS, IT IS NOT NECESSARY AND COULD MOST LIKELY DAMAGE OR RUIN YOUR SCREEN! After removing the whole module, I proceeded to strip it down so that I could remove the glass display. At the time I thought I would have to do that. So I removed the outer rubber casing... Then I removed the inner metal casing... To be left with the raw module. It was easy to see how the screen was held in place. There are three small retainers at the bottom of the plastic module housing that the glass sits under, and at the top of the screen there is a spring loaded or tensioned clip that holds the top of the glass firmly in place. More firmly than I would have ever imagined. Once I figured it out I thought it would be easy to remo...

This project was a little more adventurous for me and as you will see quite a bit more complicated than some of the other projects I've done with my G-Shocks. It involves doing some pretty nasty things to the screen of a G-Shock, so if you’re faint hearted this is probably not the ideal DIY project for you. If you’re still reading this and, like me, desperately want to try reversing the display of one of your digital watches – read on. I’m going to be taking my plain DW-5600 and ‘hopefully’ converting the regular display into a negative one with the use of some self-adhesive polarizing film. There have been many questions about where to buy this posted in the various online forums. I bought mine from Polarization.com in Texas. The quality was very good, service excellent, and the shipping was pretty fast (3 days). I ordered the thinnest self-adhesive film they had in a relatively small size, part name was: “Linear Polarizer w/adhesive PFA”. Ok, on to the project. First let me...

Here is a very simple, stealthing project. I am planning to do a lot more to my little DW-5600 like reverse the display, stealth the faceplate (if possible), but for now I wanted to stealth the bezel (remove the white paint). The first step was to gather all the necessary equipment. For me that means Goof Off (not Goo Gone or any similar sounding products), a small ceramic bowl/dish (plastic ones may melt with the Goof Off inside it) this is one I made myself, a small pair of tweezers, and an old toothbrush or scrubbing brush. I removed the bezel from my DW-5600 and poured just enough of the Goof Off into the bottom of the bowl to cover the bottom. I place the bezel in the bowl face down so that the lettering was constantly submerged. Doing it this way saves using a lot of unnecessary Goof Off. I set my count down timer (CDT) for 20 minutes and stuck the bowl outside to avoid the nasty smell/fumes. Beep, beep! Ok 20 minutes is up and I lift out the bezel using the tweezers. I take the...

I continue to play with the idea of ways to improve on the 5600 module for the future. Based on feedback from you guys I've been playing with how the atomic sync results screen might look, when you press the button to see when the last time it synced up was. I've replaced "GET" with "SYNC!" and it shows the day, full date, and time it was last successfully synced with the atomic signal. I've also created the screen for setting the correct time zone "ZN" for your atomic signal. This is actually very close to the way the GW-5600 module provides the method of selecting the time zone in the watch setting mode. I saw some more feedback recently, so I'm going to read through it and give it some more thought. It would be very exciting to be able to incorporate these minor changes into a new 5600 module, bit can't ever see that happening - CASIO you listening?