STEAM watch ideal for the Victorian time traveller.

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Design submitted by Matt from Canada.

Matt says: This is STEAM, because of the steampunk appearance. The idea for the display came while watching a movie, specifically a short animation of one of the producing company at his beginning. There was a gauge at the left followed by eight rectangles displaying changing numbers that eventually changed to the name of the company.

I was using the brown during the early designing stage and I was supposed to change it after doing the case and before sending it. But then I become conscious of the possibility to make it with a steampunk look. So I modified the decorative screws, choose to go with a metal case with a leather band screwed under. I rounded the top and bottom surface because flat surface look bad. I added inlay slots that can be used for optional dual-color. I added 4 decorative cylinders because the area around the buttons looked empty. (One of them could be used to connect the USB cable if it was using a rechargeable battery)

The gauge is used for the hour, with a real hand, which start at 7 o’clock and end at 5 o’clock. It can be 12 or 24 hour format. It can be always moving or retrograde (moving once at every hour).

The minutes and seconds use 4 LCD screens to show digits, or a single screen virtually divided in 4 by the case plate. They usually have 1 full digit, but sometime they have 2 partials digits. This occurs every .5 seconds before the digit on that screen will change to the new one.

Peoples who like steampunk objects and/or analog-digital combined watches are the target market.

There’s 4 things making it stand-out: The steampunk appearance; the dual-straps band; the combination of analog and digital displays, which is used to show 1 time & not dual/triple-time; The animation provided by the 1’s second splitting in 2 partials digits every half-second and the others splitting .5 second before the new time & going to the new, full and single, digit on time.

19 thoughts on “STEAM watch ideal for the Victorian time traveller.”

  2. Retropunk something like can be found in Fallout. I like them. I hope it is feasible to make custom analog movement for this design, or perhaps everything could be made digital. As far as I can imagine, I would buy this watch and I believe it’s cool!

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    • I guess you mean Fallout game. I heard the name but never played it. All digital would be my second choice because I like the 3D hand. Ty for your comment.

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  3. I like the concept and the steampunk industrial feel. The one thing I don’t understand is the retro grade dial. Should there be a gap between 12 & 0? I would have expected them to just 12 or 0 (minor detail) what would be really cool is if the digital element was red or green led then it would have a hint of the display from the Delorean in the back to the future films. Nice work 5/Y beat of luck! 😀

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    • On a watch like this, the hour hand don’t do a full circle but gets re-winded to 0 when it’s 12:00. ( the 12 is a decoration & is there for symmetry ) Normally, retrograde watches start & end with the same digits ( either 0 or 12 for the hour ). Here I choose not to do it to stick with the gauge spirit. Does that help ?

      Colored LED lighting could be nice but, in SKUP, I saw 2 choice of translucent color for the lenses. ( I choose the blue and used a dark gray display, for the M/S, & dark brown for the hour. )

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      • Ahh I understand. Cheers for the explaination! 😀 LEDs would be nice but then a mechanical version like Anders suggested would also be nice. Plenty of possibilities for this one I think! 😀

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  4. I’m partial to a bit of steampunk, so this looks interesting! I like the dual straps, it balances the case (which would probably look very wide otherwise), and adds to the theme. It’s also a bit unusual for the blog, I can’t recall seeing to many of them in the past.

    The display looks fine, certainly clear enough…=) I suspect showing half-seconds is a little bit over-ambitious, however.

    As an aside, a thought struck when I read Firdaus’s mention of Fallout; it’d be cool if the numbers were mechanical, like a split-flap or flip-dot display (or possibly even nixie tubes), to keep with the Steampunk theme. Probably not very feasible, but one can dream…=)

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  5. Hi Makkovik, the version with two straps seems more appropriate for this project. The idea is good and could be executed as mechanical watches Urwerk.
    5 * and Yes, idea beautiful.

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  8. Oh lovely steamy and punky ♥ I’m glad that it’s not too much things going on there. A grid, a dial, numbers, some nice little screws(!!) a cool material and that’s it. Oh how cool it would be if you have areas that are allowed to rust! The double straps are cool too. I cross my fingers for such a watch. 5*/AYE

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    • “Rusted areas” was my plan for the ss version. But because I don’t have any software/pc capable to do nice band, I googled “rusted wall” pics to use as background. I also thought about having empty holes to mimic segments that would be too rusted to hold a screw, but I forgot to do it ! “Areas allowed to rusted” could be nice because each watch would age differently. Using more than 2 tones of brown would also be possible for the 1st version.

      I like that, so far, peoples like the double straps because it’s a very long one to do. ( specially the buckled one )

      TY for your comment.

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