Tag: Manual Winding

Categories
Merkur

Pierre Paulin Small Seconds Vintage Watch Review

Pierre Paulin Small Seconds

What is Pierre Paulin? It is the name of a watch brand, I saw this brand on the website of Merkur, which is also a custom-made watch brand created in China, not like other Chinese homage watches, Merkur is more creative in design. I introduced Pierre Paulin watches on my blog before, the most popular model is the one that looks similar to Daytona Panda, many people like this watch and have asked me the price, actually, almost all watches made by Merkur have cheap prices except the ones with tourbillon movement. The Pierre Paulin watch I am going to review today is a basic model of Pierre Paulin with simple design, but with elegant style, the watch also offers a lot of fun on the band because the wearer can change different types of bands and they still look nice on the watch.

Pierre Paulin Silver Dial

The case is not big, which is only 38mm in diameter, but checking the pictures, it looks larger than 38mm. The case is totally brushed, it is a whole piece of metal that is made with stainless steel, the brushing on the case does not look very delicate, but I like this finish that looks a bit rough. Due to the manual winding movement inside, the case is only 12mm thick. The solid case back has the engraving of a lion head. And seeing from the back, the connection between the case and band is also very simple for the wearer to remove and change a new band on.

The dial is silver and has a very high readability. In my memory, I do not know which Swiss watch uses this dial design, or is it just the own design of Pierre Paulin? If yes, that’s amazing. The circle with big Arabic numeral hour markers on has the same brushing finish as the case. The blue color just refreshes the entire silver and gray dial. A small dial positioned at 6 o’clock shows the working small seconds hand, which is sweeping smoothly. The outer track-style minute scales always look classic. The watch is powered by a manual winding mechanical movement, I do not suggest you wind too tight each time, just 20 rotations will be enough. The watch comes with a green leather band, actually this type of full grain leather band fits better than any other bands, absolutely you can try a rubber band. By the way, I will love the watch more if it has a see-through crystal back.

Pierre Paulin Case Back
Categories
Parnis

Parnis Lume-Master Handwind Watch Review

Parnis Lume-Master

Parnis was a very popular homage watch brand in the past, it was liked by a lot of watch fans, Parnis has a very similar development path to the replica watch industry, when I just entered this field, Parnis watches were widly discussed in watch forums, but now this brand’s hotness has decreased a lot, just like replica watches, their prosperity has become the past. Parnis Power Reserve was a very hot watch before, it is the first homage watch I know and it is exactly Parnis that lets me know the meaning of homage watch. In the early development of Parnis, they made a lot of Panerai homage watches, now it is hard to find a store that still sells these homages, today, the Parnis Lume-Master watch I am going to share here was bought from China, I asked one of my Chinese friends to buy for me, I like its shape and design, very similar to Panerai pro-type.

Parnis Lume-Master Hand Wind
Parnis Panerai Homage

The case is made with 316L stainless steel, it has a diameter of 44mm, it looks big but not thick, only 13mm, this thanks to the manual winding movement it is equipped with. The case is polished, the bezel seems to be screwed down into the middle case and has a brushed front, angular lugs have been polished and arc-shaped to provide the wear a good wearing comfort, the big crown is screw-down and is very convenient to rotate, there is a big “P” lettering in polishing.

Parnis Lume-Master Crown
Parnis Lume-Master Case

The black dial has a sandwiched structure like Panerai, the plate on the top has skeleton markers, including skeleton hour markers and the markers on the subdial at 9 o’clock, the plate on the bottom is then applied with luminous material, so in the dark, you will see a strong green lume light emitting through these markers. I like sandwiched structure lume system, the lume material won’t fall straight off the markers, and it is also easy to maintain. The track-style hour hand and minute hand as well as the small hand at 9 o’clock use dark blue frame, the lume light on them is slightly different from that of the markers. The word “HANDAUFZUG” in Germany means Manual Wind, the “LUME-MASTER”, you can consider it is a series name of this watch.

Parnis Lume-Master ST36

Through the crystal back, we can see a mechanical movement inside, which is ST36 hand-wind engine made by Sea-gull Watch Company, sometimes such hand-wound movement gives us another kind of fun. Many high-end replica Panerai watches with manual winding movement like PAM 111 and PAM 005 use ST36 as a base movement. By the way, the brown leather band is made with calfskin leather, it looks very nice on this Parnis watch.

Parnis Lume-Master Buckle
Parnis Lume-Master Brown Leather Strap