replica watches uk

Long beloved for its exceptional vintage-styled watch bracelets, Forstner Bands has stepped into the business of making watches. Bringing the same fastidious passion as it does to its bracelets, Forstner has created a faithful iteration of a classic military timepiece with modern improvements. The second model released by the brand after its spot-on interpretation of the A-12,replica rolex the Forstner Pilot Ref. F-6B/346, is exactly what you might expect from the company: a historically accurate recreation executed perfectly. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Forstner without one of the brand’s amazing bracelets.

The Forstner Pilot Ref. F-6B/346 gets its design and its name from the Mark 11 pilot’s watch, which was based on specs issued by the British Ministry of Defense a few years after World War II came to an end. (The 6B/346 designation comes from the “The Vocabulary of Royal Airforce Equipment: AP1086, Book 7, Section 6B” lists all Aircraft Navigation Equipment and Accessories.) The Air Ministry sought to improve upon the American A-11 spec that it had used for the RAF 6B/234 watches, seeking “a highly accurate time-piece, suitable for astro navigation purposes.” In addition to the litany of specs common to military watches of the day, it was stipulated that the watch must meet chronometer standards (specifically, it needed to run for at least 36 hours with a daily variance of no more than 4 seconds per day) and be anti-magnetic. On top of that, each watch underwent 44 days of chronometric testing at the Royal Greenwich Observatory and thereafter was to be serviced every year.

The result was one of the finest military-grade watches ever produced and it fell to IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre to produce them, with the former delivering about 8,000 and the latter delivering just under 3,000 (Longines made a few hundred prototypes, but they were never put into production or issued). Ultimately, the watches were worn by RAF navigators and used in conjunction with a bubble sextant to determine the exact location of an aircraft.

The Pilot Ref. F-6B/346 is offered by Forstner in two dials. The first is a true-to-spec recreation of the original 6B/346s, featuring a matte-black dial with white markings and unlumed numerals (the original spec designated that only the four cardinal markers be lumed). The truncated hour hand, solid-white seconds hand (and its teardrop counterbalance), sans serif numerals, 12 o’clock triangle—this is the classic pilot watch,replica watches uk and exactly what you’d get if you had been issued one of the IWC or JLCs. The only real extra you get from the Forstner (aside from modern appurtenances and a much lower price tag) is the textured dial with slightly raised markers and text that adds just a touch of character to the sterility of the original.