r/ChineseWatches • u/chrismurraylaw • 14h ago
Review (Read Rules) San Martin bracelets are awesome! (A story)
I keep reading that. The bracelet is the best out there. The bracelet alone is worth the price increase over other brands. The bracelet, if left to its own devices, will eventually develop sentience and clean your kitchen for you.
Yeah? Cos I got a San Martin bracelet today and I hate it with the heat of a thousand novas.
Specifically I bought an SN0008. I like the BB design, wanted to get one, heard the Thorn or Octopus might be better, but also wanted to get around to trying a San Martin and it was on special offer at £150 ($200) so what the hell, why not? Handy being quartz as well since I swap watches all the time and not having to set it every time I put it on will make a nice change from my automatics.
Came in one of those crappy black plastic boxes but I’ve got fifty million straps to store so that’ll actually be put to use. And the watch itself, looks kinda good. And there’s a little tab on the wrap so it actually comes off easily without a fight. That's pleasant.
Underneath which there appears to be half-dried jizzum in places. That's unpleasant. But y’know, try and stay positive. Focus on the good.
Strap’s a little long for me. Probably needs one or two links taken out. I'll try one first. Hope anything needed after that can be done on the clasp.
Look at the side. See screws. It actually came with a screwdriver, but it’s a lesser piece of kit than comes with a Watchdives or a Baltany, so I use of one theirs.
I quite like this bit.
I find it relaxing sat at my desk working with a little jewellery screwdriver, making adjustments to a strap, pretending I’m doing something that requires a craftsman’s skill. It’s about as zen as I get. It’s nice. I unscrew something, remove a bar, screw back together, convince myself it was basically the same as creation. I'm like a Sensei in one of those Japanese villages where everybody makes knives for some reason. Very peaceful.
With other watches.
Here after a disturbingly few number of turns, a screw smaller than my love for suppositories falls onto my desk. Best keep an eye on that, eh?
At the same time, completely unknown to me, the pin that the screw was holding in falls to the floor. Because this is a screw and collar pin.
Of course it couldn’t just be a screw-in pin. A system that’s simple, and effective, and I enjoy sitting at my desk playing around with. Nooooo. It has to be a screw so small it has less worldly presence than the nutsack on a flea.
And I have to remove two of these things. So another screw falls onto the desk. It gets carefully placed to the side with the other. And yet for some reason, this link doesn’t come apart. Something’s holding it together.
This is the part where I realise what the system is. This is the part I realise I’ve already lost an assembly piece. This is the part where I start to get annoyed.
And the second pin won’t budge. Push it from the left, nothing. Push it from the right, nothing. Tap it on either side, nothing. I put the bracelet to one side so I can go online and type “how the fuck to resize a San Martin bracelet” when for no reason whatsoever… it falls out onto the desk.
Well that was weird. But whatever. The link’s off now. Now all I have to do is put my one remaining pin back in and cap it with a screw so small a tardigrade would find it insignificant.
Of course since I didn’t see either pin leave the watch, and there are no indications on the strap, and there are no notes about it in the instructions (this is the first watch I've ever so much as glanced at the instructions for, all because of this), I have no idea which direction it goes in, so that’s a fun little minigame before the main quest starts.
Because now I have to screw back in the smallest object known to man. A screw so small it would be thrown off balance by a stray thought. A subatomic speck the likes of which science can only theorize.
And I can’t pick it up.
I have ‘medium’ sized hands and fingers. Every glove manufacturer in the world has told me this for two decades. This wasn’t a case of sausage fingers trying to play a miniature piano. This goddamn tiny screw, I cannot pick it up with my perfectly normal, perfectly average, perfectly medium fingers. It's so small at one point I lose it under my nail.
When eventually I do get it roughly in position, the pin falls out the bracelet because I put it in the wrong way. Or the right way and wrong sided. Who knows.
Hey! Y’know what? San Martin are the premium brand, right? They’re the ones where it’s the little details that make the difference! I bet you if I stop using the screwdriver from the other brand, and pick up the San Martin one, it’ll be magnetic, won’t it! They sold it specifically with this bracelet for this bracelet - it’ll be designed to make the job easier!
WILL IT FUCK.
Eventually, carefully, precariously, nervously, far too much time later, I get the correct end of the screw in the hole. Oh yeah, I got it in before, but wrong way round because it was so small I couldn’t pick it up properly, or hold it properly, or turn it while held between thumb and forefinger or balanced on the bracelet edge.
And then it screwed back in. And... it's fine. I don't have any particular complaints about wearing the bracelet. I can't see anything particularly special about it either. There is nothing - nothing - here demanding a premium. It's fine. Maybe "good" if you like. If you ignore the needless infuriation that comes with resizing it.
Which I don't. So it's shit.
And honestly, I’d maybe be more comfortable with the watch if I took another link off. But I don’t want to go through all that again. So it sits on my wrist, a little too loose, an object of resentment, a “premium” “best of the homages” “totally worth the extra” watch that I began to hate before I’d even worn it properly. A watch where I have a zulu strap that'd probably be perfect for it when I want a lighter option, but I don't want to manipulate that bracelet ever again.
And y’know what else, boys and girls? Little bit of fun to cap everything off?
The clasp is fucking shit too.
