Issue 214: The Best Of The Fourth Wheel (Part 2)
Picking fights, interviewing incredible people and delivering honest analysis
Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that has never been that comfortable with the transient nature of online publishing. Strange, really, but there you go - I write here because it has many advantages, but one of the main problems with the internet is that while a great deal of work survives, we so rarely revisit it.
So this is my invitation to you: bookmark this page - do people still bookmark things? Or is it becoming as anachronistic as its name implies? - and come back to it whenever you need something new to read. I’ll be back with fresh content next week.
The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!
Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:
Live from London Watch Week
In case you missed it - since that’s very much the theme of this week’s newsletter anyway - please enjoy this conversation between me and Bremont’s CEO Davide Cerrato, recorded last month.
The Best Of The Fourth Wheel, Issues 101-200
Call me biased but I found it a lot harder whittling this half of my archive down to a manageable number of highlights; the first half may have had more scandals and more scattergun humour, but in the last couple of years I think I’ve got better at making TFW less reactive, the upshot of which is that more of the back catalogue merits revisiting.
It also dawned on me that this was the period when I really started to walk into fights - I have left out the newsletters that pissed off Ben Clymer, Wei Koh, TAG Heuer and others precisely because they were reactive, but should you wish to go back and find them, you’re looking for Issue 124, Issue 107 and Issue 186 respectively. Oops, did I just link to them? Oh well.
Elsewhere there are a few newsletters that I can’t believe didn’t provoke an acidic response, a few flights of fancy - the gastronomy of watches is perhaps up there with the moonphase face analysis - and quite a few more interviews and factory visits, which happily speaks to the fact that TFW has become a bit more recognised as the years have gone on.
Until the end of next week I will be removing the paywalls on these linked articles; there is also no paywall on this week’s newsletter. If you like what you see, you know what to do.
My interview with Jean-Francois Mojon, founder of Chronode and probably one of the most unsung talents in the watch world today.
An interview of a very different kind, with meme-king Horological Dicktionary, conducted under complete anonymity. Back then, this felt like a real eye-opener; these days, social media humour has almost entirely dried up and HD seems to have run its course.
Hall’s Gastronomy Of Watchmaking, i.e. a light-hearted look at all the food and drink related watches out there.
Minerva, which is well on its way to becoming its own brand even if it is no nearer to ditching the idea that inverting your movement is an interesting USP, is a fascinating place to visit. I learned a lot, but focussed this newsletter on hairsprings as it is one of the few places to make its own.
My attempt at a definitive text on water resistance.
As per the title: a great chat with a lovely person about something we all find interesting, from a very honest perspective. She talks about working with Tasaki, mainstream trends, staying out of the limelight and teaching the next generation of designers.
Rummaging through TAG Heuer’s archive and museum. Brilliant fun.
And my thoughts on the watch-car brand partnerships that I’d love to see.
And five things that have improved in the last few years.
This time, I knew I was picking a fight.
My analysis of perpetual calendar design standards. Some of them are awful.
I will never start a watch brand, and you can quote me on that. But if I did…
Swatch vs Steven Wood, round one.
Why the beautiful game struggles to produce beautiful watches.
A year on, I would be very interested to know if you think this still holds up, or how the landscape has changed.
My in-depth brand analysis on Chopard, from Happy Diamonds to LUC.
Thirty-six hours in Switzerland to see the RD#5 and a few other things.
The conversation around AI is evolving all the time, so a nine-month old article might feel ancient - but I think the basic arguments are still germane.
A no-holds-barred take on the brand that should be the engine room of Richemont’s watch division, but just isn’t firing the way it should.
The interviewee with the smallest public profile, which generated more comments and debate than any other Q&A I’ve ever published. Narbel represents true expertise, and what he said was uncompromising and uncomfortable.
Argument-bait. Go on, try and resist.
Coincidence that this came not long after profiling IWC? No. But it goes a lot further.
Simple and effective. One of the most read newsletters I’ve ever written.
Visiting Mr Jones watches, a company I ignored out of snobbery despite it being five minutes from my house. Needless to say, my opinion was changed.
In my humble opinion the best ‘old-school feature’ I’ve written, i.e. an article that you’d hope to find in any of the better mainstream watch titles.
I went to Corum’s grand revival, and was not entirely convinced by what I saw.
The next day, I went to Dominique Renaud, and my god was I a lot more convinced.
That’s it folks. A whole lot of homework for you to catch up on. I hope you go back and find something you missed, whether you agree with it or not. I loved writing every one of these (and the ones I didn’t include, of course) and if even only a handful of you go back to them as a result of this, I’ll be happy.
And Finally…
I’ve been on the beach most of the week. So ‘and finally’ can wait. If the watch world has done anything stupid, or amazing, I’ll get back to talking about it next week, when hopefully I’ll have the bandwidth for a podcast.
See you next week,
Chris
Woo hoo! Weekend reading is sorted!
And thank you for not shirking from fight club! It’s richly deserved in those cases and we thank you for baring your knuckles when it’s appropriate 🙏🍻
Damn, damn, damn--why on earth didn't I subscribe sooner??? So much great stuff here. Sure, I know there's an archive, but going there is overwhelming. Like setting out to read all 1001 Tales of the Arabian Nights. But getting one each week? Fabulous!
I particularly loved the deep dive (bad pun intended, of course) on water resistance. My own take is much different: since there's no way for me to know the condition of the gaskets in any of my watches, and even if they're relatively new and rated for 200+M WR, I take them off before I go into the pool. 'Cause if there's any little tiny opening anywhere, water will get in and...bye bye watch, hello expensive repair.