H2O Watch OceanicTime 8’000M AMBER ABYSS + Titanium Pack

H2O Watch is celebrating its 10th Anniversary by breathing new life into one of its most iconic models of the past ten years, the OceanicTime 8’000M. OceanicTime & H2O Watch have formed a lifelong friendship over the past decade with the small German company (who have literally become a world-leader in the field of extreme water-resistance for mechanical wristwatches) producing several incredible watches for OceanicTime. Just one of the ways in which H2O Watch will be celebrating this important milestone is with a small run of a “final edition” of the OceanicTime 8’000M (based on the Kalmar 2) with a bold new look thanks to an orange-lumed ceramic bezel and bright orange custom rubber strap.

I addition to this – H2O Watch will include a very cool gift for each the AMBER ABYSS customers with the inclusion of a TITANIUM PACK which includes: 

a beautiful Titanium writing instrument as well as unique credit card-sized heat-anodized Titanium warranty-card made by a leading German knife-maker – the very same one that shipped with the OG Kalmar back in 2011 - all delivered in a high-quality leather pouch big enough for 3 watches.

Let’s get straight to the watch’s dimensions: The case has a diameter of 42.5mm, the bezel a diameter of 44mm while the overall-length is 53.4mm and the total thickness of the watch (including the crystal) is just 21.60mm.

One of the contributing factors that allowed H2O to engineer this watch with such a modest thickness in relation to its WR, was the use of Grade 5 Titanium, which has been used for the main case and its components. 

Grade 5 Titanium consists of 6% Aluminum and 4% Vanadium and has a considerably higher strength than Titanium Grade 2 or Stainless Steel 316L. It has an excellent combination of both strength and corrosion-resistance.

Titanium Grade 2 (by comparison) is more commonly used in watch-making as it is not so damaging to case-making machinery and so is easier and less expensive to work with. Titanium Grade 5 however is far more tricky and costly to produce. 

Usually, if a watch-maker advertises the use of Titanium, it is likely Titanium Grade 2 unless otherwise stated. If they are using G5, you can bet that they will make a point of telling you as it is far more special!

Diver’s features include: an automatic Helium Escape Valve (9 o’clock), a Titanium Grade 5 Ti divers bezel with a black ceramic inlay and orange luminous dive-time-scale, a solid screw-down Grade 5 Ti case-back and an 8mm OT diver signed screwdown crown. Pressure-resistance is up to 800 bar, the equivalent of 8’000 meters. Testing was conducted by a leading German research company that is the only facility of its type in Germany capable of pressure testing to 4’000 bar! Along with a 7mm thick Titanium Grade 5 case-back, a 8.25mm thick, slightly domed Sapphire crystal helped the watch resist the enormous pressures that were endured during testing - while giving the watch a nice clean look and offering an undistorted view of the dial, below. The dial is in a high-gloss deep-black. While it incorporates the Kalmar’s hallmark chromed double hour markers, it has been designed to be minimal with the deletion of all minute markers, date and text. Complementing the hour markers are the H2O cresting wave logo and the OceanicTime Diver icon in chrome. Bright gloss-orange ‘8000M’ text makes a bold statement about the watch’s incredible depth-rating while echoing the color of the prominent minute hand. All hands and markers are filled with BGW9 SLN. The AMBER ABYSS is available for a limited time and in limited numbers from H2O Watch’ ONLINE shop priced 799euros.

Thoughts? My thanks to Clemens Helberg, the founder of H2O Watch for all the fantastic collaborations that we have worked on over the past decade; it has been a privilege and an honor. Here’s to the next ten years!