There are some watches that I own that I would struggle to live without, and the Precista PRS-2 “Dreadnought” is one of them. For those of you who are not familiar with this watch, it was designed and developed by a chap called Eddie Platts at his home in Sheffield, UK almost 20 years ago now. Eddie’s inspiration was to design a watch from scratch that was not only built to a high specifiaction but also offered “exceptional value for money”. The first drawings of the PRS-2 were made in January 2002 and 18 months later the watch was released. It was named “Dreadnought’ after Britain’s first nuclear submarine.
This was very much a group project, driven by Eddie but taking on board suggestions from the membershp of the TZ-UK watch forum. Although Eddie had the final say in all things, he was always keen to hear the forum members comments and regularly asked for feedback from them regarding design and specification. In this way the watch evolved during it’s development, taking inspiration from some iconic watches along the way, but nothing about this watch was “off the shelf”. When it was announced that reservations were being taken the entire compliment of 200 watches sold out within the first 48 hours.
The specification of the watch was indeed exceptional considering the original asking price of £450 GBP. The movement was an upgraded ETA2824-2T (Top) with decoration, and chronometer rated to DIN standard by Dirk Dornbleuth. The case was manufactured for the watch by Walter Fricker in 316L stainless steel (with a solid link stainless steel bracelet with solid end pieces, diver’s extension and screwed removable links). The watch was pressure tested to 500m and protected from magnetic fields to 30000 A/m, and was fitted with a domed sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating on the underside. The original finish was bead blasted, and I love it like this, but I have seen examples that have been polished or brushed by their owners.
Over the years the Dreadnought has developed something of a cult following with collectors. It was hugely important in illustrating that a high quality watch could be produced at a fraction of the cost charged by some of the major players in the market, and as a result it inspired the foundation of many “micro brands” who attempted to do the same. I wasn’t lucky enough to be one of the original 200 customers, but bought mine a few years later from one of the original 200. In my collection there are probably 5 watches that I will never part with happily, and my PRS2 Dreadnought is one of them.
In my opinion the watch looks fabulous on the bracelet, but there is no getting away from the fact that it is heavy, weighing in at 265gms with the bracelet. This is the only issue I have with the watch, and for this reason I tend to wear mine on leather most of the time. Recently I fancied a change and so decided I’d make something new for it. Because of the heft of the watch it needed to be something substantial so I decided on Horween Nut Brown with dark brown stitching. I think it works very well.
If anyone reading this wants to read a little more about the PRS2 Dreadnought, the following site is interesting – http://www.prs2dreadnought.com, along with the early posts about the watch in the TZ-UK watch forum
