Orient Slide Rule watch

I was dragged to London at the weekend for a family event despite my protests. Seeng as I wasn't driving there, I thought it would be a good opportunity to read up in the car how to use my Orient Slide Rule watch.

It's very underused and rarely gets any wrist time at all, I even tried to sell it a couple of years ago though didn't get much interest so I've kept it in in a draw ever since.

The dial looked a bit too complicated to fathom though it's kind of straightforward once you get your head round how it works.  I don't recall using a slide rule at school so it was all new to me though the more I read up about using the watch, the more I realised this is a seriously clever little bit of kit.  Using the inner and outer bezels you can work out multiplication, division, currency conversion, km to mile conversion and farenheit to Celsius conversion.

Aesthetically the watch is a decently built, well sized, dressy looking watch. Importantly for me, it is easy to read the time despite it's many markings on the dial. The bracelet is stainless Steel with a push release clasp. The top pusher changes the day. The sub dial at the 6 position displays the day with a little arrow, in the morning the arrow is white on a black background and in the afternoon it is a red arrow on a white background. This effectively gives the watch an am/pm function.
The crown changes both the time or date (at the 3 position) utilising a quick date set mechanism.
The bottom pusher moves the out bezel with the inner bezel always remaining static.

Here is some of the spec which I've cribbed from another website that used to retail this model:

21,600 oscillations per hour
Luminescent hands
50m water resistant
Weight - 5.51 oz
Stainless steel case
Case diameter - 41.5mm
Scratch resistant mineral crystal
Orient automatic 21 Jewell movement
45 hour power reserve

Thanks for passing on your newly found knowledge.
Amazing what you can do with a slide rule.
You have got me thinking if I have any watches that I don't know how to use all of the functions now

thats a really cool and interesting watch although slide rules are above my pay grade
i think Orient are a very underated brand and they make some very unique watches with bomb proof movements

I would be clueless how to use a slide rule but it's a fascinating complication to incorporate into a watch. Its quite large at 41.5mm, well for me anyway, but really like the look of the watch & like yourself would find it easy to quickly tell the time. I think that is one you should hold onto as it may not be easy to replace if you had second thoughts later. 

daff62 wrote:I would be clueless how to use a slide rule but it's a fascinating complication to incorporate into a watch. Its quite large at 41.5mm, well for me anyway, but really like the look of the watch & like yourself would find it easy to quickly tell the time. I think that is one you should hold onto as it may not be easy to replace if you had second thoughts later. 

Definitely a keeper now. When I went on the Web to research the watch prior to posting I noticed how hard people are finding it to do even the simplest of repairs due to the shortage of parts as this watch is now discontinued.

That's great, it has a good home. I'm sure it will get more wrist time now & you will enjoy wearing / owning the watch. 

Elwood wrote:

daff62 wrote:I would be clueless how to use a slide rule but it's a fascinating complication to incorporate into a watch. Its quite large at 41.5mm, well for me anyway, but really like the look of the watch & like yourself would find it easy to quickly tell the time. I think that is one you should hold onto as it may not be easy to replace if you had second thoughts later. 

Definitely a keeper now. When I went on the Web to research the watch prior to posting I noticed how hard people are finding it to do even the simplest of repairs due to the shortage of parts as this watch is now discontinued.  

there shouldnt be any repair issues as it uses a standard slightly modified base movement that is still available, i have got a couple of NOS ones kicking about and one is earmarked for my Mako

That's good to hear. I'd clicked on a couple of posts people had made saying the problems they'd had getting hold of the right thickness of replacement glass was causing an issue

Elwood wrote:That's good to hear. I'd clicked on a couple of posts people had made saying the problems they'd had getting hold of the right thickness of replacement glass was causing an issue

after market mineral crystal is the same as OE crystals...just a lot cheaper, all sizes and thinknesses available, yours would be around 80p

Sounds like servicing and maintaining shouldn't be a big problem then. I like the comments about Orient, fairly well made and well priced too. They've stopped making these now though they only retailed for about 140 usd, not really worth selling for what I'd expect to recoup