I grew up in Florida with little to no exposure to watches. Then one day I encountered something that caught my eye. We all remember that moment. The rest is history (which is usually something you only say when legendary things happen). However, this lead to me spending the following decade pursuing watchmaking with everything I had in order to acquire the knowledge and skills to design and produce the watch that you see advertised on this very website.

I used to be an artist and would draw cars for local exotic car owners. I had a reoccurring customer who had ordered a few drawings from me of his Ferraris and I looked up to him simply because I was a teenager and he owned the cars I wanted. I knew nothing about watches at the time. Not even the difference between quartz and mechanical. So when I wondered what type of watch someone like him would wear, I could only take mental snapshots of the watch on his wrist and when I got home I searched and searched until I found it online. It was an AP Bumblebee Offshore and when I saw the price (which I'm completely desensitised to at this point) my jaw hit the floor and that was the very moment I started asking the questions that lead me deep into this rabbit hole. Mainly, how these watches are made and how they work. I knew I had to pursue this professionally but first, college.

I attended Florida Gulf Coast University and studied business and as it turns out, as much as I didn’t want to be there, the higher education made it much easier for me to get international Visas as I would soon learn would be very important to the journey of learning watchmaking. I dreamt of watchmaking in all of my college courses until I found a school nearby in Miami. The Nicolas G. Hayek School of Watchmaking was taking students for their 2015/2016 WOSTEP 3000 course. I drove down there and conducted all of the necessary practical and written tests and was chosen for the coming semester from a large pool of applicants. It was here that I learned how much I truly love this craft.

I barely graduated and was eager to start what I was truly passionate about. We started with micro-mechanics. The cornerstone of watchmaking. I was like a sponge. I was not necessarily the best but definitely the most eager to learn amongst the 8 students. Over the next two years I would learn a lot of skills that would help me accomplish this goal of producing something truly of my own. That is an important factor to understand. It wasn’t just making “something.” I had to make everything or it didn’t feel like an accomplishment.

After school I decided to contact people in Germany and found they were very welcoming and in need of young craftsman and would even take someone that didn’t yet speak their language. I was taken in by Dirk Dornblüth of D. Dornblüth und Sohn who I apprenticed for a year in the small town of Kalbe. I have the upmost respect for Dirk. He is a humble watchmaker achieving more than a lot of known names and yet he doesn’t ask for much for one of his timepieces. I slowly picked up on the language but still struggled as I considered looking for more opportunities.

After a year of producing watches with Dirk, I relocated to Cologne, Germany where I went into restoration and complications at Atelier Suché. It is here where I encountered many high quality watch movements from many different time periods and slowly honed in on a design of my own that would reflect the quality that I found throughout the hundreds of watches I had restored.

In 2017 I started designing the watch that you see now but it didn’t look quite like it does now… I met a collector who was betting on me to succeed. We agreed on a project cost and basically shook hands and I began. I struggled to design and even find someone to help with CAD. I finally had some parts manufactured in the United States but all were unusable and the money spent was already a large portion of the project cost.  A few years of a lot of failing upwards happened and eventually I accepted defeat but knew either the money was owed or a watch. I couldn’t live with myself knowing the dream has died due to my failure. So in 2022 I revisited the project and slowly started to learn how to respect watchmaking. And even when you respect watchmaking, you will be humbled but I went from a roughly 20% success rate when sitting down at my bench and slowly started to increase that success rate with sheer perseverance and patience.

On top of this, I decided for some reason to go all or nothing by redesigning some key components within my watch. The case was now redesigned to have no visible screws and removable triple-stepped lugs, the movements was already complicated enough for a three-handed watch but then decided to make the world’s first birdcage pinions as well as a square balance wheel with a newly designed free sprung inertia system and the dial was redesigned to include 15 individual components and a more complicated hand design. If I was going to make a watch, it better be the best three-handed watch anyone has ever seen (or at least one that I believed was the best I had ever seen). And, for someone who has never worn a watch, something that I would be proud to wear.

In 2023 I met a few key craftsman who would help me complete the CAD design and precision machine some components. The rest was always up to me to complete. I am roughly 70% completed with this current prototype and you can see me and my successes and failures on Instagram @peterelliotglomb. Upon completing the prototype I will build a precision CNC machine which will allow me to produce everything in-house (currently the precision machining of the listed CNC components is outsourced to @edumerc).

This watch is not just for me. It’s for all of those who ever wanted to make a watch and doubted themselves. I doubted myself and nearly quit many times but I’m here to say, you can do it and if you ever need guidance or help, give me a shout.