The time has come to present a
watch from one of my most beloved brands. Let me introduce the Landsort from
Sjöö Sandström. OK, so I’m from Sweden and Sjöö Sandström is a Swedish brand. Of
course it makes me a little bias but honestly, Sjöö Sandström does make some
incredible timepieces and the Landsort is a unique creation indeed. Landsort is
an island in the Stockholm archipelago and not far from it there is an abyss measuring
459m down to the bottom; the Landsort depth – the deepest spot in the Baltic Sea.
I fell completely in love with
the Landsort when a friend and I were invited to Sjöö Sandström’s workshop in
the old town of Stockholm. From the pictures I'd seen I was expecting something huge but I was really surprised over how well it wore with its 44mm (excl. crown) which mainly depended on the absence of lugs. It is thick but just thick enough to not give
it any irregular proportions. During the Q&A I couldn’t help asking why they didn’t flip the case 180 degrees to make it
with the crown on the left side instead; a destro version. You can’t avoid noticing that the crown is a rather large detail and when being worn on the bracelet it’s
going to torture your wrist. I tried to put it in the nicest way, without being
too disrespectful of their newly launched watch, that IF they actually were aiming on
making a proper dive watch they should have built it with the crown on the left
side. All I got back was “Oh, do you think that would be a good idea? We haven’t
really thought of that.”
Six months later another
Landsort was released. The D1. And guess what? It had the crown on the left
side…
Finding a used Landsort so
close to the release date back in the summer of 2012 was close to impossible. But
then suddenly a friend (who had another friend, who had a friend, who had a friend, who apparently knew someone at Sjöö
Sandström), who didn’t even knew I was interested in the Landsort, asked me
during a watch get-together, if I by any
chance would be interested in taking over this new dive watch he’d just bought but
wasn’t very fond of, which just happened to be the Landsort. A crazy
coincidence indeed!
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| #143 - The Sjöö Sandström Landsort D2. |
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| See that rectangle under the 12 o'clock marker? A good example of a visual detail that wasn't centered. |
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| One of the first. |
It had a very low serial
number which was fun but after a while I got a little suspicious. There were so
many details that weren’t precise. What was this? A prototype? Some of the lume markers
weren't centered and the bezel felt really awkward to turn. If I’m not completely mistaken
it even had 58 or 59 clicks instead of 60. But fine, perhaps I could live with those deviations. I figured it still might be kind of cool to have one of the first ones made and especially if it had some minor production errors. Perhaps this was a future gem? But
what I couldn’t cope with was the horrible lume quality. Was this a fucking
joke or what? The lume was almost nonexistent. I was expecting this piece to fire up like a Seiko and if not it would at least glow as bright as any
other watch with C3 luminova. Boy was I mistaken or what. The indexes might as
well have been painted with ordinary white paint. I was almost beginning to
suspect I was holding a fake in my hands. It had to go. No question about it. I sold it with the hope
of someday buying another one were all those mistakes had been adjusted.
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| It was never exposed to more water than this. |
I hate being so negative about something so beautiful but I have to express my sincere and honest thoughts or this blog would be worthless and be just like any other blog reviewing watches. I can only hope that Sjöö Sandström use this information to create a better product for their dedicated fans to enjoy and love in the future.
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Flipper's Diary unless noted.
