Polished sword hands also get a dose of the lume. I love the white frames around the mellow beige C3 SuperLuminova. It’s a fairly conventional dots-and-bars layout with a white-on-black chapter index. I sampled the matte black, but he also offers blue and sunray blue or dark gray. Under the AR-coated sapphire crystal is McDowell Time’s first sandwich dial. Maryland Watch Works is also responsible for putting together the rest of the Rockville and for conducting final quality control. Buyers can take comfort in the fact that it is a tried-and-true design. There aren’t many American-assembled mechanical movements and to my knowledge, this is the only one available for volume production. This is a brand new unit based on ETA 2824 architecture that is assembled, regulated, and tested right here in the USA – Hagerstown, Maryland to be precise. On the back, you will get to see that 7081. The coin edge is easy to grip and the bezel moves easily through its 120 clicks, albeit with a bit more backplay than I would like. I love glossy ceramic, but true bezel nirvana arrives when the insert is engraved and lumed. The upper surface of the Rockville is brushed, which makes the polished bezel and its glossy ceramic insert pop all the more. They stick out just enough to do their job without calling any undue attention to themselves. The crown guards are similarly restrained. It is big enough to meet the “operate with gloves” test necessary for a proper drive watch, but not so large that it needs its own zip code. Speaking of scale, McDowell did it right when he designed the signed, screw-down crown. You would think those sheer sides would make it show every millimeter, but it actually seems much thinner because the mirror polish draws your attention to the 5.5mm midcase and blurs your sense of scale. It is 13mm thick, which is hardly fat and in fact, allows the Rockville to slide easily under a buttoned shirt cuff.
These tidy dimensions are good for all but the thickest wrists and particularly nice for folks like me who are only about 6.75″ around the wristbone. Both watches share the same 40mm wide, 46.5mm long Sub-style case. This is a good thing because the Wanderer is excellent. If the Rockville may seem a bit familiar to McDowell Time fans and that’s because it shares much with the Wanderer Limited Edition collaboration he did with Rockville rock band, O.A.R.
That said, I’ll always let him – and you – know if there is something I don’t like about his watches. As longtime readers already know, Bill is a buddy of mine and my partner in the annual District Time DC watch show. Brand founder Bill McDowell let me play with this black dial model for my review. Today, McDowell Time opened pre-orders for the Rockville, a mid-sized, 300m diver with the new and exciting MWW 7081 automatic movement inside.
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