A Father’s Day Reflection on Watches, Wear, and Life

A year ago, my son gave me a Brigade Subcommander as a gift.

He handed it to me and said:

“Wear it every day for a year, then tell me what you think.”

I laughed and told him:

“I can’t do that… you know I do a lot of different stuff. I’ll beat the hell out of it.”

He just smiled.

“Yeah—that’s the idea.”

That conversation stayed with me.

Now, a year later, I understand exactly what he meant.

One Clear Question

Since this is a Father’s Day post, I’ll add a bit of life wisdom that’s been on my mind over the past year.

Life gets a lot clearer when you figure out what you actually want and start working toward it. Once you do that, you can simplify almost every decision down to one question:

Is this moving me closer to what I want… or farther away?

Because every decision does one or the other.

Every single one.

That’s how I’ve tried to live for a long time—and this past year was no different.

The Subcommander was there through all of it.

From the Mojave Desert to an Alberta Winter

It’s been on my wrist in the dusty 115-degree heat of the Mojave Desert and through the bone chilling minus-40 cold of an Alberta prairie winter.

I bounced it off carburetors, scraped it across asphalt shingles, covered it in grease, and splashed it with hydraulic fluid.

And it just keeps going.

That’s probably the thing that impressed me most about it.

No drama. No fuss. No fragility.

A quick rinse and it’s right back on my wrist—clean, sharp, and perfectly at home at a business lunch, a family function, or a night out.

Somehow, it looks just as right with rolled-up sleeves at the pistol range as it does with French cuffs at a formal event.

Very few watches can genuinely pull that off.

The Subcommander can.

Mechanical Impressions After One Year

Mechanically, I can’t say anything surprising—and honestly, that’s probably the best compliment I can give it.

It simply worked.

It kept accurate time all year long. The crown and stem seal performed perfectly. The second-hand sweep is still smooth, and every time I reset the watch, everything operated exactly as it should.

The case and bracelet aged beautifully as well.

Even after all the impacts, scrapes, and abuse, they only picked up minor scratches. Personally, I like that. A proper tool watch should look like it has actually lived a life.

The clasp still snaps shut with authority and works as smoothly as it did on day one.

The sapphire crystal surprised me the most.

There were multiple times when I smacked the crystal against something hard and immediately had that:

“OH SH**T…” moment.

Every single time, I looked down expecting to see a nasty scratch.

Every single time, I was wrong.

The crystal still looks almost new.

The lume also deserves mention. It’s bright enough to make the indices easy to read in low light without becoming overly bright or distracting.

The One Problem I Had

I did run into one issue during the year: the bezel.

For the first several months, it worked perfectly. Then one day it suddenly became extremely difficult to turn—almost completely seized.

I tried working it back and forth to loosen it up, but it barely moved.

I asked my son whether he thought I should remove the bezel and investigate the problem myself. He told me that Brigade watches are built with very tight tolerances and suggested that bezel removal was probably best left to the manufacturer.

Fair advice.

But then I realized something.

One thing I hadn’t done with this dive watch in a very long time… was actually put it in water.

There wasn’t a lake or ocean nearby, so I improvised.

I made sure the crown was screwed down tightly and submerged the watch in a sink with a few inches of water. Using a paper towel for grip, I slowly worked the bezel back and forth.

Almost immediately, a cloud of debris flushed out from underneath the bezel.

And suddenly, it loosened up.

I rinsed the watch thoroughly, dried it off, and the bezel returned to normal—smooth rotation, sharp clicks, perfect feel.

Now, I don’t know if that was the officially correct way to solve the problem.

But that's what I did and it worked extremely well for me.

I guess a dive watch likes to go swimming every once in a while.

That one was on me.

Final Thoughts

Ironically, the biggest downside of wearing the Brigade Subcommander for a full year was that I did not wear all my other watches.

I’ve spent years building a collection of mostly vintage mechanical pieces. Some are divers, others are simply unusual watches that caught my interest.

I’ll start rotating some of those back into the lineup occasionally.

But as for the everyday watch I can count on no matter what life throws at me next year?

The Brigade Subcommander has more than earned its place on my wrist.

-Rico's Father