Black Badger's James Thompson On Joy, Grit, And Building Watches That Don’t Ask Permission

The watch world loves a good story. We love a good material even more. James “Black Badger” Thompson drops by to unpack how real experimentation beats borrowed heritage, and why joy—yes, actual fun—belongs on the wrist. From a tongue-in-cheek “Saturday morning hero” collab to blasting an AI theme song at Geneva, he shows how play fuels rigor when you’re willing to push past the safe zone.

James walks us through the gritty side of independent watchmaking: pulverizing slate to recast stronger stone dials, isolating pigment from blue mussel shells to create the lavender Havender, and learning the hard way when magnesium meets salt and when Inconel eats tooling for breakfast. He argues for storytelling with receipts—provenance that adds value instead of stealing clout—and explains why some artifacts, like a McLaren P1 test engine or wood from HMS Victory, should be admired, not machined.

We get personal about boundaries and burnout, too. Hyper-access almost turned the bench into a help desk; stepping back from rings helped him show up as a parent and a maker. Along the way, we explore Arcanaut’s garage-band ethos, lume as a legitimate canvas, the myth of “wearability” versus delight, and the reality that originality is expensive, uncomfortable, and worth it. If you’re a collector tired of sunset embargoes and press-trip gloss, or a creative searching for permission to get weird, this conversation offers both a compass and a dare.

Hit play, then tell us: what material would you turn into meaning if no one could say no? If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more curious makers can find us.

Show James some love here:

https://www.instagram.com/blackbadger/

https://www.blackbadger.se/

https://arcanaut.watch/

Transcript

Setting The Stage: Meet Black Badger

Speaker 0:00

Where's my screen thing here?

Blake Rea 0:02

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode here of the Lonely Wrist. I am your host, as always, Blake Ray. And every now and again, we invite somebody on who reminds us why we care about watches. Not for hype, not for trends, but just for general creativity. Today's guest is James Thompson, James Thompson, founder of Black Badger and the co-owner of Arconaut, a design, a designer known for pushing materials, textures, and just, well, watches past what we would call the safe zone. James does not make watches to please everybody, but he does make them with intent. And in doing so, he helps redefine what independent watchmaking can look like and feels like. So today we're going to talk materials over marketing, experimentation over comfort, and what it means to build watches that don't ask for permission. Everybody, please welcome James Thompson, uh, Black Badger and Arcanaut to the show.

James Thompson 1:02

Hi. What's up? That was a that that was a fantastic intro. That uh I fear I fear you've set the bar too high already.

Blake Rea 1:10

So that was what I had to write. When we were texting, I was like, okay, this is what I have to write. I have to write something, you know.

James Thompson 1:16

Like I mean, if you wrote that, then it seems a little disingenuous, to be honest. Does it?

Blake Rea 1:22

Yeah, it wasn't really. I mean, you're not saying you're not saying you didn't write it. I wrote it. It's not like you said, hey Blake, here, like use this.

James Thompson 1:30

Yeah, I sent you my official Black Badger press kit.

Blake Rea 1:34

I if you if you did, I didn't get it. I didn't get it. So I gotta ask. I mean, you're clearly wearing one of your watches. Show me, uh show me what you got.

James Thompson 1:45

I currently wearing, and I obviously just put it on just now because I've been in the workshop here making a god-awful mess today, but that is the recent micro mill spec Black Badger collaboration, which was called Project Sabotage. And this was based on the ridiculously successful micro mill spec milgraph that they did from last year. And then basically I got invited on board to destroy things, just to kind of put them out of their comfort zone a little bit, which is literally what feeds my kids, just messing with other people's brands and such. What made this really fun was that micro mil spec, as the name suggests, is really quite a legit military watch brand. They're from Norway, and the Milgraph, if I'm not mistaken, was their first civilian available watch. Usually everything else they've done is they would sort of do collaborations

Project Sabotage And The Cartoon Hero

James Thompson 2:45

with various military units all over the world. So this was the first kind of publicly available one, the the Milgraph. So when I got invited to get my scummy fingerprints all over it, we we just swung for the fences. And I would say that's about as much fun as I've ever had with a product launch anywhere in my career. It was it was like summer camp. It was just brilliant.

Blake Rea 3:10

What made what made it so fun? And and what and what inspired the collab?

Speaker 1 3:14

The dork factor is what made it so fun. I I had actually honestly it was. I mean, I I had complained a couple times that nobody ever introduces me as James Thompson. It's always Black Badger, like it's some kind of superhero alter ego thing. And and I I have never walked up to somebody and said, hi, I'm Black Badger, because that would make me an idiot. So with this, we decided to really kind of flip that on its head and lean into it. So instead, we actually said, Well, what if Black Badger was a Saturday morning cartoon action hero? What would he look like? What would he wear? What would his how would his persona be? We didn't want to do a watch inspired by that. We wanted to do this is the watch that the character in situ in that show would be, would be wearing. And a couple of the guys within Mike Romillspec, in particular, an absolutely brilliant young guy named Alexander Kadim, works within the Nordic film industry. So we actually had this entire skill set of why don't we make a movie poster for the watch? And then why don't we actually write a whole world in which this watch inhabits? Like it's it was so over the top, and I would say, I don't want to say unnecessary, because that sounds really kind of jaded, but in the realm of a Swiss watch brand, it was pointless. In the realm of the new Nordics, it was absolutely fantastic. I haven't wrote a theme song for the for the Saturday morning cartoon of Black. Oh yeah. I mean, it was just the the nerd factor was through the roof. But it was fun. Sorry, go ahead.

Blake Rea 5:01

No, no, no, you go, please, please, please.

Speaker 1 5:05

I'll send you the song over later. It was just, it was just the stupidest thing ever. But it was so on brand for this project. I think a lot of people really related to it. So when we were at Geneva Watch Days, I was there with I was there with Mike Gramil spec for a couple of days showing the watch and sort of interviewing about it. And I was so proud of this goofy theme song that I made that I was like forcing journalists to listen to it. Like people were trying to leave. They're like, okay, cool, we have to go talk to Hublo in a few minutes. I'm like, no, no, no, hang on, hang on. And I'm trying to bring up the file on my phone. And I'm standing there in the hotel of like the Bo Rivage in the in the hallway of the hotel, blasting this idiotic, synth-heavy, sort of AI-generated theme song. And yeah, I I chased journalists away for most of the week that I was there. That's what you're supposed to do. That's what we're supposed to do. And there needs to be more of that. I mean, yeah. As as soon as you realize that nobody expects you to take yourself that seriously, it's pretty liberating. And that actually becomes kind of a superpower.

Blake Rea 6:08

Yeah.

Speaker 1 6:09

We're not Swiss and we're not sorry.

Blake Rea 6:12

It sounds like it just opens you up into having something creative beyond the product, you know, which is something that is refreshing for all creative people. You know, you have this weird little sandbox that you're supposed to stay within, right? And and usually all that's inside of it is sand. But you know, you can pull dirt and and terror from outside and mix it, and you know what I mean? Like, yeah.

Speaker 1 6:39

Well, and I mean to to continue that analogy, I I never got into the sandbox in the first place because I'm not Swiss. I'm Canadian living in Sweden. I'm I wouldn't call myself a watch design. I might call myself a watch designer now, but that's only very recently. Yeah. You know, I mean, I I use all these different projects purely for for entertainment, and a lot of it's entertaining myself, but also I don't want people to just be financially interested in these pieces and these projects. I think we're allowed to be entertained by these things. Things can make you smile, and that's not a negative. That's not taking attention away from you know, quote unquote, the more important things, as our parents would say. This this is the important thing. Just put a little bit of joy in the world. I mean, why the hell not? Yeah.

Blake Rea 7:34

Yeah. So let's let's wind the clock back a bit, no pun intended, but you started off in was it it was jewelry, right? And kind of more material science. And and and so how how did you like take this step into horology?

Speaker 1 7:54

Material science without the science, I think, is very important. Material experimentation, material mistakes. I I have absolutely no science, absolutely no scientific background whatsoever, no engineering background, and I do not ever intend to put out there that I do. I I come from a product design background. I did a I did a master's degree in industrial design, flunked out of two really crappy design schools to get into a really good one here in Sweden. And I've just always been interested in stuff, not just decorating, not just making happy shapes and colors, but for me, what something is made of, I think is a really, really interesting and rewarding way to sort of have that in your storytelling toolbox. You know, I think a really nice analogy. I'm

Storytelling Over Hype In Watchmaking

Speaker 1 8:45

just looking around what's on my desk here. You know, just some random hunk of metal. This little component that's sitting here that came to me yesterday is maybe not the sexiest thing in the world. But that actually came from the McLaren Formula One team, and that's off of Lando Norris's car. And I'm probably gonna put some pencils in it later or something. And it, that story, I can choose if I'm gonna tell you that story. The object on its own is kind of cool and is kind of tech looking. But that second level of, well, this is actually a race-used component from the McLaren MCL37 car, suddenly now a percentage of the people watching just leaned in a lot closer to the screen and got excited about it. And that's really something that I enjoy. But it's it's gotta be honest and it's gotta be your story to tell. I tend to grump a lot about brands that are telling somebody else's story that just seems kind of pointless.

Blake Rea 9:47

Yeah, I mean, you're starting to see brands that are like learning how to kind of like romanticize their products through design, right? And then they use they use heritage to kind of further romanticize the agenda. Oh, well, this this design comes from 1969 and and and da-da-da-da-da.

Speaker 1 10:11

Like and they throw around a couple cool German-sounding names. Oh, it was designed by Helmut Burmach in 1970. Who cares? Who cares? That's that's their story to tell. I think you could definitely have references. I think you can definitely have arch architectural or design references or auto sports references. But it it needs to make sense and it needs to add value, and you need to add value to something. Uh if I took this piece of the car and just laser engraved a black badger logo on it and sold it for 500 bucks, what the hell's the point? What have I actually added to this?

Blake Rea 10:50

Yeah.

Speaker 1 10:50

So a lot of brands that will be boasting about our dial is made of titanium from the a space station or uh some kind of cool stealth bomber fighter ninja jet, whatever. It's like that's cool on its own. I would like to have I've got some pieces of that stuff, like it's cool on its own. I'm not gonna cut it in half and make a pencil sharpener out of it. That's not gonna add anything of any value to it, other than I would basically just be borrowing the cool from that product that it already has. And at that point, that's one of my absolute pet peeves. That's like somebody bragging about a card that their mom or dad bought. You know, oh, I borrowed my mom's new Jaguar. I'm such a big shot. Yeah, she bought it, not you.

Blake Rea 11:35

What the the watch community is a weird one because like a watch brand will essentially just release a new dial color, and then like people will praise the brand for like coming out with like a white dial or like a different different shade of blue, and then you know, all the all the journalists just jump jump onto it, and it's like, all right, all right. If if you ever wanted manufactured hype, here it is, you know.

Speaker 1 12:02

It's it's it goes back to this disingenuous kind of vibe. And I don't mean to sound sort of cynical and jaded. But there's a lot of times you'll hear like some new watch, not gonna name any names, but you know bloody well who I mean, will announce some fantastic new watch and they'll fly 50 journalists to this beachfront resort on the other side of the world where they go fishing and diving and have this fantastic, sexy adventure. And then, you know, the day of the embargo, everyone starts showing all these beautiful sunset views of this new watch. And it's like, what are the odds that anyone's gonna say, uh, you know it's kind of a piece of shit? You know, it's okay, but it's overpriced, and I like the orange blon better or whatever. It's it's absolutely buying hype. And I don't I don't know if clients are into that anymore. I think people are jaded enough with not being invited to these fancy things that why does the journalist who gets paid to say nice things about your brand, why do they get flown to the other side of the world and having dinner with fucking DePesh Mode or whoever it is, or all these fantastic like like I'm thinking back to the days of Basel World. And I went there, one of the first years I went there was with MBNF. And I thought I was hot shit. And for about 20 minutes I was. I was really convinced that this was the biggest thing ever. And every journalist or blogger, I wouldn't say it was more bloggers, because the actual journalists were on like a press tour, they had actual work to do. Sort of in the early days of blogs and stuff, I would couldn't get into any of the parties because nobody knew who the hell I was, and my last name wasn't Rolex or anything. So I couldn't get into anywhere. And the next day I would be seeing all these Instagram posts from people saying, Oh, yeah, the the Hublow party at the Ferrari boutique with Metallica and Dafpuncture was fun last night. And I'm like sitting in my hotel room with a pepperoni stick and a can of beer, going, This is the luxury watch industry right here.

Blake Rea 14:07

I would have been pissed as hell if I didn't get an invite to it's absolutely sour grapes. It's absolutely sour grapes, but yeah, I would cost the cost of that comes from somewhere, right? Oh, yeah, from the consumer. Yeah, yeah.

Material Experimentation Without The Science

Blake Rea 14:20

I'd be pissed as hell if I didn't get an invite to Daft Punk. Like, right? I don't care. I don't care about the watches anymore. Like, let me just go here, Daft Punk, you know.

Speaker 1 14:29

I think I think it was one of the last years at at Basel. Depeche Mode was there on the Hublow booth, and this is huge in the Depeche Mode. And I found out about it like three days later, and I was just so disappointed in my place in the industry that I didn't even warrant uh well, boo hoo.

Blake Rea 14:50

Yeah, yeah, you you gotta you gotta write about watches to get those invites, and I I get those invites every here here and again. And it's funny because you know you just mentioned like one of these like brand excursions, and and some of my friends right now are like on the excursion right now, a similar event where they're I don't I don't even know where they're at, but you know, they're they're doing it up and training with Filipino Navy SEALs and the surf and all this kind of a part a part of me is like, oh, that's cool that they get to go, right? But then a part of me is like that goes again that does that doesn't fit my agenda, you know. Like, first of all, I'd rather be home with my family, like more importantly, than on some some brand trip. And then like, you know, I don't really talk about products as much because everybody seems to do that, right? And and if I could put my own perspective on how I view the the industry and the and the journalistic uh platform in the watch industry, because everybody's talking about products, this release, that release. It's like the same people are just writing it after release, they're waiting for for somebody to release a new watch for them to make content. And you know, I think there's there's more of a subculture to be like discussed where we talk about like the community, like buying decisions, collecting decisions, like strategy, like there's this whole subculture that people aren't aren't giving love to and there are and there are blogs and there are communities that that absolutely cover that.

Speaker 1 16:22

And I think those need to be completely championed and and and celebrated. But it's kind of the ones that just they repost press releases and get to go on sailboats.

Blake Rea 16:37

Yeah, you you're gonna we're gonna have to stop real quick, but no, so that item that came from the McLaren, you have you have a relationship with Lando, don't you? Is that do I understand that correctly? Because I see him sweet tender lover do doing this or something on your Instagram.

Speaker 1 16:53

Yeah. So I I got to be good friends with a a British painter, a guy named Paul Oz, who does these spectacular kind of 3D oil paintings. And he's huge into F1. So he does like all the sort of helmet poses and and all these uh of Lewis Hamilton and Verstappen and all the champions. And he's become so popular that a couple years ago, I think it was I think it was Jensen Button actually brought him to the Monaco Grand Prix, and he was doing a live painting on his yacht while the race was going on and all this. So I got to be buddies with so I got to be buddies with Paul, and we exhibited together at a show in England about probably at least 10 years ago now, a little more. And through him, let's see, I'm gonna get all my histories trader. Paul, Paul's quite tight with McLaren, and he's tight with a lot of the F1 teams, but specifically McLaren. He's done a couple bronze life-size statues that are actually on the boulevard at NTC at the McLaren factory. I mean, he's done one of Senna, he's done one, I think he did one of Nicki Lauda as well. I mean, the guy's just massive. So I had done a ring a couple years ago that had blue and orange loom in it, and I had just posted a picture of the ring, and I got all sorts of little McLaren bits around here. And I just had that sitting in the background because they were running the vintage golf racing library for Monaco Grand Prix. And I think it was maybe about four or five years ago when Lando was on the team with dinner Ricciardo, Ricardo, excuse me. And I just sort of post tagged them both in the picture saying, ha ha, you know, you guys need to get one of these. And bloody Paul shoots me a text message like 10 minutes later saying, Can you overnight one of these rings to me? Like I'm going to the McLaren factory on Monday and I'll I'll give it to the guys. And bloody hell he did. And like two weeks later, I think I'm on the bus, you know, with my crapper, crappy 7-Eleven to go coffee cup sitting on the bus. And my and my Instagram starts beeping that I've got instant messages. It's fucking Lando got his ring, and he's and he's sending me messages saying, dude, this thing's amazing. Thank you so much. This is great. I want to, I want to get a bunch of these for my family, and I want to, you know, thanks. And this is great, and I can't wait to show it off. And so we had this a couple of really nice chats back and forth. And he sent me a picture that he took of his hand, like in the back of the car wherever he was, just showing the ring on it. So I asked him, Is it okay if I put this picture on my on my Instagram? He says, Yeah, yes, of course. And overnight I got something like 3,000 new followers on Instagram. Shit. But they were all like horny 15-year-old girls that are like this this massive Lando Norris, he's so dreamy fan base. So it was fun. But at the same time, like, what are the odds one of these girls is gonna buy a $20,000 watch?

Speaker 3 19:46

Like, ah.

Speaker 1 19:48

But sort of through that, I've kind of I've kind of found a bit of a back a bit of a back door into the company because I know nothing about cars. I don't even have a driver's license. But sort of through that and through a couple kind of parallel relationships, I got to be good friends with Frank Stephenson, who was the design chief of McLaren, who designed the P1. So I think I was over there maybe four times a couple of years ago on various kind of sneaky black ops under the table kinds of projects, to the point that they actually sent me the complete engine from a P1, which is up on the shelf over there. And it was one of the original track test engines where they're like, this engine blew out, you know, doing 300 kilometers an hour. Can you make something cool of it? This is the perfect example of what am I gonna do to this thing to make it cooler than it is? This is the McLaren P1 track test engine. What's a fat Canadian pushing 50 gonna do to this thing that's gonna make it cooler than it already is? Nothing. So it's sitting in the corner, and I just kind of look at it like a painting and just kind of admire it.

Blake Rea 20:59

So sometimes it's not about what you do with it, but just the fact that you're able to kind of break this up and share it with the world. That's the cool factor. Let me see if I can lift this without having to hernia.

Speaker 1 21:14

Oh here we go. Hell yeah. That's out of the P1. That is heavy, heavy ass.

Blake Rea 21:23

Yeah, I mean, just the fact that you can even share that with the world, you know. Like, that's the cool factor. Not what you can do with it, but the fact that you get to do something with it.

Speaker 1 21:35

Yeah. I wouldn't, I wouldn't dare do anything with that because that would just be sacrilege. You know, it'd be like cutting cutting up a religious artifact to make uh a drink a drink coaster or something. And I I'm absolutely guilty of doing crappy stuff like that. But certain certain relationships come along and they just elevate what you're able to do and what you're able to get exposed to. So the McLaren one absolutely is a is a force multiplier. And I've just got piles of little bits around here that have that have shown up over the years. So whenever I'm trying to clean up, like I need to do a massive cleanup now, and I look around the studio and like every little bolt, it's like, oh nope, that's off of the Concord or something. I can't throw that out or it's like important. Yeah, so that's why this place is a complete mess.

Blake Rea 22:26

I think that's a perfect, a perfect segue into just your brand, Black Badger, if we can call it a brand, is more it sounds more like like like Dex. I used to watch Dexter's Laboratory as a kid.

Speaker 1 22:43

I I know Dexter, but I don't

Heritage Borrowing And Manufactured Buzz

Speaker 1 22:45

know Dexter's Laboratory.

Blake Rea 22:46

Oh, really? Oh, you should, oh, you should uh it's it's just a cartoon, right? And it was like this young little like scientist, and he would go in there and make all this crate, like you know, under his house. Like he would go, his parents had no idea that he was like a mad scientist.

Speaker 1 23:02

And like okay, I was thinking like Dexter, like the serial killer show.

Blake Rea 23:07

No, no, no. This is like a cartoon.

Speaker 1 23:10

That's a messed up cartoon, dude.

Blake Rea 23:12

No, no, no. This one is uh he essentially is just like uh like a like a like uh like a little chit chit kid genius, and like he would like go there and make all this crazy technology, and yeah, okay. And he would he would trick his whole family as to like how or why or how things happened, and like he had these weird little gadgets.

Speaker 1 23:30

You should you should definitely go watch it. For me, when when I had to when I was applying to get into my first design school in Vancouver, a place called the Emily Carr Institute, and it was about 1999. You had to do this really pretentious juried interview to get in, along with your portfolio and all your work samples and stuff. And they were asking you all these, like, what's your favorite architectural movement? And name three design. And every everyone's quoting Nietzsche and Le Corbusier and all this kind of really high flight stuff. And I said my biggest design influence was the coyote from the Roadrunner cartoons. Oh, yeah. Right? Because he would like strap himself to a missile and just totally cock it up, and there'd be this nuclear cloud explosion and death. And he would come crawling out of the hole like on fire and go over to a blackboard and change like a four to like a five and then try it again. That's me. I I basically that is kind of what I do and what I was doing earlier today, actually, now that I think of it, but yeah, milling magnesium and trying not to have it burn my studio down.

Blake Rea 24:38

How how do you decide like which materials to work with and which ones are just like you know, you talked a lot about the the the shaft or cramp, whatever that is, of the P1.

Speaker 1 24:51

Like, like how do you decide where it needs to be it it needs to be relevant, I think. It needs to be like my most hated thing is forged carbon. It just it it oh, this interview's over. Come on, because I used to be like a real carbon fiber guy, like I've like proper production design of carbon fiber stuff. And I know that what was it? Lamborghini was developing forged carbon to make their the bathtub, the chassis sort of ridiculously stiff. So as a result, it kind of did the opposite of what carbon fiber is supposed to do, and I get that, but then it gets picked up so much purely for its aesthetic value, like carbon fiber forge carbon cases. Fucking hate them so much. I'm sorry. You've you're the one that has everything about it that makes us a successful material, and you've just negated that in the interest of oh, that looks kind of sexy.

Blake Rea 25:57

Yeah, it's from what I've seen, and and as a consumer, right? I don't have to work with it. So I I feel like I can still love it. You can hate it because it's probably a pain in the ass. And then the way that it's made, from my understanding, where you just take like like carbon fiber toe and then just kind of like cram it in and then just like epoxy it and then it's in in the broad strokes, yes.

Speaker 1 26:21

That that's pretty much it. If you look at what's inside IKEA furniture, that sort of chipboard that they put the lemonade on, that uh forged carbon is kind of the sexy sister of of that, like particle board, I think they call it. It's like she's like ground up like wood, and just like yeah, that is a massive oversimplification. I hope I don't get flamed too badly for that. But in theory, yeah, yeah. So that's my grumpy old man rant over. Picking picking materials, I think it it has to it has to sort of say something, especially with I tend to paint myself into the corner with work a lot of the time. So, like, I don't think I will ever be able to do just a sensible stainless steel dive watch. Nobody will let me do that. It always has to have the black badger angle to it, which means it has to be actually made of strawberries or you know, lobster tails or whatever, whatever it is. It always has to have some kind of insanity to it. So, so a lot of times I I tend to look at, especially with Arcana, this is something I think we're doing quite successfully, is deconstructing materials and then reassembling it in a interesting, we think it's interesting fashion. That's why I think actually Anderson, I, CEO and founder of Arcanaut, we were just talking about this yesterday that there's this massive trend for stone dials in in watches not for me. I'll try to stop being a little negative. It's been a long day and I've had a lot of coffee and I'm grumpy. I I don't love the solid stone dials. What we have been doing is taking slate stone, which is, you know, kind of a cheap industrial architectural stone here in Scandinavia, and I broke a bunch of pieces off of a fountain in front of the building where I live that's made of this stone, and I shit whipped them with a hammer, and then I stuffed the bits through an espresso grinder, and then the resultant sort of stone powder we got from that, we actually recast into the dials. So it's the exact same material, but the structure to it looks completely different. It's not just flat stone. It looks like honestly, it looks a bit like forged carbon, or it looks a bit like chipboard, so to speak. Yeah. But that sort of visual interest of it is what makes it Arcanaut appropriate. Plus, it actually ends up being stronger than just a stick, because a slight stone dial that's one and a half millimeters thick. You would blink at it and it would shatter.

Blake Rea 28:53

I think if I could take my stab at why people like stone dials, it's just what they're sold to like. You know, they're sold that this is unique to them, and and nobody else is gonna have the same cut of the stone, and like, you know, they're just yeah, that's the in the romanticizing that we talked about, you know.

Speaker 1 29:18

Yeah, I mean, I don't I I don't think the watch industry is is really unique in that. I I think the fashion industry does this, I think the wine industry is the the world champions of that. You know, you don't sell the the rotten grape juice in the bottle, you sell the terroir of the valley and chef and off the pop or you know, whatever it is. And I'm I'm absolutely guilty of uh buying into that on a daily basis. But I think there's a little too much of that in the watches where they're selling the history and the romanticism and all these things that are floating in the background behind the watch, but aren't actually on the dial. And it just gets to be a little fluffy, I think.

Blake Rea 29:58

Yeah. Well, I remember last time you and I met in person, and you know, you're super busy, but in Atlanta, and you know, that was at the time when you released the Havender.

Speaker 1 30:13

And you know, you told me there was sweating as soon as you mentioned that watch.

Blake Rea 30:17

Oh shit, really?

Speaker 1 30:19

Yeah, yeah.

Blake Rea 30:22

Sorry, continue. No, it's it just it just seems like like, you know, the way that you told the story, like, like how the fuck did you like even like come to the because you took like was it muzzles or something, right? Like Scandinavian muzzles and rounded them up. And I'm sure you're I'm sure your blender sees a lot of action these days, too.

Speaker 1 30:45

Yeah, the blender won't make eye contact with me anymore. It's it's taken some it's taken some abuse. Originally, we wanted the what would become the Havender, we wanted that to be a good follow-up to what we call the dark matter. The dark matter is the stone composite dial that I was just talking about before. And I live here now on the west coast of Sweden in Gothenburg, and just north of us, you know, it's this fantastic rocky coastline that goes all the way up to Norway. And you've got, I mean, it in a sense, it looks a lot like the west coast of Canada and sort of northern California as well. It's really rocky, angry beaches and stuff. And you get piles and piles of blue mussels and various sort of shellfish around there. So I'd sort of thought, well, I wonder if I

McLaren, Lando, And Objects With History

Speaker 1 31:30

can do something using like the shells, you know, because the shells are kind of a waste product. But whenever somebody finds one on the beach, you always kind of pick it up and admire the colors. And I'd thought, well, can I not just get a shit ton of these shells and stuff them in the magic grinder of science? And I'm gonna get this beautiful blue powder. I was vastly, vastly incorrect. I got gray sand. Nothing more. It looks exactly like the crap you walk out on the beach. It just, there's so many other materials and colors and bits in there that it just looked like nothing. So that was an absolute fail. So then I had to kind of go, had to kind of go super nerd and just research the crap out of it. And I figured that most of the pigment that gives it the color is in about the top, maybe quarter of a millimeter of the shell. So I had to find a way to get that out of the shell and leave the rest of it. So it I had to sort of cook up this whole ridiculous process about a chemical bath to get rid of the outer biological membrane on the outside of the on the outside of the shell because that would turn a brown color when the shell dies, and that would affect the color. And well, all this crap that I had to force myself to learn. But it became such a laborious research project that it was, I couldn't put it down. It became a real sort of opus, so to speak. So the result of this was I had to go through about, I'm gonna say 50 or 60 pounds of empty blue muscle shells that I got from an organic blue muscle shell farm up the coast here. Boxes, boxes of empty blue muscle shells. Like I would have cats and seagulls following me, following me to work with these things. That sounds awesome. Yeah. And I had to use a Dremel by hand and just sand off about the top quarter millimeter of the shell and had a vacuum sitting right next to me here because this was airborne dust. Like it wasn't even like sand particles that you could sort of catch off the ground. It was sucking up airborne dust. And to get 100 grams of that would be about two and a half weeks, Monday to Friday, 10, 11 hour days, just zzz zzz zzz. It was I was so proud of myself when I the concept worked because I got like a gram of material once I took the filter out of the vacuum and kind of banged it on the on the table. And I had enough to make one dial. And I'm like, this is great. This is my greatest achievement. And then I'm and then I show this to Anders, and he's like, Oh, this is amazing. This is great. Let's do a series of 70. FML. Painted myself in the corner, and I had to spend two months doing nothing but sanding goddamn blue muscle shells to get this. But what was neat was that I got this beautiful light purple kind of lilac orchid color. In fact, it's kind of the same color as this horrible jacket behind me here in the picture. It wasn't blue. It wasn't blue, it was sort of lavender colored, which was a complete accident and a complete mistake. We added nothing in the way of color to the material. That's just what what it was. So the the name Hovender is a bit of a mix-up, a mashup of Hovit, which is Swedish for ocean, and lavender. Hovender. And actually, a friend of mine, a friend of mine in India, he's like, I think I actually have an uncle named Havender. Like, I'll have to go check.

Speaker 3 35:00

Oh shit.

Speaker 1 35:02

I thought of so but that kind of that that kind of set the tempo for the way that we are going to work. And it's like a duck, calm on the surface, but just absolute apeshit madness underneath to create these things that just look like a bit of a whimsical wink. The months, the months of work that has to go into making something look like a bit of a whimsical joke is is far, far, far greater than any of the quote unquote real watch design projects that I've done, where it's more of a traditional sort of watch.

Blake Rea 35:42

I'm sure you you fall in love with these materials and and bring them into the the workshop, and then you just realize that like similar to that, like this just isn't gonna work out. Like you just you can't figure out how it will behave, right?

Speaker 1 36:02

And you you discover all these weird chemical conflicts. Some things you can add a bit of resin to it and it just works perfect. Other things you add a bit of resin to it and it starts to smoke, or it turns green, or it, you know, dragons and bats fly out of it. Or it'll just do some little chemical conflict so that the resin will never, ever, ever, ever set if it's something you're doing with resin. I mean, I'm I'm working on a ring here that I was just doing the other day, and that's made of something called supermagnesium, which is military-grained magnesium alloy. And I found out that if you leave it anywhere near salt, salt water, it just gets not just corroded, but the salt actually eats and digests the metal. So I had a ring that was perfectly finished and polished and ready to go. And I guess I must have had a bit of salt or something on my on my desktop where I've been cleaning. And I came back a few days later and it was like real, not real, real, real, real. And like one side of it was just looked like it had been in a fire. So that was kind of funny. Then you have to take that unfortunate experience and say, well, why did it do that? Can I control that process and can I do it intentionally on something else?

Blake Rea 37:30

It it brings up an interesting question because you're working with these unorthodox materials and like, you know, it and something that a lot I've in, and this is just a traditional watch industry, like watch brands tend to prefer to work with materials that have been like tried and tested because they can kind of predict how a watch will look like in 20, 30, 50 years, and like isn't that boring? It it does, it does seem like it now, you know. It does seem like it. So like gold?

Speaker 1 38:03

How exciting is gold? I know financially that's the dumbest thing I could say, but honestly.

Blake Rea 38:10

So so do you do you ever do you ever I'm sure you probably think about that? Like, how how will this material hold up over time? And like like what will this look like in 50, 50 or 60 or 100 years? Yeah, yeah. And and did do you do you ever go back to it?

Speaker 1 38:24

That's a lot of the work that gets done behind the scene. That's that's a lot of the sort of vetting and a lot of the, you know, I've I've got an entire file cabinet full of material data sheets from all these different things that we've never used, but you might need to reference that against something. You know, like even the the resins that we use on the actually have one of the Arconaut dark matter dials here. Sneak peek. Oh, yeah. And it's it's it's a test one, it's been sitting on my desk, so it's probably all kind of beat up and stuff. But we needed to use a very specific kind of resin for this, because let me get this straight. A lot of the polyester resins that get used for fiberglassing things, like for fiberglassing surfboards and that kind of stuff, those are really popular to use in sort of small artsy hobby castings because they're really easy to mix and it sets in about half an hour. Unfortunately, after about four years, it turns yellow with any UV exposure. It turns yellow and goes to crop. So we

From Stone Fountains To Recast Dials

Speaker 1 39:30

needed to specifically search out and research resins that had obviously an optical longevity. And you then find out down the rabbit hole. My job is to go down the rabbit hole in a million different things. So with this, I had to go down the rabbit hole, and you realize that there's always the trade off between optical clarity, yellowing over time, and thermal stability and everything. You know, you've got these sort of sliding scales and everything goes back and forth. I love it. I love it. I I get more excited about that than honestly a lot of the other parts of the project. I guess that's why they pay me the big bucks.

Blake Rea 40:18

Is there is there something that like you've gotten your hands on that like you you would love to work with, but you're just like like fuck this. This is way too annoying to work with. Similar to the the the muzzles, but like you just you you will you'll just never work with it just because of how challenging it is to work with or annoying or how much like prep you have to put into it. Like, is there just something you just refuse to work with now during your whole experimentation of materials?

Speaker 1 40:48

Yes. But I can't tell you what that is. Oh, okay. Well, you can get a lot of the really weird advanced metals, I think, that a major brand, you know, call it a Hublow or a Rolex or whatever, who cares, they can fund a factory to say, we want you guys to go mill these cases out of tantalum or palladium or zerk and all these kinds of metals in a controlled industrial environment on a $4 million CNC machine. I, on the other hand, am trying to do that shit here by hand, you know, with my little squirt butter of coolant, hoping this thing doesn't burst into flames. So a lot of it is a lot of it is just for sort of practical reasons. Like tantalum is ridiculously hard on tools. I had some Inconel that I was playing with a couple years ago that actually came from the Williams Formula One team. And it was just some little scrap bits that this friend of mine had sent me to try and incorporate into a ring or something. And I thought I was gonna jump out a window. This stuff was like Robocops toenails. It was just I actually have a little baggie that I put next to my my uh my lafe in the machine shop here because I've I was going through so many tooling heads. Like normally I'd have to change the tooling head once every two weeks or something, and I think I went through about eight in a day.

unknown 42:26

Jeez.

Speaker 1 42:26

You know, and they're and they're like 50 bucks a piece. So I'm like, what the hell?

Blake Rea 42:31

Yeah, you know a whole bin of shit. Never use this shit. Never use this material.

Speaker 1 42:35

No, I've got material that has a story. I I like having it, but I don't want to use it too much because like we were talking about before, I've got all sorts of pieces of famous race cars and all this kind of stuff. But I I don't think me gluing it onto a ring is gonna make it especially better. It almost it almost seems kind of disrespectful to the the history that that piece has already earned. Like I had quick analogy. I had somebody in England send me a piece of wood, and it was off of the HMS Victory, which was the flagship in the fucking Battle of Trafalgar. Like this is you know, Trafalgar's the Trafalgar Square, you know, the top of the statue and all this kind of massive history. And basically, when the victory was being converted into a proper public access museum, they had to put in like modern fire suppression systems, I think, or something like this. So every time they had to drill a hole to put a conduit through or a pipe through, that piece came out and had to be cataloged with the British Royal Naval Heritage Trust or something like that. So there was a couple little random pieces of this. And a company in England that made poker sets contacted me and said, Well, we've got some of this victory wood. Can we send you a couple pieces and think of what's some neat stuff that we can make? And it was like, you know, I'm used to milling like titanium and carbon fiber, all this. And somebody sends you a piece of forget if it was oak or teak, but it's, you know, a piece of hardwood from 175 years ago from a bloody famous ship. And every time I blew one of these rings apart trying to do it in a lathe, I literally was, I was convinced my studio was going to be so haunted by all these old British sailor ghosts because I had just completely destroyed a piece of history trying to make something cool out of it. Sometimes it's better to be left alone, just put on the shelf and look at it and say, that's that's cool as it is.

Blake Rea 44:44

Yeah.

Speaker 1 44:45

Doesn't need uh doesn't need James screwing around with it.

Blake Rea 44:48

Yeah. Let's talk about some of the collaborations that you've done because you know your your projects seem you know real more personal than they do like commercial. So it kind of immediately brings up the question like what prerequisites are important to you before you know you jump into a project? Is it more about like shared taste or like shared values, or like, you know, just where your your experimentation has to meet their design language? Like, like what's your thought process like before you even jump on? You know, you talked about like micro mil spec, you know, like like well with micro mill spec, it was just I I just had massive respect for the guys as a brand.

Speaker 1 45:32

Um with without shooting myself in the foot too badly. When I saw the mill graph, like shit, I want one of those. But they sold out in like 10 minutes. So I was like, hey guys, why don't we do a variant of the mill graph? And they went for it. So haha. But but actually, all joking aside, that is a big a big part of it is the wow factor. How excited do I get about this watch? And if it's not something that I am absolutely thirsty for myself, I don't think I'll do a very good job on it. I can't I can't force myself to be razzled fantastic if it's not something that I'm personally really overly horny about. So that's why when, you know, like with something like this one, I mean, that's the the MBNF HMX Black Badger Edition. There is no force on earth that could have kept me from this project. Because the product, absolutely, the brand, absolutely, and and just Max, getting to work with Max, getting to have dinner with the guy just once is worth it. And the that kind of set a bit of a dangerous precedent because that was one of the first projects. So then kind of everything that I've done after that, I'm sort of it, it has to be as bombastic and it has to be as exciting, and it has to be as as much of a spiritual experience. It's nice if they actually pay the bills sometimes as well, as a self-employed father of two. You know, you need you need to keep an eye on those sorts of things. But there's a nice balance, I think, of being able to do the crazy artsy wild stuff and then as well have have some things running in the background that that keep the lights on around here.

Blake Rea 47:27

Do you do you feel like Arcanaut is

The Havender: Mussel Dust And Obsession

Blake Rea 47:30

that like kind of counterpoint to Black Badger? Like structured, but still kind of wild in that sense.

Speaker 1 47:37

Like, yeah, yeah. In fact, I've actually I've got a couple of the Arconauts here, just for so that of course is Fordite. That's yeah, that's machized. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I absolutely love when I get to explain this stuff to somebody. I was at a a six-year-old girl's birthday party last weekend, and a couple of the dads, you know, we were just sort of sitting around drinking coffee kind of thing. And as usual, what do a bunch of middle-aged guys start talking about watches? And next thing I knew, I sort of had four four or five of the dads kind of clamoring over this thing and looking at Arcanaut on Instagram and trying it on. And then after like an hour of this, I look over and I'm like, oh, I think the party's over. It's like I I hope my kid's not standing outside in the cold waiting for me. It's I think the Arcanaut mix, it's it's a lot more organic, I think, than I'd even expected because I met I met Anders at at Salon QP in London, and I was I was just really impressed. It was just a couple of young sort of Danish guys that weren't watch guys, but they were just so kind of eager and so excited about stuff. And it it felt more like a garage band. You know, we weren't gonna take over the world, but fuck, we were gonna have fun doing it. Yeah. And that vibe, I think, is I I'm I'm quite impressed that we still have that kind of mentality going because you know, I've been with the company for about four or five years now, and we've done lots and lots of watches. And I think staying off the edge of the map, I think, is something that is quite quite difficult to fake. So this is one of the other Arcanaut ones here, and this is called the Bonehead.

Blake Rea 49:21

I know I love this. I was looking at these on the website. So good. So good. Best case back of the year.

Speaker 1 49:33

Oh, yeah. Hell yeah. So we actually put loom on the case back of the watch. Why not?

Blake Rea 49:40

Yeah, why not? Why not? Yeah, why not?

Speaker 1 49:43

Because it's it sort of goes back to that thing about you can choose to tell somebody as much or as little about this as you want. They just look at it and go, oh, that's a loom dial. Oh, that's that's quite cool. Nice, handsome watch. You can go, thanks. Or you can tell them the story and go, well, actually, it's aerospace grade aluminum foam that's been infilled with glow resin, and then the sort of custom-made glow patch on the back, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it kind of puts a a secondary level of appeal and interest and things on it, which which is something that I really try and keep going through all my stuff.

Blake Rea 50:17

It naturally causes me to think like, how do you balance like wearability with experimentation? You know, because some I find myself. You know, like rewind it. I'm just kidding, but I'm just I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. There's there's there's watches out there, and this is just from my personal personal experience. There's watches out there that I feel like are too beautiful to wear, you know, and that I own, sadly, you know, and I'm like, fuck, like I I love this watch, and it looks good in my in my in my case, in my safe, you know, but like it's so beautiful, I don't even want to wear it.

Speaker 1 50:55

So how do you well, I mean not not to seem you know ungrateful or something, but if we're talking about wearability. Seriously, yeah, I would never wear that, but it's cool watch. It's it's it's it's the coolest thing ever. But yeah, I I received it about maybe about four or five months before my first kid was born. You know, so my life very quickly became all about peeling bananas and going to the sandbox and crawling around on the floor with infinite lego and all this sort of stuff. It is it is not the piece for that. So it it you know sort of became relegated to my watch case in lieu of a G Shock, quite quite abruptly. But I don't I don't worry too much. This is gonna sound dumb. I don't worry too much about wearability because if it's something that you love, you'll find a way. Honestly, legibility. It's important, but like with the with the four-dite ones, people like look at the picture and go, oh no, I can't read the time on that. And they go, well, all you have to do to look at the hands is just move it like a quarter of a tick. The dial's matte, the hands polished, boom, you can see the time in a second. So if it takes me an extra half second, I'm okay with that. I don't know if I would wear one of these while I'm landing a helicopter at night on an oil rig somewhere, but yeah, that's okay. I mean, I think actually most of the watches I have, I tend to gravitate towards the the fun. The fun. I don't I don't I don't think I need to apologize for having fun with it and wanting and wanting you to have fun with these things. Otherwise we're a fucking G Shock. I've got four.

Blake Rea 52:48

They're great. Do you do you have like like a measuring stick somehow, or maybe like an indicator, like an internal indicator that you say, like, okay, I've I've like took the I've pushed this way too far. Like this commercially is never, never, never, ever gonna happen.

Speaker 1 53:06

Like, I've done where I'm I'm sincerely touched that you would actually ask me that question and not just assume that I don't have one, because I don't. Okay. All right. I don't. Um you know what? I I don't. I don't. I'm I'm in it for entertainment, for artistic expression, absolutely. At the end of the day, it is a you know, it it is a product. I do think a watch needs to tell you what time it is. Yeah. But like, I mean, for instance, when the when the day Batoon came out, I mean, I I was a bloody small part of this project, but got one. And while it was being developed, I was sort of being told that it was a sports watch. It comes out and they're like, no, no, it's a dive watch. And it got entered in the dive watch category at GPHG, and I went, oh shit. Because divers are very, oh, they're like pilots. Yeah, they're very dear details. Yeah, you don't, you know, it's like you can't just say you're an architect. You need to be accredited to be an architect. Yeah, divers are really serious about this for obvious reasons. So people are like, that's a dive watch. No, can't read it. Not a dive watch. Terrible, terrible, stupid, go to hell.

Blake Rea 54:31

And like ISO cert, does it? You know, those divers need their ISO certs, you know, like course not.

Speaker 1 54:37

I just love the fact that people thought that I actually designed that all on my own. Yeah, yeah. I think you're looking for Denis Flagelet on that one. But but but it was fun because it kind of where's it going with this? Dive watch.

Blake Rea 54:56

We talked about kind of you pushing it. Completely brain too far and and having yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 55:02

I I I try not to pigeonhole things too much. I don't like necessarily saying this is a driving watch, this is a pilot watch, this is a diving watch, because I mean that there's room for all that, but I kind of enjoy things that you can sort of blur the lines a little bit. Yeah, I I wear a pilot watch. I'm not a pilot. The the MBNF is a driver's watch. I came here on the bus. You know, that's that's okay. Micro Mil spec is, you know, a Norwegian special forces brand. Yeah. Not me. Not me. Yeah. But it's easy to go too far with that and do this aspirational marketing. Like I'm gonna wear an Omega Seamaster because I want the girl at Starbucks to think I'm a you know, Navy SEAL, James Bond kind of thing. Shaking not stirred.

Blake Rea 55:55

Splendid. Do do you feel and it I've been thinking about this for a while. You know, we're often we're often sold watches, right? Like, like we're not, there's very rare instances that I fell it into a watch. You know, we're sold these products, right? Luxury watches, time pieces. So it's a bit of a dirty word, isn't it? Sold is, it it is, but sold. It's true, it's true. Like, so do you feel like the market really kind of demands originality

Chemical Conflicts, Magnesium, And Failure

Blake Rea 56:30

or really just kind of the appearance of it?

Speaker 1 56:36

Oh geez. Look at that. Crack out the rum. I would probably lean more towards the appearance of the originality because actual originality is fucking expensive and terrifying to establish brands. And I think that's why the sort of guerrilla warfare brands of the indies, like like some of the ones that I'm a part of. I think when you're first starting out and nobody knows who the hell you are, and you can do whatever you want because nobody knows who the hell you are. All you want is recognition. You want to make it, you want to have a booth at Basel, you want to get invited to the stupid Depeche Mode party at Hublow or whatever the hell I'm still doing. I'll take the Dab Punk one. Yeah.

Blake Rea 57:22

Yeah. I can do that too. You could, yeah. We'll go to both of them. We'll go to both of them.

Speaker 1 57:28

And we'll Instagram about it later. Yeah, yeah. But but I think when you start talking to some of the people that are involved with some of these larger brands, and you and you show them the stuff that I'm that you're doing here, like shoving rocks into an espresso grinder, or trying to find out if you can make a watch dial out of peanut butter or whatever. And and and you show this to somebody who spends their days in a suit and tie in mid-level marketing meetings, talking about brand forecasting and stuff. And from my perspective, that looks awesome. Like, oh, I would love to have some nice Geneva office with a view over the fountain and stuff. The people that are doing that are looking at what we're doing, go, oh shit, that sounds fun. That's cool. You know, every time I start a small fire in here or sort of blow myself up like the coyote or something, I kind of remind myself, this this job's kind of cool sometimes.

Blake Rea 58:23

Yeah.

Speaker 1 58:23

So you actually need to go out of your way to stay off the edge of the map, which is something that I definitely didn't anticipate I would need to spend as much time doing, trying trying not to fit in.

Blake Rea 58:35

Yeah. Makes sense.

Speaker 1 58:37

Yeah.

Blake Rea 58:38

Is is there is there a specific dis and this kind of is going to talk more into like your personal tastes, but like I'm sure you've made design design decisions or material decisions that like people just confuse the shit out of people. But then you have to go back and defend, right? Like, no, this is the reason why it exists, and you still kind of defend to this day.

Speaker 1 59:08

Yeah. I mean, I think I think Loom has has been a real good sort of example of that. Photoluminescent materials, glow materials is what a lot of my work revolves around. And I and I work very, very closely with RC TriTech in Switzerland who manufacture Superluminova. And I've got a bunch of little sample things on my desk here that are sort of new prototype colors coming out or new sort of application methods of materials and stuff. It's it's it's fantastic fun. But at what point am I pushing for all these crazy materials because I like it? How often do I stop and go, geez, I wonder if people are gonna buy that? Like it I I am the shit businessman of the world. Because I honestly, that's about three or four steps down the ladder from, oh man, I wonder if I can do this. Oh, this will look crazy cool. You know, my nine-year-old son will love this. And then when it gets to the point of yes, we've managed to do it, okay. Well, now is somebody gonna buy it? Oh, maybe not. Shit. Okay. Yeah. So I we we we would definitely see pushback, but really from a specific portion of the community. The the purists, I'm gonna tread very carefully here because they're a vindictive motherfuckers. The purist people will look at anything that has Loom on it that isn't a Seiko dive watch and go, Tosh, utter Tosh. It's crap. This is idiotic. This looks like something that a child would wear. And that's been said about they said that about the MBNF, they said that about the day-to-une, they said that about the Autlance pieces. I mean, everything, anything that has visual fun to it, people look at it and go, that sucks, and you're an idiot. And it it got under my skin for years. But now I'm I can see this absolutely consistent trend in the people that write those things on blogs. It's always the comments on blogs. Don't read the comments, kids. Anders had to sit me down last year and basically make me sign something saying I would never respond to comments on blogs again.

Blake Rea 1:01:33

Oh shit. Oh, it makes me crazy. It makes me crazy. It it brings up a it brings up a really interesting question, right? So, like, because everything here is like your fingerprint, right? Like your fingerprints are all over all these projects. So everything is is deeply personal. Like every project that comes out of the lab, the Black Badger Lab is like is like is like you. So so how everything that's sitting on my desk here. How how is it that that criticism, like like how do you respond to that? You know, like if if you do it, it sounds like you don't at all.

Speaker 1 1:02:11

I I get so I get so pissy because like every single thing that's sitting on my desk here, whether it's a ring that I made or a watch or a painting or something, this thing behind me, I I made it for me. Right. I made it because I want to have it. And if you'd like awesome, and that means we probably like the same kind of stuff, and we can probably be buddies, but it does make the criticism really tough because when somebody looks at something that we've literally bled on for months and months and months and leveraged our lives to produce, you know, like the like the bonehead. Some people just looked at it right away and said, No, no, crap. What you should have done is XYZ.

Blake Rea 1:02:58

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:02:59

And and that's just an absolute trigger for me is we've figured out every square millimeter of this watch in pornographic detail. Nothing, nothing is arbitrary, nothing. So as soon as you finally have the release that we've been waiting for months to show, and within five minutes, someone says, You know what I would have done? No, I don't fucking care. Sit out, which is not the best business response. But as a person, you know, like people would just start telling you everything that you're doing wrong. And I've never understood the drive to do that. They've never done it either. Did I buy the right shirt? Did I marry the right woman? Oh, am I driving the right kind? Like, who's gonna look at someone else's life and tell them what they did is right or wrong? And the answer is somebody who's selling products in a public market.

Blake Rea 1:03:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:03:54

They're gonna look at something and I mean if I don't like the new Mercedes, I don't buy it. I don't feel a need to go onto the Mercedes website and say, look, dickhead, okay, here's what you chowder heads did, you know, and just look down my nose and tell them everything they did wrong. I have never done that in my life. That might be just part of being Canadian. But it's so it's so prevalent in in watches. And I think because it's such a it is such a community, and it is such a communic, communicative community, super, that everybody

When Metals Fight Back: Tantalum To Inconel

Speaker 1 1:04:30

is interacting with each other and commenting on everyone's blogs and posts and all these subsets of substacks and all these kinds of things. But it's it's it's difficult to keep it positive. Yeah.

Blake Rea 1:04:44

Something something that also kind of comes to mind is obviously uh you have a very artisanal approach to building any any type of product. You know, it's very you're very hands-on, it's very well thought, very well experimented. Do you feel like craft can can still scale without like losing that meaning behind it?

Speaker 1 1:05:10

Let me tell you about a watch called the Hovender. Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As as I reach off camera for a bottle of gin. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, fuck there there's room for everybody. There's room for a $50 watch made by robots in some foreign country. There's room for a $50 million handmade thing that took you know Da Vinci his whole life to make. There's room for everything. And I and I I don't subscribe to this over-categorizing of things. You know, oh, the world needs another one of those. No, it doesn't. I I I mean, let's be honest. I mean, it's it's a watch. Your phone does the exact same thing at telling the time. But what you like about the watch is you, whichever one you bought, you have some kind of connection to it. It means something to you. Doesn't have to mean it to me, but whatever you've bought, whatever little object you've let into your life, you did it for a reason. Sure. And that reason doesn't need to make sense to anybody else. That makes sense. Welcome to my tether.

Blake Rea 1:06:20

Something too that, like, you know, as I'm getting to learn and more about you through this this whole conversation, is like we have a lot of similarities in the sense that, like, I mean, OCD is something that comes to mind for me. And it sounds like you kind of have that that same thing, if I can say it respectfully, right? But like, yeah, yeah. I I think so. As a creative myself, and you know, I'm a filmmaker, right? Like, that's what I do. I'm a filmmaker and I I talk to people, right? That's what I do. Um, so like I have to restrain myself. Like, my like I'll be editing a video, and like my wife will come in and be like, like, you were editing that same fucking video like like two months ago. Like, like, when is enough? And so, as somebody with OCD, I don't know how to to to answer that question, but I'm curious if maybe you can help me or like how do you but is the OCD kind of your superpower?

Speaker 1 1:07:19

Does that make you better at what you do because you cannot let things go?

Blake Rea 1:07:23

No, actually, I don't I don't think so. I don't know, maybe, maybe, but like, you know, at some point, like and I I in film, right? Like, I can go back and cut any recut any film and and tell a different story, right? You know, we can put the the person who you know was born in the beginning, you know, and and loses their life in the end. We could put them losing their life in the beginning and then being born again in the end, right? Like, you know, you can you can repackage this same idea over and over and over. So, like, how do you that's such how does James stop knowing when to refine an idea?

Speaker 1 1:07:59

I don't think I'm at all good at that. I it's it's such a it's all just design masturbation, man. I mean, let's call call it what it is. I love the process so much that I legitimately get bummed and depressed when it's finished. I love the discovery. I love when you're almost done and shit burns to the ground and you gotta go through the ashes and figure out what went wrong, like the coyote coming up out of the hole. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's the that's the dopamine right there. That's that's peak, peak badger right there. When it's finished and I send it off, I can just, you know, it's like if you've had people staying with you for a couple of weeks and then they leave and you're like, all right. This is pretty quiet. House is pretty quiet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, case in point, with the with the MBNF project, I was very aware that this was a once-in-a-lifetime career making gift of a project that I've been getting.

Blake Rea 1:09:07

Sure, sure, sure, sure.

Speaker 1 1:09:08

And all I wanted, the only thing I wanted out of this project was to be able to look at the back of an MBNF watch and see my goofy logo on on the case back. That's all I wanted. Max had to literally chase me for about eight months after the project to pay me for the project. Because I'm like, there's an MBNF out there with my name on it. Yeah. Great success. You know, like I was I was so invested in that in that part of the project that the actual okay, and you're gonna get paid for it, and you can use that rent to pay for your studio and pay for your computer and pay for materials. Sure. Basically forgot, forgot all that. Yeah. So I think that's where sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, please, please, please finish your thought. Oh, sorry, I'm going around in circles, but and and I think that's something that that Arcanaut has really proven to be quite successful on, is that we've got kind of complementary skill sets. We've got people that are bonkers crazy, we've got people that are quite linear and organized. Organized is the important thing. And and we end up yelling and bonking heads all the time, but we need to, because everybody kind of needs to find where the edge of the pool is, and to find when your sphere of responsibility starts to bonk into somebody else's, that needs to be sort of addressed and tempered and that kind of thing. Sure, sure, sure. So yeah, I take things too seriously, I take things too personally, and I I hope I keep doing that. Yeah, if it gets to the point when I'm just doing it for the money, cool, but you know, I'll I'll sell out later. Not yet.

Blake Rea 1:11:00

Yeah, yeah. So it makes me think too, like, so you know, time is is abstract, right? If I can say that, you know, and and you're working with shit that nobody works with, extreme materials, right? So has that changed, or maybe even working on time pieces or what like has that changed how you view time, or maybe even patience as as a virtue, you know?

Collaboration Filters And The “Wow” Test

Blake Rea 1:11:30

No. Oh wow, okay.

Speaker 1 1:11:38

Simple answer. Love it. The work, the work didn't, but my kids have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get lost in working with things literally at nose distance. You know, your life is like this. Yeah, kind of range working on stuff, and then you sort of look up to catch your breath and you're like, oh god, I haven't seen the sun in four days. Like, oh dear lord.

Blake Rea 1:12:03

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:12:04

There's a great expression about kids that I think my mom told me where she said, uh, the days are long, but the years are short.

Speaker 3 1:12:11

Hmm.

Speaker 1 1:12:12

Quite, quite like that. When you're in it, it's unbelievably difficult and frustrating. But then you sort of take a step back and you're like, when the hell did you get to be nine years old? What where'd it go? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I I helped deliver my baby girl on her bathroom floor. And uh, and now she's six, walking and talking, and she's just started tracking field, and she will tell you everything you never wanted to know about Taylor Swift and all this kind of stuff. And I still have that in the back of my head that her coming into this world.

Blake Rea 1:12:49

Yeah. Do you often think because you know, your job and your, I guess, passion for this world is kind of like like bottling and repackaging amazing things? Like, do you ever think about how you can kind of do that for your your child's life? You know, like and when I say it, that sounds very weird to say, but like, you know, maybe taking like their first Lego set and then and then blending it with, you know, their little, you know, like something else that like, you know, that that has been lost in time, you know, for them.

Speaker 1 1:13:23

Yeah, yeah. I I I don't I don't go out of my way to actively sort of sit down and try and itemize that, but but it's I mean, just watches in general. I think that's why vintage watches are as as popular as they are. Somebody might have some old watch that a grandfather gave them or something that barely works and the strap is falling apart and it's kind of beat up. But they'll be like, Yeah, my my grandfather was wearing this watch when he first met my grandmother. Like, that's cool. This watch was ticking when your kid was born, or something. Like, that's that's neat. And that is that is a direct parallel to the storytelling aspect, the stuff with the wine industry and all this. It's all it's all the same thing, it's the spinning top in inception.

Speaker 3 1:14:17

Oh, yeah, right.

Speaker 1 1:14:19

It's a physical totem, it is a physical link to something that is in the back of your mind. Every little, again, every little object on this desk, I can pick it up and it makes me think of a place or a time. Music, I absolutely have that sort of connection with. I like to listen to crappy music from the early 90s, and like a song comes on that I haven't heard since I was 12 years old, and you're instantly back to what you were doing and what you were thinking when you were 12 years old.

Speaker 3 1:14:49

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:14:50

And then you look now in a different country, married, two kids, 49 years old, and it's like a touchstone. I instantly go back to that spot and go, look what I've done since then. Yeah. I don't know. I I get I get excited about that kind of thing. It it it's as you should. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Blake Rea 1:15:10

A few more questions here, and then I'll let you. Um, you know, I know it's late there, and you gotta let me know if you actually want to hear about watches at all.

Speaker 1 1:15:16

I don't think I've really talked about watches very much.

Blake Rea 1:15:19

No, I mean we're kind of on we're more of an entrepreneurial podcast, a creative podcast, and like watches are like the wrapper.

Speaker 1 1:15:29

Okay. So we're we're a little different here. We're a little different. God, if it's an on if it's an entrepreneurial podcast, I'm amazed I got in the door.

Blake Rea 1:15:36

Well, no, no, we the creativity, I think, is is what people are gonna be more interested in than the output, okay. You know, I think personally. And and so naturally, like, what's something that people kind of assume about you or maybe your work and that just they just could get completely wrong 100% of the time.

Speaker 1 1:16:03

God, there's so many self-deprecating answers about that. People usually assume that I'm taller. All right, there we go. That's the problem with living in Sweden. Everybody's six foot six and blonde, and I'm built like Fred Flintstone, so it doesn't really but the uniqueness is interesting.

Blake Rea 1:16:24

Yeah. What excites you the most in this moment? Is it, you know, working with materials? Is it like, you know, developing an idea, or is it just the direction that you're going?

Speaker 1 1:16:40

It's kind of a bit of all of that. I I get like we were saying, I get extremely excited about these little discovery moments, these little these little eureka things. Much more so excited than actually the the financial success of a watch that sells out or makes a pile of money or something. Sure, sure, sure. When you're when you're just there's smoke and flames everywhere, and you get that one little kernel of awesomeness that says this actually might work. And I I keep that stuff inside, you know, because that that's what's going to keep you going when the next three projects explode in your face. Yeah, it's the it's a really selfish thing because it's this absolute self-gratification. But I just get I'll I'll sort of take a step back and kind of like looking around the workshop here now, and there's about eight or ten different projects that are sort of in various stages of advanced failure. But that that's that's the good stuff. That that when you're in the middle of it and you're doing six things at once, it's a bit like being a chef in a restaurant. You don't make one dish at a time, you make everything at once.

Speaker 1:17:58

Sure.

Speaker 1 1:17:59

And I just came back from almost three weeks of holidays over Christmas with my parents in Vancouver. And it sounds really selfish to say, but it was like, thank God it's Monday. I need to get back into work, get back into studio, into my complete mess of the studio, and just start mixing things together, start seeing if this will do that, or just seeing all the projects on the go. Do you do you have this overpersonal connection to things, I think?

Blake Rea 1:18:28

Do you have this like

Arcanaut’s Garage-Band Ethos

Blake Rea 1:18:30

no sense of normalcy in the studio? Like, because I can't I can't imagine like you having a very structured work day, you know, where like you wake up and you you know you you have your first cup of coffee, and then from there it just spirals. Oh, okay. Yeah. Nice.

Speaker 1 1:18:51

So I think that's the the no answer. There's my giant forehead looking like a lighthouse in the middle there. Yeah, this is the level of professionalism that we're dealing with here. That's actually a really cool, like, yeah.

Blake Rea 1:19:03

Isn't that cool?

Speaker 1 1:19:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was that was for the the Lind Verdolin octopus blue sea project. Oh as we were doing it, it had this had excuse me, had three different colors of loom. Pardon me. That all had this kind of aqua, lilac, purple, pink kind of tones to it. So we were sort of joking that it had this kind of Miami Vice color palette to it. So a friend of mine knocked up this. So that's Jorin Verdolin of Lynn Verdolin and myself as Grand Theft Auto Vice City characters, and that's about a 40 foot-high banner behind me here. That's the only way to do it. So, all through COVID and everything, when it was all there's so many podcasts and so many interviews because nobody could go anywhere. I did I did so many interviews, and in every single one, I've got this sort of jackass sitting over my shoulder looking down on me. Yeah, yeah. Just the the dumbest thing ever. But it makes me smile. So why would I apologize for it?

Blake Rea 1:20:10

So that's the only thing that never changes throughout your course of your day. Your big ass mural.

Speaker 1 1:20:17

Big ass mural. No, I kind of I kind of needed to be chaotic. If if things are too structured, I kind of get a little itchy and I start almost going out of my way to find things to screw up.

Blake Rea 1:20:29

Yeah. Yeah. If you had total freedom with zero constraints, whether that be creative, financial, what would you make next? We don't ask a lot of like the traditional bullshit questions here. We try and like really like that, you know, like peel back who you are as a person. Yeah. That's my goal.

Speaker 1 1:21:00

That's my goal at least, you know. I wish I had some really super relevant, like on them on the nose answer, but when I get asked about like, you know, sort of in a in a different life, if you weren't doing this, what would you like to be doing or something? I I always come back to being a chef. Yeah. No, I can't, I can't cook for shit. I am completely useless. But I get I get more inspiration from all these weird sort of travel, travel food shows of Anthony Bourdain and Jamie Oliver and all these kinds of guys. I get more inspiration from that than I do really from the watch industry. I mean, if you if you hear some of these Michelin-star chefs talking about like carrots, you know, and the guy's got tears in his eyes talking about bloody carrots. I just I just love that. And and the the way that somebody can elevate a potato from in the ground to this absolutely sort of fantastic achievement. The actual ingredient's still the same, it's still just an eth and a potato, but in different people's hands, how sort of amazing it can become.

Speaker 3 1:22:08

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:22:08

That's that that that's the kind of inspiration that I take at least. So maybe being being a chef.

Blake Rea 1:22:18

Okay.

unknown 1:22:18

Okay.

Speaker 1 1:22:19

Or just being a drunk.

Blake Rea 1:22:22

The last question is probably gonna be the most, hopefully the most impactful for our listeners. But I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that look at you and you know, kind of be kind, you know. No, no, no, that that are maybe envious. I don't know if envious is the right word, but maybe inspired by the fact that you have your job is creative chaos. Like you have the the outlet to express yourself, like you have the people supporting you financially to to give you the means to you know be original, to you know, to to pursue your passions. And like so, like, like for people out there that may be listening that are trying to, you know, maybe capitalize on on their passion or creativity or you know, just trying to figure out how to how to get somewhere in life. Like, you know, what what would you say to those people?

Speaker 1 1:23:27

You gotta make sure you're doing it for the right reasons. I think if if you're doing it because you're like, I'm gonna make a million dollars owning a watch company. Fucking good luck, champ. But it just do do whatever speaks to you. I mean, I didn't I I really took the long way to get to get here. You know, I didn't I didn't even take my first art school, my first art class was at art school after I graduated high school. I barely got out of high school because I was an absolutely abysmal student because I was more interested in being funny than I was in actually studying for a test. Right. So even as a kid, it was creative chaos. So I can look at it now and say, well, okay, all that sort of stupid crap that I put myself through is is what got me here and is what gave me this sort of weirdo skill set. But I don't know if I would really recommend that for anybody, and especially now. Now it seems that people are getting into excuse me, are getting into studying what they're gonna do for their vocation. You're you seem to be starting that a lot earlier and earlier in school. I don't know if that's really something more over here in Scandinavia, but like kids in like grade nine and 10 are like, oh, I'm going into studying media production or advertising. I'm like, you're 15. What the hell are you talking about? 26 when I, you know, before I sort of figured out what the hell I was going to do. I would definitely say don't be afraid to fuck it up and actually go out of your way to really fumble it a few times because you're gonna figure out if you're doing it for the right reasons, if you really love it, or if you're just doing it because you want to have a business card that says design chief. Yeah. You know, I I went through all these kinds of decisions and all these kinds of self-doubt moments, still am. Yeah, don't don't be afraid to go it alone, I think also is quite important. Like if you

Wearability, Fun, And Legibility Myths

Speaker 1 1:25:30

want to be a designer, design stuff. You don't have to go work for a giant design agency and be a cog in the machine. Just put put yourself out there and just, you know, it's a the skill set is a toolbox. Just figure out what you like to do, find some weird little corner where nobody else is playing and make it yours. That that's literally word for word what I what I did. I started screwing around making rings because I had some extra time in the machine shop at design school and kind of figured, oh, this is kind of this is kind of fun. I made a titanium ring for my brother for Christmas or something. And in the beginning, I was making rings that were inspired by watches. The classic, you know, Omega Speedmaster and all these kinds of things. And then after several years, what's happening now is that people are coming back saying, the watch brands are now saying, can we do a watch inspired by this ring that you did a couple years ago? So it's kind of a nice circle of life moment there.

Blake Rea 1:26:30

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:26:31

Don't don't rush, I think is is is is a big one. I was always in such a bloody rush. Nobody wanted to be a design student, everybody wanted to be a design chief. Nobody wants to be a med student, everybody wants to be a doctor, you know, and that process, I think, is very important because you're learning the basics, but you're also kind of figuring out who you are in this in this regard. So just just relax. You'll get there. Enjoy the process. Or you won't, and you can come work for me.

Blake Rea 1:27:08

No, this has been amazing. Yeah, thank you for for spending some time with us and kind of sharing your perspective. Yeah, yeah. Hopefully, I'll see you soon, you know, as in some part of the world, you know, again. Yeah. So hopefully I'll be allowed into your country at some point. Hopefully. Hopefully. Yeah, yeah. No, I I I'm trying to figure out like my net my next like work trip, you know, because like it's challenging, man. It's really challenging because I I do get some of those invites, and I'm like, which ones do I go? Which one that that's the hardest thing for me. Like, what do I what do I do? Right. So that last question was also kind of for me in the sense because you know, I'm like I'm kind of at a really dangerous level of these things that I'll get invitations to some of these fantastic things, but I'm not famous enough that they'll say, and here's your plane ticket.

Speaker 1 1:28:05

It'll be, hey, we'd like to invite you to this fantastic dinner thing. I'm like, oh, that sounds great. Oh, but it's in Bangkok. And I'd pay my own flights and hotel. And are you kidding me? I'm gonna, I'm gonna put $15,000 into dinner for a brand. Yeah. So it's it's a difficult balance because you find yourself trying to keep up with the big dogs. And don't. Don't, don't, don't. You'll go, you'll go broke.

Blake Rea 1:28:34

I I stop, I stopped trying to do that. You know, I just like you, like this whole project for me has just been an expressive outlet, you know, like how I can kind of like give my perspective if people care enough to listen and people care enough to to support us. And and so yeah, it it I'm not a traditional outlet by any means. And and I never try to be, and I never I never apologize for being something different, you know, and good. And good, and that that that's just you know, it's just like the you you can only bottle lightning so many times, you know, if you're lucky enough to even bottle it once, you know.

Speaker 1 1:29:18

That's what gets that's what gets to be really difficult and exhausting, is I I get asked to bottle lightning about three or four times a week. And it's like the fatigue is real.

Blake Rea 1:29:33

Yeah, yeah. No, the there's a there's a lot of like mental fatigue that that comes from from that request, you know, and especially when it's coming from so many different directions. And and yeah, so you're just kind of fumbling through life at some point, and that's Ryan.

Speaker 1 1:29:52

That got to be that got to be really difficult a couple years ago. This was more to do with the the rings. I was so busy with the rings that I was doing. That like, and everything was coming in via instant message. It wasn't like somebody sends you an email, okay, I'll get back to that after dinner, I'll get back to that when the kids go to bed or in the morning or whatever. Everything was instant messages, whether it's WhatsApp or Instagram or whatever bloody chat programs. So I would usually be having about 10 or 15 conversations at the same time with different people wanting to buy something. Everybody wants to see different pictures and options and stuff. And I just I thought I was gonna go flying out a window because it was so because the time zones, I'm here in Sweden, most of the clients were in North America. So when it would be like 8:30 at night, kids are in bed. I'm gonna sit down on the couch with my wife and have a glass of wine or a cup of coffee or something. I'd look at my phone and I've got 17 new messages from somebody waiting. And you try and be nice and say, Oh, hey, yeah, I'll take a look at this tomorrow. And then you get the, oh, hey, since you got your phone in your hand, let me ask you a quick question. And it was, it was, it was because I do all this personally. It's if you bought something, it's me. I'm the one talking to you, I'm the one designing, I'm the one making, I'm the one shipping the damn thing. It was so much hands-on attention that it was just getting spread massively too thin. And it was honestly, you it was making me a pretty shitty parent. Because mentally I was always somewhere else. And that's and that's not that's not good enough. So I actually stopped making rings for almost a year and a half, maybe two years. And actually, I'm just getting back into it now. Hopefully, I've I think I've kind of figured the uh the balance a little better. But definitely the the mental fatigue and the hyper accessibility, accessibility of our time is watch out for it because it's that slow burn. You'll just you'll just drop.

Blake Rea 1:31:53

Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm I'm learning about it right now in real time.

Speaker 1 1:31:58

Yep.

Blake Rea 1:31:58

James, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 1:32:01

Thank you very much, but I appreciate this.

Blake Rea 1:32:03

Glad we got to hang again. And and yeah, we'll make sure everybody please, you know, we we will, you know, plug all your socials here in the description. So if if you aren't, you know, already following James or not familiar with the stuff that he's working on, I would highly encourage everybody to spend a couple minutes to learn about James, to learn about Black Badger and Arcana, and just to see the the cool shit they're putting out in the world, you know. And yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:32:33

So and there's lots of cool shit on the go. There's I think maybe five five different watch brands I'm working with right now. Well, yeah, yeah. Stuff that we don't get to talk about, but yeah, not yet, at least. Not yet. One of one of the big ones, one of the big, big, big, big big ones.

Blake Rea 1:32:55

When's that? When are we when when can when will the world know about that? I ain't

Purists, Lume, And Taking Criticism

Blake Rea 1:33:00

saying shit.

Speaker 1 1:33:01

Okay. I'm not of a level where I can talk about it and not get screamed at. So yeah, or suit. Or suit. Yeah, there's that. There's that. Yeah. There's more cool stuff on the go. It's uh it's it's rewarding.

Blake Rea 1:33:15

No, well, we'll certainly have to to revisit this conversation once those cool things are out there, more cool things, and uh and we'll have to reflect on it. Reflect on way.

Speaker 1:33:25

Absolutely.

Blake Rea 1:33:25

Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you again so much. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Cheers.