Review of Squale AWCo Subino

One of my Grail watches is the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms. I love the history of dive watches and have been fascinated by the brand for many years. As one of the first ever dive watches their place in history was sealed back in the 1950’s. The Fifty Fathoms was designed for combat divers back in 1952 when the French frogmen unit were looking for a manufacturer to build a very special timepiece for them. A watch with a black dial, large, bold numerals and clear markings, as well as an outer rotating bezel.

Blancpain fulfilled the commission and delivered the first model of their dive watch in 1953, the Fifty Fathoms. Around that time, a little known case manufacturer called Squale, started to produce watch cases for legendary brands such as Doxa, Heuer and Blancpain. It was very common back then to out-source a wide range of components to build watches.

A LUCKY FIND

Now, fast forward to 2018. Andrea Maggi, the Squale CEO, was offered 180 NOS Blancpain cases dating back to the mid-fifties from a company that used to assemble Blancpain watches . These are original Fifty Fathoms cases measuring a very petit 34.8mm diameter, that were originally used in Blancpain’s MC4 dive watch. These cases even feature the original acrylic bezel inlays, with a beautiful cream-colored triangle at the top. What a find!

Squale teamed up with Amsterdam Watch Company (AWCo) to develop a one-time batch of very special watches using these original Blancpain cases. A once in a lifetime opportunity. They created three designs of 60 cases each and in November 2020, launched two of them; Subino and No Radiobino.

I discovered these when they launched on a news feed and immediately got excited. Unfortunately, by the time I found out about them, they’d already been sold out. I remember commenting on the Amsterdam Watch Companies Instagram site and saying how cool these were and like many, was gutted I’d missed out.

In my comment, I recall adding “if you get a cancellation, let me know.” To my total surprise (and good fortune) I received a message a few days later saying someone had cancelled their order and would I like to buy one. I was ecstatic!

LITTLE SUB

I was lucky enough to get the Subino (Italian for ‘little sub’) model. Powered by an ETA 2671, this smaller movement allowed for the ability to use an automatic movement in a case designed for a thinner hand-winding movement. The dial features a 3-6-9-12 dial layout with stick markers in between. The indices are painted in Super-LumiNova C3. Even the pencil style hands used are the same as what you’d find on a Fifty Fathoms at the time. A lot of thought went into making these to give them the respect they deserve using cases of such prominence.

This is not a watch that stays in a presentation case to be admired. It is one to wear and I take great pride having this a part of my growing collection. I love wearing it, even though the rotor is a little noisy for my liking. For such a small case size, it wears surprisingly well. Most of my watches are 39-42mm for my 18cm wrist. With an 18mm lug to lug, I have a few straps for this already to keep it looking fresh. It pairs really well with a Barton quick-release canvas strap as you can see in these photos.