343 Watches
Put a Piece of History on Your Wrist
343 Watches offer a unique collection of timepieces with a compelling history. Our watches are crafted with steel dials containing a special element – steel from the World Trade Center after 9/11. Each timepiece represents a piece of history, allowing you to carry a powerful story on your wrist.
Put a Piece of History on Your Wrist.
The main goal of any watch company is to make a timepiece that keeps accurate time. After that they go for style and other functions.
Starting with the Best
We already started with a proven watch movement that has a great track record of keeping accurate time, our goal is to simply give you a beautiful timepiece that will keep the memory of those who lost their lives on 9/11.
Why 343?
We call our company 343 because 343 firefighters lost their lives that tragic day back in 2001, along with 2,653 other innocent victims.
The Submariner
We began by finding the most popular and the most googled men’s watch in 2023, the Rolex Submariner. Taking that into mind when we started 343 Watch Co., we decided to start with a watch case like the Submariner. This watch case is a rugged diver style watch yet can be worn with casual and dress clothes.
The Big Question
Everyone asks the same question; how did we get the metal from the Twin Towers site?
After cleaning up of the site, debris became a huge problem. In all, there was 180,000,000 tons of debris recovered from ground zero. It is estimated that some 200,000 tons of steel collapsed to the ground when the twin towers collapsed. According to an article in the Journal Places, by spring of 2002 most of the structural steel had been transported to New Jersey. New York City sold about 175,000 tons of the scrap. Some was sold to various places in the United States and about 60,000 tons went to companies in China, India and South Korea according to news reports. Much of the steel was sold to be recycled. Among what remained was about 7,000 tons of structural steel and artifacts. This was moved and stored in an 80,000 square foot hangar at John F. Kennedy International Airport and various entities began to express interest in using the steel for various memorials. Some of the remaining steel went to build a Naval Ship, and some went to be recycled. A company in Statesboro, GA called International Agile Manufacturing obtained some of the steel from a recycling plant to make memorable medallions that they were selling as a part of history. Unfortunately, International Agile Manufacturing went bankrupt, and this is where Jeff came in. Jeff was able to obtain some of this steel from those medallions for his watches. Once he had his hands on that actual steel, he started looking for a way to use this steel as part of his watches. Jeff finally decided to use it to make the dials (face) of watch out of this steel. Rolex did a similar thing with a meteorite that they made into dials for their watches. Then Jeff wanted to take it a step further and include a picture of the twin towers on the dial of the watch to make a unique yet beautiful and memorable watch. The Twin Towers are actually lasered into the steel. The company name is left off of the front of the watch, so it doesn’t take away from the beauty of the Twin Towers. The company name, 343 Watch Company, is lasered engraved into the case back of the watch. The dial is then left as bare metal and not painted. This is so people can actually relate when they see the steel colored dial. The dial is then clear coated to prevent rust even though the watch is water resistant
About 343 Watches
A Watch that never lets that tragic day be forgotten
Watch Winding
Our watches use an automatic self winding movement that we call the internal engine of our watches. What does this mean? Well, it means it runs and gets its power from movement. When you wear the watch, your daily activities keep the watch wound. When we say activity we mean, sitting at a desk job is not activity. If you’re retired and spend most of your day sitting around watching tv, that is not activity. You have to have 8 hours of activity to keep the watch wound fully. That is why your watch comes with a watch winder. When you take your watch off, put it back in the watch winder box that it came in and turn it on. It turns your watch about 15 minutes of every hour to keep it wound. This watch winder is silent and is a nice leather black winder. This way if you don’t wear your watch for a week, when you pick it up it will still be on time and running. This watch winder runs on electric or battery.
Why Our Watches?
Why are our watches so special? We have taken metal that was in the debris and wreckage at the Ground Zero site after 9/11 and incorporated that metal in each and every 343 watch. With three hundred and forty three firefighters and two thousand, six hundred and fifty three other victims losing their life on that tragic day, this is our way, time will never let them be forgotten.
Each of our watches are water resistant and tested prior to leaving our facility and each watch comes with a 1 year unconditional warranty. Now lets talk about accuracy. Each watch is regulated for timing prior to leaving our facility also, to 2 seconds a day or less. That is one of the most accurate timings in the industry considering some of Seiko model’s timings are within 30 seconds a day on some of their automatic watches.