Introduction to Tolmia

During this past year, while isolating during the pandemic, I needed to do something to keep sane.  I began to peruse numerous videos about a hobby that I have always enjoyed... watch collecting.  To be clear, I have always enjoyed watch collecting in the abstract and had never owned a fine timepiece.  After doing a fair amount of research, I discovered a few watches that I would like to buy.

I took the plunge and purchased three watches (one dive watch and two dressier watches).  I purchased them on stainless steel bracelets as I don't like leather.  After resizing them to my 7 inch (177mm) wrist, I quickly discovered a few things I never knew.  First, it is really hard to get the proper size on a watch bracelet unless it has micro-adjustments.  Second, my wrist expands and contracts considerably throughout the day, particularly when going in and out of air conditioned settings during the heat of the summer.  Even when I was able to size a watch bracelet correctly, it became too tight or too loose depending upon the environment that I was in.  Third, I just did not enjoy wearing a watch unless it fit perfectly.

Further investigation revealed that many others had a similar problem.  Yet there was hope.  Many watch brands (as well as independent watch bracelet manufacturers) had developed solutions to this.  Unfortunately, information on the topic was very spotty at best.  This was a result of the following problems:

1. There was no standard industry way to describe what I was looking for.  The most common way to characterize the problem solving feature is as a tool-less micro-adjustment, or an on the fly ratcheting adjustment system, or as a ratcheting extension clasp, or as a diver's extension with micro-adjustments, or a sliding clasp, or by comparing them to the other company's proprietary products such as Glidelock bracelets or Easylink clasps (which are patented Rolex products);
2. Search engines have trouble producing results for something unless there is a standard industry way of describing it. When doing an online search for all of the common terms above, you get a LOT of unnecessary results.  Some extraneous search results include: watches that have micro-adjustments but require a tool to adjust it, tools for watches, fly fishing, how to adjust your watch by removing links, watch straps, replacement parts, etc.
   
3. Most watch brands do not focus much on the bracelets in their marketing materials.  For better or for worse, most of the focus is on the dial and the movement; and
   
4. Most watch brands are inconsistent in the type of bracelets they use from watch to watch within their own lineup.  In other words, they rarely spend significant time and resources to develop a watch bracelet which would could then be used for multiple watches within the brand. 
   

While good search results were difficult to find, there were some helpful links that turned up.  The best information that could be found were in watch forums like Reddit.com and Watchuseek.com. Yet, even in these forums, people only identified a small selection of watches with the feature I was looking for and no agreed upon lexicon that could be used.  Which brings me to "tolmia".

In an effort to help the watch community, my goal is to identify watches that utilize a tool-less micro-adjustments on their bracelets.  That identification process starts by using a common terminology. I understand this process is likely to be slow and painful.  I hope you all will join me in making the watch community slightly better by henceforth describing a tool-less micro-adjustment on a a wristwatch bracelet as a tolmia bracelet.

For those in the industry who think of such things, I hereby grant to all individuals and businesses the right to utilize the word "tolmia" on a non-exclusive basis, in perpetuity.  In other words, I am not going to do a bait and switch to sue people who start using this word.  It's sad that I have to say things like this, but this is the society that we live in now.