Titaniumize Everything (w/ Austin Rogers, @rehaut)

Unpolished Watches

In this episode of Unpolished Watches, host and guest Austin Rogers (@rehaut) discuss the intersection of lifestyle and horology. The convers

Key takeaways

• Austin Rogers uses a Rolex Explorer as his primary companion during mountaineering attempts on Mount Baker.
• The technical distinction between Grade 2 and Grade 5 titanium is significant, with Grade 5 offering superior hardness and finishing potential.

Main topics

• Titanium grades in watchmaking
• Watch content creation journey

Notable quotes

I'm like maybe the most credulous watch buyer.

Conclusion

The episode provides a sophisticated look at how material science and

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:04) Ladies Speaker 2 (0:05) and gentlemen, I am excited today because we have a special guest on the podcast on the collector conversations as I'm calling them. Today's guest is Austin Rogers, who goes by Rehote on Instagram. I've been excited to follow along with his content over the past year, year plus. Austin, thanks for joining the program. It's great to be here. So you are, as we were just talking, you're based out of New York. You're from Ohio. Is that right? Speaker 3 (0:29) Yeah, that's right. My wife and I sort of migrated to New York in 2016. Speaker 2 (0:34) And I saw you just posted recently that you made a third summit attempt, maybe it was, in Mount... Is it Mount Baker? That's in Washington State, am I Speaker 3 (0:44) right? Yeah, that's the one. Anyone who's familiar with Mount Baker or the Northern Cascades will... Be aware that that makes it sound significantly more challenging than it is in reality. I've just had a string of bad luck. The first time I was out there, it was 2023, and my wife and I were road tripping from Seattle to Coeur d'Alene for an Ironman. We just wanted to tack it on. And so the weather was nasty on our approach. We didn't even make it to high camp, turned around. Last year, I went back with someone from the dog park of all people. and woke up at 1 a.m. when we were going to make our summit attempt with a migraine. So I puked at camp and sort of sent the rest of the rope team up without me. And then last year, or this year, made a third attempt, and we just had some really terrible weather, you know, 200, 300 feet from the crater. And it was raining sideways. We decided to turn around and call it. I'm sure I'll be back at some point in the future. I feel like I have unfinished business. But I think in the near term, we're talking Rainier and Kilimanjaro for next year. So I'm just going to move on for Speaker 2 (1:57) a little while. Are you a bit of a mountaineer? Is this something you've done before? I assume this Mount Baker is a tall mountain, but other tall mountains you've summited in your life? Speaker 3 (2:07) Baker is the first, so can you be a Mountaineer if you've never actually summited? That's sort of my question. Maybe aspiring Mountaineer at this point. Speaker 2 (2:17) Yeah. I guess we're all aspiring on some level, but you've gotten much closer to executing it than some of us. What's the watch of choice while you're attempting to be a Mountaineer? Speaker 3 (2:27) Three attempts in a row, it's been an Explorer, which... Have you read Brendan Cunningham's book, Selling the Crown? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm Speaker 2 (2:35) pals with Brendan and I've read his book. Speaker 3 (2:37) Oh, perfect. Yeah, there's obviously controversy about the relationship between the explorer and Everest. But yeah, it's certainly a good companion for a trip like that. Speaker 2 (2:51) Yeah, as an explorer fan myself, I'm not going to knock the choice. I don't know if it's controversy so much as just... Our watch brands love to, there's always a bit of puffery involved in the storytelling and the narrative that they spend for themselves, especially as we get farther removed from the actual events. And I see you've got the famous ad in the background as well. Yeah, Speaker 3 (3:11) that's from probably another friend of the pod. That's from Nick at Ad Patina. I got that from him pretty close to a decade ago at this point. It was in our first office. We had like a teeny we work on Madison Ave and it sort of followed me since. Speaker 2 (3:28) Talking about the mountaineering, one of the first videos you ever did that hit my feed was the Doxa video, which I'm sure you get. Was it a Doxa video? It was just like you throwing watches into a lake and seeing which one you could read. Was it Doxa's that you were doing that with? It was Doxa's. Those Speaker 3 (3:44) were actually the first like loaner watches I had gotten from a brand, which was such a cool moment. You know, you feel like you're... You made it into the circle. They trust you enough to send thousands of dollars of watches. And what I neglected to tell them was that I was going to like strap them to this PVC pipe rig and throw them, you know, a hundred plus feet down in this quarry. The sort of mythology of the Doxa is that they chose orange after diving in a lake in Switzerland and orange just showed up the best. But if you sort of look into the science, orange isn't necessarily the best color for visibility of depth. And so I was testing a few other dial colors and the yellow ended up, I feel, having the best visibility. Speaker 2 (4:35) But Speaker 3 (4:36) yeah, that was a ton of fun. Speaker 2 (4:39) I ask this because I think you're a diver as well, right? You're scuba certified perhaps, but you take your watches doing things, right? And I think that's cool because most of us don't. What's the dive watch of choice, if any? Speaker 3 (4:53) Yeah, so I am like an enormous Sea-Dweller guy. The 116600 is sort of my, you know, favorite. It's the SD4K, 40mm ceramic. So it has like this really cool convergence of the older proportions. It's thick, but with the sort of modern technology. Yeah, I sort of think about myself as being like maybe the most credulous watch buyer where like a brand's... Like, hey, we made this dive watch. You can take it with you diving. It's this piece of mission-critical gear. And I'm like, oh, okay, sounds great. And then I'll actually turn around and do it when in reality that really isn't the intention these days. Most people are going to use a Garmin or a Shearwater, something a little more 21st century. But there's still a ton of fun to bring with you and a little sort of talisman of those trips and those experiences when you're like, clocking into the email factory when you're not on a dive boat. Speaker 2 (5:56) The email factory. Yeah, we're all great producers there. Doxa, did they get mad at you when they received the watches and there was junk from some quarry lake? Or were they like, oh, the video turned out well, so it's all good? Speaker 3 (6:11) They have been so cool to me. They were so supportive. I didn't even tell them before the video went up. You know, I sent the watches back. They were fine. They weren't damaged. I take very good care of the loaners that I get watch brands. They were super cool and really encouraging of the whole thing. Speaker 2 (6:31) I wanted to talk a little bit about your journey navigating the world of watch content. You've been making videos on Instagram for the past year, year plus maybe. One of the things I like about yours is that it always feels sort of... pretty true to you and you don't post a lot of stuff that feels like it's deliberately chasing wherever the algorithm happens to be at the moment or where the views happen to be. You just kind of do what you like. And I think the, your taste in watches and your lifestyle kind of comes through in them. And I learned more about Austin in every video, which is kind of why, why I enjoy them. But talk about your journey to creating content about watches. You know, obviously you must've, you started as an enthusiast and, and now here we are sharing opinions on watches. So kind of talk about how we got from A to B. Speaker 3 (7:14) Yeah, I've been into watches for about as long as I can remember. My sort of entry point into watch enthusiasm was my grandpa. He's still around. He has a 5513 Submariner that absolutely rips. He bought it off a co-worker, you know, decades ago who wanted money for motorcycle parts. So I think it was 750 bucks sort of fleeced the guy in retrospect. Speaker 3 (7:43) And, you know, I just saw him wearing that all the time and it was just the coolest object. So as a little kid, I had, are you familiar with Timex Weekenders? Yeah, of course. Everyone's entry into like NATO strap wearing field watches. Yeah, of course. And so, you know, that through college, you know, consumed just a tremendous amount of like Hodinkee 1.0 watch media, like the OG like. John Mayer, Prince Street Talking Watches, that stuff, lots of Jack's writing. And, you know, in New York, there are a lot of watch events. And so I was sort of a regular at a few of those. But yeah, started sort of putting my thoughts out on the internet in a more serious way around a year ago. It was just a nice creative outlet. I work in software. And so having something that is... Totally different than that as a sort of part of my daily routine has been just a lot of fun and it's been wild Speaker 2 (8:47) how open the community has been Speaker 3 (8:51) you know, like you mentioned it's been a year and The opportunities I've been able to have the people I've been able to get to know it's just been absolutely tremendous talk Speaker 2 (9:02) a little bit more about that what's it been like as others in the world have started to notice what you're doing when brands start to notice what you're doing and ask if they can lend you watches or do a more formal partnership what's it been like navigating that for you and what have you learned about becoming a watch content creator that you maybe didn't expect yeah Speaker 3 (9:23) i mean i think i'm in a really nice spot with all of it where i get to be really picky and choosy about the opportunities that i i take um I've had the chance to go to Watches and Wonders, which was just absolutely crazy. And 18 months ago, I would have never guessed I would have found myself there. So having this be sort of a passion project more than anything has allowed me to have a lot of latitude with what I do and what I don't take on. But yeah, it's been just... absolutely wild having the experience of like someone will pop in your inbox and it's you know a brand that you own or that you've looked up to and yeah it's it's been it's been a really really weird experience for sure for for someone who you know not too long ago was on the outside looking in like um day one at watches and wonders i was waiting for the the shuttle and uh you know justin hast comes up behind me and says hi and Speaker 2 (10:27) Just Speaker 3 (10:28) stuff like that is just absolutely the weirdest experience. And everything's been like that. It's been genuinely nothing but positive experiences. Speaker 2 (10:38) Speaking of those brands that I know you like, you have shown a lot of love for Omega over the past couple of years that you've been doing this, which I'm glad someone is. But I wanted to talk about your connection with... With Omega, you've talked about Planet Oceans, you've talked about Seamasters, you've talked about Bond, I'm sure. What's your connection with the brand? Speaker 3 (11:00) Yeah, definitely as an owner, but also really as an enthusiast. I think the watch world broadly is best when there is that Coke and Pepsi relationship, whether it's Omega Rolex or Omega Tudor, AP, Patek, that sort of thing. And so I really do like the idea of supporting brands that are adding to the conversation in that way. And Omega is an interesting one because I feel like they take a lot more swings than something like a Rolex, which is going to be extremely conservative. Like one of my favorite watches in recent memory was a... I want to say it was a $25,000 ceramic case Planet Ocean GMT with a titanium movement. And, you know, like how many of those could they possibly have made? And just the idea that they sunk this R &D and this effort into this really esoteric, really expensive watch that, you know, I may never encounter in person is something that I think is really cool and something I love to... support. Speaker 2 (12:10) You know, that's funny because one of the common critiques of Omega is that they make too many watches, basically. That their SKU number is bloated. The catalog is confusing for someone who walks in off the street. Hell, it's confusing for me and you a lot of the times. There's all these variations of Seamasters, Speedmasters, not to mention the Aqua Terra. So I'm glad you're giving one of the counter arguments. I've always thought like, what did all those Aqua Terras do to you, man? Like they never hurt anyone. And they probably sell. Like if you probably got under the hood of Omega and you got to see the actual sales numbers of what they're selling, the ones that you would want to kill off are probably, they probably sell better than you could possibly imagine. So I've always thought that was a bit of a lazy critique. So I'm glad you're giving another sort of counter to the Omega catalog is too bloated critique. I've spent Speaker 3 (12:58) some time thinking about that element as well. I'm not sure I can get on board with that argument. And I think... Part of it at its core is the idea that watch enthusiasts often get confused thinking that watch brands exist for enthusiasts. And they really do exist to sell to a very broad market in most cases, Omega certainly being one of those cases. And so there's a reason why Rolex offers the Pearlmaster and it's not to sell it to you or me. It's to sell to... someone random sort of breezing past an AD and wanting something shiny. I think that's an element with the catalog creep as well. That Speaker 2 (13:45) said, I'm curious. I guess, look, they've already got a big catalog, so what's a couple more? If you could, like, what would you like to see Omega doing right now that they're not? I don't know if this is a specific watch you have