Latest Review
August 19, 2024 
Cycling and watches have more in common than just gears. These enthusiast hobbies also share a mindset and a style that seem to go hand in hand. In this edition of Tool/Kit, our pal Evan Perrone, a professional in the cycling industry, takes Forstner’s new Pilot Ref. F-6B/346 for a spin and talks to us about cycling and traveling on time and in style.
Hey Evan! Thanks for being the subject of a Tool/Kit for us. Can you tell us and our audience a little bit about yourself? Where are you based? What do you do for a living? What are your hobbies?
Hi I’m Evan Perrone, so glad to be chatting with you today. I’m a native Pittsburgher, born and raised, and that’s where I reside now. My current title is Senior Account Manager and Special Projects. I oversee account business in four states as well as sit on several category committees. These committees help shape future Cannondale’s bicycles and how they come to market. I’ve been with Cannonade for over 4 years now. I love it. I’ve been in the cycling industry in some semblance or another since 2003 and would consider myself an industry veteran.
My hobbies do, of course, include cycling, but Worn & Wound has been instrumental in discovering my passion for and interest in watches. I also like anything with wheels, so that includes cars and motorcycles, including vintage varieties… I’m all about it.
How and when did you get into cycling?
I discovered the joy of cycling through a really good lifelong friend of mine. We played soccer together in middle school and he had an opportunity to try mountain biking while out on a family vacation. He immediately fell in love with it. So for his next birthday, he threw a mountain biking party and a bunch of us were able to experience mountain biking for the first time. That was it, I was completely hooked after that. I saved up my summertime chore money, got my first mountain bike back in 1997 and the rest, as they say, is history.
A few years after that, while I was in high school, I started working at a local bike shop here in Pittsburgh. It became a college summer job and then a grad school summer job. When I finished grad school, the job market for my particular degree was extremely tough, so I made the decision to stick within the world of cycling and moved my way into the brand side of the industry. That was one of those game-changing choices and I’ve stayed ever since!
What made you decide to make your passion your profession?
When you make your passion your profession, you’ve got to be careful. Day to day, it’s very easy for bicycles to simply become numbers on spreadsheets. Sometimes I start losing sight of what exactly I am doing with bicycles in this data form. But the good news is, each and every day, I get to ride my bike after work. So I constantly get to reconnect with why I love cycling.
How many bikes do you have and to what degree do you customize your gear choices for each type of ride?
Currently I have 7 bikes, ranging from road to mountain and from commuter to gravel. I organize my gear into three different categories. Each of them, of course, begins with a helmet. It’s typically one that’s appropriately suited for the type of ride, but I never leave without one. Ever.
So the first category of gear is based on lycra kits for road for gravel, light-weight and form-fitting. I’m wearing a smartwatch tuned for cycling, performance sunglasses, and clipless cycling shoes. The next kit, is specifically for the mountain bike trail, which includes lycra shorts as a base-layer underneath stretch-fit shorts and a looser-fit poly tee, along with a fanny pack, the same smartwatch setup, and clipless mountain biking shoes.
The final kit is that casual, around town commuter kit that’s featured here. I always start this kit with an analog watch. In this case, it’s obviously the Forstner Pilot Ref. F-6B/346. I follow that with a performance top or polo. For this ride, I chose the Handup Flat Floral Button up. Next is a pair of stretch-fit shorts sans liner, like Chrome’s Folsom Mid Short. I wore comfortable, padded mountain bike suede lace-ups by Five Ten that can double as street shoes. I always have a discreet handlebar bag and a clip to secure any valuables. In this case I’m using Road Runner’s awesome little Burrito Handlebar Bag and The James Brand’s Hardin carabiner for my keys. And in the city you’re going to want to have a lock on hand, I use the Abus Granit U-lock as it’s particularly secure thanks to its double locking system.
So you’re a cycling enthusiast and professional—but we happen to know that you’re also a watch guy. What got you first interested in watches?
As a kid, I got a watch as a Christmas gift, it was a Swiss quartz watch in the flavor of a diver with a classic turning bezel. I loved that watch and it got me into the habit of wearing one all the time. I wouldn’t say that it got me started in collecting, but over time I accrued more—digital watches, themed Swatches, so I had a little collection. It was really when Worn & Wound launched and I started reading reviews weekly and sure enough, more and more watched caught my eye. I started saving my money and grew in my collecting right along with the Worn & Wound team, eventually leading me to watch brands like Forstner.
This edition of Tool/Kit is about Forstner, what was your first encounter with their brand and why did you choose the Forstner Pilot Ref. F-6B/346 as the latest edition to your collection?
When I saw this watch, I immediately thought it was a really ingenious interpretation of what would happen if you took a pilot-style watch and mated it with a military, field-style watch. The size of the watch at 36mm with a pilot-style handset and numerals is unique and feels like a fresh take on something that feels like it could have existed at a certain point in time. I also love that it’s a manual wind, with a large crown that’s really easy to grab, even with riding gloves on. I like the simplicity, and I love winding it every day. It’s part of that daily ritual and gives me that same vibe of reconnection to a hobby I love, just like getting out on my bike each day.
What makes this Forstner the ideal analog riding watch?
In terms of what makes it an ideal riding watch is first, its size. Big watches don’t work great for riding, because you do move around a lot on and around the bike. For me, larger watches can get snagged on gear or apparel. I just want something that’s sleek and svelte. This Forstner totally checks that box. Next is its legibility.
Thanks to its high contrast numerals and the highly legible layout of the dial, it’s super easy to read at a glance while in motion on the bike. Its stark simplicity ensures you see everything you need to see—and nothing that you don’t. That’s super important because you don’t want to be distracted, especially in an urban location like Chicago where we did this particular photoshoot.
Lastly, is its versatility in terms of how it wears on a bracelet and straps. Obviously, Forstner is known for its very comfortable vintage style bracelets, and their Pilot watch comes on an ultra flexible ladder-style stainless steel one, which is great for the summer. I feel like this watch also pairs really well on fabric and military straps. For riding, I put it on my Sage Green ADPT Mil-strap and here’s a little pro tip for you. I find that the extra height provided by the two layers of material between the caseback and my wrist helps keep a watch’s crown from digging into the back of your hand when you’re riding with a straight handlebar setup!
It seemed that you chose a very specific bike to pair with the watch for this photoshoot. Was that a conscious choice? Do you think about which watch goes with which bike?
When thinking about and prepping for this shoot, the Cannondale Badboy was the obvious choice for multiple reasons. I knew I was going to be doing an urban ride and the stripped-down, no nonsense Bad Boy was created specifically for that purpose. It’s got this super solid frame with integrated lights. It has a fast-rolling, but voluminous tire that winds up quickly, lending to fast acceleration. It’s a good stoplight drag race wheel, while handling potholes well. And being that it’s black on black, it’s low profile and doesn’t draw too much attention to itself, which is an important feature that you want when you’re locking your bike up in the city. All this makes it pair really well with this black-dialed Forstner.
Just like this bike, it too is low profile and not overly flashy, but feels substantive and solid on the wrist. The Forstner’s dial has a lot of texture to it that almost gives it this asphalt-like look, which adds to that contrast and legibility, but also inspires me at a glance to go out for that daily ride. Both this Cannondale bike and this Forstner watch are these pared-down analog tools that have so much more going than what you might expect at first glance.
