Tuul Launches the Filthy 13, a New Take on the Classic Military Spec Tool Watch

It’s always fun when we get to introduce you to a new entrant in the micro-brand tool watch space, and today is no exception. Tuul (pronounced tool) is a brand new Brooklyn-based micro-brand with a focus on — you guessed it — tool watches. If you spend too much time on Instagram (who am I kidding, we all do), you may have seen teasers for their first watch peppered through your feed over the last year. Now, with the introduction of the Filthy 13, we’re finally getting to see what a Tuul watch looks like.

For a new brand building their first watch, it is almost always the right choice to go simple. Making a watch is hard, making a good watch even harder, and overcomplicating the process can easily turn the whole thing into a jumbled mess. Besides, tool watches should be simple and straightforward, ready to do their job and not much else. So it’s no big surprise that Tuul has fallen back on a familiar source of inspiration for their first release — the Dirty Dozen watches issued by the MoD to British troops during World War II, which is in many ways the prototypical tool watch.

The Filthy 13 follows closely in the footsteps of the Dirty Dozen Watch, Wrist Waterproof spec and carried over the familiar dial layout with central hour and minute hands, small seconds at six o’clock, large Arabic numerals, a railroad minute track, and an abundance of lume. The Filthy 13 swaps the radioactive paint used on the original dials for Super-Luminova, which here has a slightly yellowed, fauxtina effect, and drops the Broad Arrow, a good choice, considering the lack of direct connection to the British MoD.

On the technical side of things, the Filthy 13 boasts a screw-down crown, drilled lugs, and 100 meters of water resistance. It also opts for an automatic movement, in this case, the Sellita SW261-1. The date position has been removed from the movement, so staunch opponents of the phantom date position have nothing to fear here.

While the original Dirty Dozen watches were only available in one spec (although differences were noticeable brand to brand), Tuul’s take is available in four versions, two each in bronze and steel. The steel watches are available with a choice of a black or a white dial, while the bronze offers the choice between a black or green colorway. Each of the four has a bead-blasted finish and comes on an appropriately color-coded nylon strap.

All versions share the same case dimensions: 38mm in diameter, 46mm lug-to-lug, 11mm thick, and with a 20mm lug width. Tuul also, and somewhat unusually, provided us a measurement of the crown’s diameter, which comes in at 7mm. I can’t say I often think about crown diameter, but my 10th Anniversary Worn & Wound Seiko 5 has a comfortable and decently sized crown I measured at 6.45mm, so make of that what you will.

Pricing for this first collection from Tuul starts at $999.99. Find more information about the Filthy 13 right here.