The Story of the
Timely EDC Conductor

Hello. My name is Thomas Bradley. I am the founder of Persecuted Truth and Persecuted Truth Atelier. I want to share a very special story and tell you about the art and inspiration behind the Timely EDC Conductor Bag.

I want to say that many times throughout the seven months and 25 days I worked on this; I was tempted to give up. I will say that The LORD helped me and cheered me on. This is the story of The Timely EDC Conductor Bag.

I very much love and respect the Japanese people. I love their undying spirit of craftsmanship, dedication, and spirit to continue on when things get difficult.

I made this bag from inspiration of The Seiko watch corporation.

The Seiko Watch Corporation as I researched was born from a desire to make watches and clocks in Japan, in the midst of many European and American clocks and watches filling the market. This was actually before watches were a thing in the late 1800's. Unfortunately they suffered a fire and it was an opportunity to quit for them. But Kintaro Hattori decided not to quit. Instead Hattori made the Seikosha factory where the name "Seiko" comes from.

This was the setting when Seiko gave the Japanese government railway the pocket watch in November of 1929. This moment in history is so monumental for Japanese punctuality standards culturally that in modern Japan train delay certificates have been issued to employers due to factors beyond their control.

I wanted to replicate the feeling and tell the story properly in art, and the way that I like to make art, are in the mediums of: silver, leather, and horology (watchmaking).

I appreciate the Japanese core philosophy of Shokunin — mastering of one's profession, driven by spiritual or social obligation. While many people will try to do many things I like to do one or a few. I originally started doing silversmithing and moved over to leathercrafting to initially compliment my silversmithing. Well I ended up getting lost in leathercrafting for a couple years and then I found silversmithing again. I would heat my own silver bullion, mix in copper if needed for strength (rarely). I prefer to work with pure silver because it has a lot of really beautiful characteristics. I love when I pour fresh bars of pure silver — I can see blue confetti shaped sparkles throughout the surface of the silver bar once it is cooled. It is also really forgiving. Caution must still be taken when working with it to keep it from cracking, but it is much nicer to work with than sterling which is only 92.5% pure silver. I recognize that pure silver is much softer, which is why it's mostly used in jewelry. Well let's just say I followed my passion when I made this bag, but I reinforced the pieces structurally in specific ways.

When I made this chain; I initially tried to make the wire that I form the links from with a hammer and anvil. I tried 6 times to make the wire and then form the chain. It was a very long and difficult process but I was determined not to quit. Each attempt took 12–26 hours and the final one being 26 hours was the most mentally taxing. I was able to form the long wire from hammering, heating it to red hot, cooling it, and then hammering for hours. I wrapped the wire and clipped the links — it was a success! Or so I thought. I was joining the links together with some silver solder that I crafted myself from 70% pure silver and 30% copper.

It was Sunday, August 24th 2025 and the mosquitos were attacking me intensely. I ended up heating the links too long and I melted the piece. I was destroyed, and I had to make a decision if I was going to continue. I decided that it was the last time I would attempt to make silver wire by hammer and anvil. I researched and came across the English Durston Rolling Mill that I had wanted in the past when I first got into silversmithing. Back then I learned to appreciate what I have and I made a decision that I wanted to practice solely with just silversmithing using only one or two hammers. I had given the desire to get a rolling mill to God, and He ended up bringing me back to it. The machine was $1,800 to arrive, but I was able to afford it.

I received the rolling mill and essentially was ecstatic. I was able to roll out the wire after two attempts. Keep in mind that with each failed attempt, I had to reheat the silver in the furnace past 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit and repour the bars. But I rolled out the wire, formed the links and soldered the chain in an even more beautiful fashion than I could have hoped to do before. The rings that connect the chain to its accessory — the Seiko Watch mod — are hand hammered from before I received the rolling mill.

I initially made this chain for a different bag, but I ended up melting all the hardware down that was made with the silver chain. I rescued the chain and some of the silver totaling 5 troy ounces and I made the other hardware for this bag.

This is the second part of the story where I almost gave up. I was able to hand forge the hardware, but it was also taxing. I heated the silver ingots that I saved, and hammered and rolled them out with my Durston rolling mill. Making the silver blanks was not too hard, it took a lot of time to roll, heat, anneal, and continue rolling; but the real difficulty came when I was actually soldering the pieces to make the hardware. I was not heating the silver up properly and the joints I made had cracks and did not fuse properly. During that time, I did not record the time and instead I soldiered on. I finally finished the hardware — or so I thought again — in late January.

This bag design was actually something that I had drafted up and designed on drafting vellum in November. I actually started to craft my own watch components with pure silver, sterling silver and 18k gold. My plan initially was to make the whole watch by hand. I tried for many days to research watch tolerances, watchmaking, and draw up my own original design. I came to the conclusion that I needed to order a movement (the mechanical heart of the watch) and work from there. I was going with a GMT watch so that I could track multiple time zones. I initially wanted to replicate an old Japanese map of the earth and have the sun travel across the face of the earth and returning to the point of origin once every 24 hours. This would represent the GMT hour but be more significant. I tried to design the watch case, but I realized that with my simple jewelry tools I had on hand and no precise measuring tools, the best course of action was to order the case, and all the other water tight components from a reputable dealer. I researched the best companies to use and I got everything rolling.

This actually was another point of decision. I had to put the watch together, but I also had to make the watch components from gold and silver. It did not appear to be that challenging until I researched the exact measurements of the precise watch parts. My plan was to make the dial, the bezel insert and the GMT hand. I did not yet realize that I was in for such a challenging task. I want to expound very briefly how difficult it is to replicate machine tolerance requirements by hand, and I had not yet purchased my digital caliper. Thankfully I had a Durston rolling mill and a simple brass caliper to check the thickness and the rough dimensions of the parts I was making.

I was able to make the dial by laser engraving a piece of card stock paper with the image and dial markings that I designed — very challenging placing the hour indices by hand on a computer program by the way, that actually took a very long time. I etched the image into the cardstock with each attempt and then got the silver down to the right thickness about .35mm. I would then roll the round silver blank with the cardstock dial reversed image onto the silver. I tried so many times. With each attempt it would stretch the silver and destroy the image. I think I tried 4–5 times to get it correct. I also was placing the hole for the date to show and that took a few attempts, and the last difficulty with the dial was making the center hole for the dial to fit the added GMT hand on the hand tube.

I was able to make the dial but during that time I was also going back and forth between the dial and the bezel ring insert. This is the ring on a dive watch that allows you to track time. I was having to make it a specific inner diameter, outer diameter, and height. I also needed it to be sloped slightly so that it could match the added height of the sapphire watch crystal. To add one more difficulty — I chose to try it by rolling an image that I designed onto the silver ring once I got it to what I thought was the right size and thickness. This was terrible because I think that I tried 6–8 attempts. I ultimately decided upon making the ring and then using my number punches to tap in each number in a 24 hour sequence. I finally finished the ring and dial on December 19th 2025.

During this escapade of making the watch face and bezel ring insert I was also making the gold watch hand. Yet again it was another extremely challenging task. This required micro precision of not only thickness, but also balance and poise of the watch hand as it would sit on the watch. I was making it out of a much more dense material than brass. Brass is one of the materials that watch hands are made of. I was able to design a watch hand on my computer and then use my laser program to etch the design into paper and then apply it to the gold that I rolled out. I initially started with about a gram of 18k gold.

The hole that connects the hand to the watch must be precisely 2.20mm–2.15mm for the gold to stretch slightly and fit. The GMT hand also must be 13.0mm long and thinner than .4mm thick. As you can imagine these requirements demand the utmost precision. I actually tried to make the gold hand so many times that I ended up whittling down my amount of gold to less than .30 grams. With each attempt I got better though. I used my cheap jeweler's saw and a magnifying glass to precisely cut the tiny gold watch hand out of the blank. I then was able to bore out the hole and set the poise of the watch hand. My goal was to make the tiny watch hand balance on my X-acto knife blade tip, just at the center of the hole. I unfortunately was unable to make the hand balance properly and be strong enough. I would polish the gold hand and make it ready, but discover that it structurally was not strong enough to hold up to installation and a lifetime of use. I finally made one of the last attempts — I think I tried anywhere from 4–6 times — and the watch hand broke. Out of frustration I launched half of the watch hand with a tool by just pressing on it against the rubber mat it rested on. I was yet again very low. This was on December 26th 2025.

During that winter I worked in upstate New York installing solar for a week or so and considered how I would go about finishing this bag. I worked with the leather I had and was able to make Tom's Tool Bag, as I thought I was going to go back and install solar. Afterward I was able to start making the bag for the Timely EDC Conductor. I designed the bag on Lightburn using real images that I researched and found of Japanese trains and Japanese maple and gingko leaves. I got the leather — full grain natural vegetable tanned leather — and began putting the images onto the leather. This took a precise balance of heat and time. I played around with different settings but ultimately I was able to get as close to an old picture as I could and what I got was sheer nostalgia.

I started making the bag on April 11th 2026 and worked on it until May 6th, when I thought it was done.

I had ordered the pocket watch in parts as the budget permitted from Crystaltimes.net — I found that they made high quality parts that were tested and rated for better water resistance than most other companies. I also didn't want to use parts that most people order from massive websites. Initially I went with all the parts that I couldn't handmake at that time along with the pure silver dial, the sterling silver gilded bezel ring insert and the 18k gold watch hand. I told you that it initially failed. This was actually after I took it in to get the parts put together. When returning I tried to polish the hand better and it snapped near the pinion hole. The one jewelry place that I took it to ended up being the only watch maker that would agree to assemble this Seiko mod.

Before I had the watch shipped to their main store where the watchmaker is located they let me at least try to assemble the crystal and bezel ring. This is where I found out that my tolerances were a little bit off on the bezel insert. It was rubbing against the crystal slightly and not allowing the bezel ring to rotate, it was also near impossible to put the bezel ring on.

On May 7th I got another gram of gold and proceeded to mix it with silver and copper and successfully make my own 18k gold. I was going to make the watch hand again. I thought I was going to but I actually realized a week later that I didn't want to focus on watchmaking yet, it was simply too demanding and my only way out of this was to sell the gold and order the necessary watch components to finish the build. I decided to order a proper GMT watch dial, a high quality ceramic bezel ring insert and a high visibility orange GMT hand to compliment the fall theme.

I took the watch to the maker and they sent the watch to the city with the promise that they would only do what they could and I would have to pay full service price. I said YES! I waited what seemed a month and they called to report that the bezel ring did not go on and they are sending it back. I attempted to get them to attach it, as it is the right part, and they refused after many days they claimed. I had to trust in God as my provider because I didn't have any more money in the budget for this watch — I was already at $619 after the $200 service fee. They offered to install the bezel ring insert for free and "expedite" it. The manufacturer was contacted and after a back and forth with the watch maker, Crystaltimes.net was so gracious to send the new part for free and ship it at no cost! I took the watch back with the new ring and they sent it back. I waited for what seemed another month and they called quoting me $50. I did not have it in the budget but most importantly I wanted to help them keep their word. I showed them evidence of their claim to do it for free that I made them write on paper — a servicemember lesson! And I got the watch back in a short week.

During that time awaiting the return of the watch I realized that I had extra leather laying around and The LORD said to me in prayer "make tiny bags." I started making the TIMELY EDC CONDUCTOR and I finished after the watch returned. I was able to make it a near replica of the Timely bag and I connected it to the bag using a nickel plated trigger snap. I received the watch back and attached it to the special leather carrier and put it into the tiny bag and it was like it was meant to be.

During the awaiting of the watch the first time I noticed a major design flaw which only presented itself fully when I tested it: the zipper on top did not open wide enough to comfortably put things in the bag and take them out. I was able to design a snap system using nickel plated line 20 snaps. I incorporated that design trait into the mini bag. I finished making the mini bag and the whole ensemble on July 7th 2026 — marking 7 months and 25 days.