How It’s Made: The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Dial from HODINKEE on Vimeo.

Our buddy at Hodinkee took some amazing video of the Audemars Piguet. Here you see how the Royal Oak face is made – using a powered pantograph that is one or two steps removed what Mssrs. A and P would have used in the 19th century.

Time Piece – Switzerland from HODINKEE on Vimeo.

It’s not hard to make watchmaking look good but this film takes the cake. It’s by Kat Mansoor and features two master watchmakers, Vianney Halter and Philippe Dufour.

via Hodinkee

It’s not every day you see a man in a lab coat test some of the more affordable watches out there but this fellow from the NAWCC School of Horology is totes serious about his craft. Enjoy this seven minute description of watch testing courtesy of our buddies at Watchdig

Ferrowatch from zaouaikarim on Vimeo.

The Montre Ferrofluide is a concept watch that uses ferrofluids – a suspension of magnetic particles in liquid – to create the watch face. When not activated, the face is just a pool of liquid… but then the magic happens.

Don’t expect this to pop up at your local Macy’s jewelry counter. While feasible, I suspect the energy required may be a bit high.

via Hodinkee

I’ve been lax in my coverage of Russian watches lately. Most Russians do not have, how you say, very high quality but they have lots of features and plenty of style.

This dude at Russia2All covers the Buran Stingray, a diver that looks like someone stole the depth gauge off of a Victorian-era submersible.

This “style,” if you want to call it that, came about in WWII and is very similar to the old-timey Cartier Pasha. Those bars are to keep the crystal from blowing up under water. This watch has an ETA 7750 movement modified to remove the chrono parts.

Apparently this watch was made in Switzerland, a move by Buran to lend a little credibility to their brand. If you’re in the market for a watch, take a look at the Russians.

Man. I don’t know if I’m supposed to look at this watch or have sex with it. The man’s hands fondling this PVD encased beauty is a bit off-putting but the music sounds like what my roommate used to play to mask the sounds of his seductions.

That said, I wouldn’t kick a Kobold out of bed for eating crackers.

Our boy Ariel at ABlogToRead reviewed this monstrous LUM-TEC LUMzilla automatic, a huge watch with huge hands and numerals. The watches run in the $600 range and have Japanese automatic movements. They’re 50mm which makes them a little hefty for most men – heck, this would look big on the bucket of a ditch digger – but it looks like a good deal for a watch that makes a statement.*

* Note: The statement would be “I like big watches with lots of lume.” The statement in no way should be “Girls will like me because of this.”

Man alive: look at this monster. It’s the DualTow watch by Cristophe Claret. This watch has a single-pusher chronograph and striking mechanism to chime when you activate the chronograph. The coolest additions are the two belt displays showing the hours and minutes. Then you’ve got a tourbillon to round things out.

It’s a manual-wind movement with 50-hour reserve and only 68 will be made.

Technical Specifications:

Movement
Manual-wind
582 parts
73 jewels
50-hour power reserve
twin barrels placed in parallel

Tourbillon
Swiss lever escapement
Balance oscillation frequency 3Hz (21,600 vph)
Tourbillon rotation frequency: 1 revolution/minute

Functions
Hour and minute display on belts
Single-pusher planetary-gear chronograph
Mechanical striking mechanism sounding each change of function (start, stop and reset)
12-hour, 60-minute and 60-second chronograph counters
Operating mode indicator
Power-Reserve display

Case
Sapphire watch crystals specifically designed to enhance wearer comfort
Rectangular, curving, fitted with exclusive mobile lugs enabling a perfect fit on the wrist
Dimensions: 42.75 x 48.20mm (not counting the lugs)
Water resistance 30 meters

Display belts
In rubber with transferred hour and minute numerals

Flange
Flange with chronograph five second markers cut from five different stones

Dynamometric crown and pusher
Partially rubber-moulded

Dial
sapphire crystal serving as a bridge for the chronograph counters and featuring transferred chronograph hour and minute counters, chronograph operating mode

Buckle
Triple-blade folding clasp with decorative covers and an innovative system enabling comfort-enhancing 10mm wrist extensions

Every year at Basel, the big watch show in Switzerland, companies trot out their latest R&D projects along with a plethora of new watches. The watches are what sell but the R&D products are what get the press. Take this lump of gears from Jaquet Droz, for example. At its core, this is a minute repeater redesigned to write numbers on a piece of paper instead of chime the current time.

Jaquet Droz is a fairly well-known brand and Droz himself was a pioneer in the field of mechanical automation. However, of late the company has been pumping out cool but fairly unknown watches to the masses and, as a result, feels it needs to show off things like this instead of building out its line. Fair enough.

Anyway, you’ve got 4,000 pieces working in concert to output the time in block letters. The idea, but probably not the implementation, were taken from Droz’s own notes. I would say he was on par with Babbage when it came to building early mechanical ur-computers. It costs $342,000. Enough said.

via Giz