Is there someone here who is familiar with the Bremont brand? I have been offered the limited production Code Breaker for $10k. Is this a good deal? The watch is in like new condition.

 

While I wouldn't touch that brand at any price, especially after their in house fiasco, it does appear to be a good price compared to the chrono24 listings.
http://www.chrono24.com/en/search/i...resultview=list&goal_suggest=1&dosearch=true&

 

IMO no not a good deal...

 

Better get another watch, and then consider a donation to
Bletchley Park Trust Limited
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/support/donate.rhtm
A percentage of the sale of a "CodeBreaker" proceeds would normally go to them.
Even if the deal you have been offered is better than the C24 offerings I am afraid the value loss will be significant.

 

Required reading on Bremont....
http://www.ablogtowatch.com/real-st...er-in-house-made-bwc01-london-watch-movement/

 

You could buy 3 nice *used* Omega watches for that price. Skyfall, Speedy, Gemini or Ploprof, Skyfall, Speedy, or SM300coax, Speedy, SM300 - you get my drift.....

 

Yes sir loud and clear. Thank you gentlemen for the advises.

 

Owned an MBII for a whole month last year before moving it on. Wore it 5 times before bezel got scratched. Thought how can this be possible when it's meant to be case hardened to 2000 vickers. Had my metallurgist at work test it on a nano-indenter and it came back at 500 vickers (the standard hardness of 316 St St). Sent it off to Bremont for testing and they came back with some rubbish about it only being case hardened to a depth of 1 micron (0.01mm), absolute crap, standard depth should be about 120 microns (1.2mm)

Wouldn't touch the brand again after this plus their pricing seems overly optimistic.

 

Well, I think to properly perform a hardness test on a case hardened surface, a sample has to be sectioned, mounted, polished (if you want to check micro-structure), and then hardness can be checked. I'm not saying that their answer wasn't BS (because knowing what they have done and claimed before I have a hard time believing anything they say really) but I'm not sure your test was conclusive.

You can certainly test small areas down to grain size with a micro-hardness tester, but again it has to be done in a cross section for a case hardened material I would think...

Disclaimer - I'm not a metallurgist (thankfully!) but had the pleasure of dealing with many of them in my former life BW (Before Watchmaking).

Cheers, Al

 

Neither am I but my metallurgist is and he's also the head at the Centre for Precision Technologies at my local University and to quote him verbatim

"the case where we did the test had no coatings on it, if they say the coating is only a couple of microns in thickness and a load of 1kg will penetrate the surface, then the coating is less than useless, a 1kg load would be a like a normal everyday scratch"

 

Again, not implying that Bremont is not taking the piss, because that's what I expect from them. Case hardening is not really a coating, but a change in the structure of the existing material, so not adding a coating on top of an existing material. I don't claim to know what process Bremont uses, because I don't care enough about them to bother looking.

My own experience is with bearings (used on cars, trains, trucks, airplanes, and even the space shuttle), and adding a carbon layer to a low carbon alloy steel via a process called carburizing and then subsequently hardening that layer. The depth of the layer is determined by how long the bearing races were in the carburizing furnaces with the elevated carbon in the atmosphere (the material that supplied the excess carbon was originally toluene, then natural gas as the gas was much safer). Knowing the structure of that layer, how deep it was, and how the hardness changed in the transition zone was a pretty critical thing. Mind you we are talking about Rockwell C scale of high 60's/low 70's here.

All I'm saying is that the test he did is not the typical way of checking the hardness of a case hardened part. Not taking any issues with the conclusions mate...

Cheers, Al

 

Al, thanks for the info. It wound me up at the time and still does when I think about it now.

I still don't understand what their case hardening process is as like you (but in basic laymans terms) I always thought you heated the material up and threw carbon powder / gas in.

I'm all for bringing watchmaking back to England and hope they succeed but I think they are more of a marketing company selling watches than a watch manufacturer selling watches. Have a read, if you haven't already, about how they got the name Bremont. That's got to be a load of rubbish if ever i've heard it.

 

Indeed ... The infamous 'Farmer Bremont' has never been seen or heard of.... & nothing against the French (my kids are both French ) but it always bugged me that a company trying to expound so much 'Englishness' picked a French name... to me it smacked of pseudo-swissism

 

1k watches with 5k of marketing in my book.

 

As an infrequent visitor to the Omega forums, I've come across this thread and it makes interesting reading. Regardless of individuals' opinions of the brand, the OP, if he/she bought it, will have had a nice return should they choose to sell it. In the UK a steel version will sell for north of £14,000. I'm fortunate enough to own a rose gold version with serial number 007, which was complete chance; it will never be sold by me. I also own an ALT1-C Polished Black and three special editions (2 military and one other).

I've visited Bremont several times, when they were HQ'd in the barn and more latterly in 'The Wing' and I admire what they're trying to achieve in the longer term. For those who feel that it's a marketing exercise over watchmaking I'll simply mention special editions of the Speedmaster. I say that as the owner of an Ed White Speedmaster and a Dark Side of the Moon.