Pascal Coyon

The original Omega 19 movement was 19 lignes which corresponds to a diameter of 42.9 mm. Does someone know if the size of the reissue movement?

From the pictures above the movement's balance wheel has timing screws, something you don't often see in contemporary movements.

The statement in bold above is somewhat misleading I think. Unless these guys are making their own jewels, drawing their own wire for balance springs, etc., they are certainly using some existing components. There's no shame in that by the way...for some parts like jewels, there's just no point in reinventing the wheel.

I also take some issue with the use of the phrase "by hand" in the context of the operations described. I'm quite fine with anglage on the spokes of train wheels being done by hand, but how exactly do you make Côtes de Genève by hand? It requires machine tools to make this finish...

Also, I hope they have a very good supply of balance staffs. For this sort of cash, I would expect some kind of shock protection on the balance jewels. I understand they are "inspired" by older Omega movements, but shock protection would be a worthy upgrade for a watch like this. Using a large balance, small pivots, and no shock protection is a recipe for many broken balance staffs - all it would take is a knock walking through a doorway...

The movement photos shown in the previous posts appear to be renderings rather than real photos, or they are highly processed. Does anyone have an actual real life photo of the movement?

Cheers, Al

I've heard of this maker before, although I've not actually seen the watches or visited the web site previously. Regarding my comment in the previous post about "hand made" I saw this video of a refinish of a center wheel chaton on the site:


As you will see, he mounts the chaton in a lathe collet, and uses the lathe to polish it (that starts at about 2:30 in). In the "ethos" page, he says this:

"I take immense pride in the manufacturing of my watches and go to great lengths to use traditional watchmaking practices and tools in each and every timepiece that leaves my workshop. My atelier is outfitted with the same tooling that was used by watchmakers decades ago and still serves me in my craft today, a real testament to the precision toolmakers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. As a modern watchmaker I do take full advantage of modern CAD systems to aid in the design stages. My watches, however, are very much handmade and hand finished to the highest level I can achieve."

Again the use of "hand made" in this context, and seeing that chaton polishing does sort of rub me the wrong way. Now to be clear both these makers have serious skills, so I am probably being overly nitpicky here, but to me polishing a chaton in a lathe is not really all that traditional. While this doesn't show the polishing of a chaton, this video does show the polishing of a countersink in bridge, done in the "traditional" way, and truly by hand in the most basic sense of that phrase:


This is a video I took while in Mr. Dufour's atelier many years ago, and the bridge in question is the fourth wheel bridge for a Simplicity.

In speaking with the watchmaker doing this work, he had spent all morning polishing the countersinks in just a few of bridges (going from memory he had done maybe 4 so far that day). Further conversations revolved around when he knew it was finished to a high enough level, and he indicated it was about the feel of the ebony polishing stick used as he rotated it with the bow, rather than a visual inspection of the countersink.

I'm not suggesting that the makers here should adopt this way of finishing, but if you are headed down the road of looking at independent watchmakers, and trying to understand the subtleties in finishing techniques, just be aware that there are many ways to perform these tasks, and not all of them are equal.

In my previous post I mentioned Côtes de Genève, and there are several ways of accomplishing this finish. The vast majority of makers use the least challenging and least pleasing methods (once you know how to spot it, you can't "unsee" it), while a few use methods that recreate a "proper" Côtes de Genève finish, but are in a way a shortcut. Only a very few use the most traditional methods. So if you are considering shelling out serious money on a watch from an independent maker, understanding that it's not just the result but how you get there, that is important.

I would be interested to know the size of the movement he uses...my educated guess is that it's a 16.5 ligne movement, and is based on the ETA 6497, which is a popular movement used by makers like this. Not only because it's what watchmakers learn on in school (I did) but because parts are readily available for it. But for me it always begs the question of just how much ETA DNA is left in the movement like this. Is he also making his own train wheels, or is he using the ETA wheels for example. I could not find anything on the site that was definitive either way (for example video of photos of gear/pinion cutting).

Cheers, Al

PS - As an aside, I think Mr. Myrick and I share a case supplier, but that is another thing altogether...😀