Watches - another OCD problem
-
I went into the IWC boutique in Melbourne to see if there was any sign of the Big Pilot Big Date with a white dial. It's not arrived yet, but the salesman showed me the Aquatimer Perpetual Calendar. It's a big watch, and I think you need to be built like the Rock to carry it off.
Just down the road I got chatting to another salesperson about the H. Moser and Cie watches. They had one of their very limited models with a Vanta black dial. The moonphase is apparently accurate to one day in a thousand odd years. :o
The movement on this is lovely. You can't see in the photo, but the back of the watch has a curved sapphire crystal to hug the back of the wrist better.
-
They had one of their very limited models with a Vanta black dial.
Geez, seems like they'd do a better job with AR coating the crystal, so you get a better impression of the Vantablack.
-
Omega have announced that they're remaking the Calibre 321, which was used in the original Speedmasters that went to the Moon.
Given we're coming up on the fiftieth anniversary of Neil Armstrong's jaunt, I suspect that we'll be seeing this in the inevitable limited commemorative edition Speedmaster, which will sell like crack filled hotcakes.
-
And will be obscenely priced…
-
Fratello indicates the movement will not be in the 50th anniversary models. There is to be a gold one allegedly (which sounds disgusting).
The backstory about how they had to do a CT scan and have a multidisciplinary team reverse engineer the movement makes no sense to me, since the Swatch group never stopped making it and presumably has all the schematics.
Good news for Speedy nerds but agree with Chris the pricing will be outrageous based on the single workshop and painstaking 2 year reverse eingineering project described.
-
I was just saying that to Jody last night re: the scan they had to do to reverse engineer it…
Is it that the specs for the movement were destroyed in a fire?!?
Or is watchmaking a haphazard process where people are making shit up as they go along, and every 321 movement is really the specific to Joe Dirt and Sunshine Lou?
Or is Omega full of shit?
You'd think making a specific movement has standards and specifications...
-
I'm going "full of shit."
The entire backstory to me seems designed to justify a high price.
-
Or is Omega full of shit?
Yes.
The idea that they couldn't follow the original specs and instead had to go to extreme lengths to recreate the movement is absurd. It's not an illuminated manuscript from the dark ages. There are probably still a couple of employees at Omega that assembled the originals. It wasn't that long ago.
-
They are also doing sedna gold PVD in lieu of the original copper in order to preserve the look of copper in the movement. With gold. That is not a typo
But gold doesn't tarnish so that may be a legitimate aim. It seems odd to take such pains to replicate the original and then switch up materials though.
-
Omega also used a CT scanner to replicate the case of the limited edition Railmaster. It could be that it's a quick and dirty way of acquiring a 3D model, or that with components being hand made back in the sixties, there was some deviation from their specifications.
Marketing has no doubt picked up on this and oversold it.
I suspect that there's been a bit of subtle modernisation of the movement. The Wrist Chronograph has a few subtle upgrades. That might have been what took the time.
https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/first-omega-wrist-chronograph-limited-edition-1918-introducing
FP Journe uses gold movements too. It's probably a way of charging a lot more.
-
It's an easy way to get a 3D model, but you know what's easier and more accurate and doesn't include worn gears and the like?
Entering the measurements from the blueprints into your CAD system or tooling equipment.
It is unquestionably just a bunch of bullshit hype.
-
I know a little bit about manufacturing being a knife and gun enthusiast, and what a scan won't tell you is the +/- of tolerances. It just tells you what things are right now. Every individual part has over and under tolerances that are not the same across all parts. Having a series of parts that are +/- in series results in tolerance stacking, ultimately affecting the reliability.
-
It's also possible that the design documents for the Calibre 321 weren't complete. There's an article at Ars Technica about the recreation of the F-1 engine used by the Saturn V, which was designed in the sixties, and goes into the problems facing resurrecting old technology.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the-monstrous-f-1-moon-rocket-back-to-life/
Incidentally, there was serious consideration of reusing this for NASA's heavy lift system.
-
Again though, the problem with all of that is that the movement never went out of production within entities that ultimately became the parent company of Omega.
A certified Omega watchmaker on the Omega forums called it bollocks too.
