The atelier · Quai Vauban, Besançon
Four hundred hours
at one bench
Three watchmakers, one calibre, twelve watches a year. Every part is finished by the same hands that assemble it, so no one can leave a corner for someone else.
Process
Six things done
by hand
- 01 · 90 h
Stripe
Côtes de Genève on every bridge: a turning wooden peg charged with abrasive, passed in overlapping bands.
- 02 · 120 h
Bevel
Anglage: each edge filed to 45°, then polished with ever finer stones. The inward corners take a day each.
- 03 · 30 h
Grain
Perlage on the mainplate, circle by circle, on both faces — including under the dial where only a watchmaker will look.
- 04 · 12 h
Blue
Screws and hands heated on a tray of brass filings until the oxide turns royal blue. Taken off a few degrees too late, they are thrown away.
- 05 · 40 h
Black polish
Flat steel rubbed on a tin plate with diamond paste until it holds no scratch at all, and reflects only black or white.
- 06 · 100 h
Assemble & regulate
Assembled, oiled, wound, then timed in six positions and three temperatures until the rate holds within two seconds a day.
Scroll to heat the tray
Blue is a
temperature
Steel grows a film of oxide as it warms, and the film's thickness is its colour: straw, bronze, purple, then the royal blue of our screws near 290 °C. A few degrees more and it fades to grey.
The bench
Three pairs
of hands
Each watch is signed on the inside of the caseback by the watchmaker who regulated it. Visits to the bench are welcome, by appointment.
- Since 2014
Aurore
Regulation and final assembly. Trained at the Lycée Edgar-Faure in Morteau, then twelve years in restoration.
- Since 2016
Théo
Anglage and black polish. Keeps a notebook of every inward angle he has ever finished.
- Since 2019
Nadia
Dials, hands and the bluing tray. Can tell 285 from 295 °C by eye, and still checks the thermometer.
Regulation
Listening to
every beat
On the timing machine each tick becomes a dot. A watch that keeps perfect time draws a flat line; one that gains draws a rising one. We adjust the regulator index until the line lies flat in every position.
Why
Besançon
In 1793 a group of Swiss watchmakers crossed the Jura and settled here. For much of the century that followed, most of France's watches were made in this city.
Its observatory was founded in 1878 to test the precision of those watches, and still certifies chronometers today. We work a few streets from the river, in a building that housed an escapement maker in 1890.