The great circle

Before I begin, I feel the need to apologise: this article has taken far too long to write, and also contains far too many hanging prepositions.

I write about watches because I want to, not because I need to or get paid to. It’s the same with all my social media interactions: when I first started ‘blogging in 2005, it was a stream of consciousness, a litany of songs, objects and observations. Nobody read it. Not a single soul. Many of my posts have still never been read by anyone other than me. It was a slightly cathartic response to a series of events, and, for a year or so, it worked. But it didn’t need an audience (and still doesn’t).

Then in 2007, I thought that I might actually start to do something a little more focused. Settling on watches was relatively easy; my interest had been piqued some time before, perhaps ignited by William Gibson’s 1999 Wired essay on eBay, but how to begin? I recalled the approach taken by Jeffrey Steingarten when he became a food critic for Vogue (documented so brilliantly in The Man Who Ate Everything): training. And list-making. Steingarten took his job as a food critic extremely seriously, concocting “a Six-Step Program to liberate [his] palate and [his] soul”. I did something similar, although my six steps were slightly simpler and required fewer bowls of kimchi.

I read. I searched the web. I joined Forums. I asked questions. I visited stores. I chatted. And the more I did these things, the more I found that I really enjoyed it. And more than that, I enjoyed the people behind the watches, and the stories behind the marques. While much of this may be attributed to marketing, no amount of anti-branding snark can detract from the wonder of horology, or the history of timekeeping. It’s the story of how we marked out our daily lives into discrete periods, learnt to navigate the globe with certainty and in safety, began to measure the world of the increasingly minute, and how some of the most extraordinarily beautiful micro-mechanical masterpieces were conceived, built and displayed. Of course, with the rise of the smartphone, all of this is almost entirely pointless, but, to me, mechanical watches remain amazing, if only for the fact that they are so precisely, and so very nearly completely, unnecessary.

A Meridian movement

However, I appear to be suffering from a malaise of sorts, possibly induced by the miasma that is the world of the “WIS”. When Chuck Maddox and other horo-pioneers started using the term WIS, it was, by all accounts, a very apt description: these guys knew their watches. Intimately and almost entirely. Chuck passed away five years ago, leaving behind something of a legacy; he was one of the first to ‘blog about watches, and to provide freely the kind of technical information that had, until then, been guarded jealously by long-term collectors and manufacturers. In doing so, he opened up the world of watch-collecting to hundreds of thousands of others, while simultaneously creating the modern “WIS”.

I’m not a WIS, I’m just a guy who likes watches. Someone who occasionally gets to meet cool people, see some cool stuff and (once in a while) even write about it. A few months ago, the opportunity arose to visit the workshops  of Meridian Watches, a new company set up by watchmaker Simon Michlmayr and collector Richard Baldwin. Richard also lent me a prototype watch to wear over a period of time, reporting back to them my thoughts and observations, but I’ve not yet written about the experience itself.

A partially-built Meridian movement

The watch I’ve been wearing is a prototype version of the Meridian Prime, tentatively  named the MP-12, and differing from all other Meridian watches, by being completely treated with a diamond-like carbon (DLC) coating. DLC, as you’ll recall, is a term used to describe a number of different materials that display various useful properties, including increased hardness, wear resistance and (perhaps least usefully) slickness. It’s this latter property that struck me first; the DLC coating provides a very tactile surface to the MP-12, as well as a very attractive one. The black is absolute, and contrasts markedly with other DLC watches I own, which chip easily and quite often appear dull. The surface of the dual-layer sandwich dial on the MP-12 is also new and appears to have an almost satin finish to it. With its bright white hands and massive domed crystal, the watch is not subtle – it’s a monochrome behemoth on the wrist, and is easily the largest watch I’ve worn at 46.5mm, excluding the prominent crown.

Meridian cases (C) Horologium

Meridian don’t cut corners, but if they did, they would cut them in-house, on a lathe, by hand, having first created a bespoke jig. Everything on these watches has been hand-machined, -polished, -edged, -engraved, -assembled or –coated. There’s a slightly obsessive focus on doing things themselves. My fellow #watchnerd Horologium accompanied me to Norfolk earlier this year, and commented on their “drive and desire” but it might go further than that. There’s an almost fanatical devotion to the production of watches that meet Simon and Richard’s ideals. This translates into processes that often stretch far beyond expected manufacturing norms. Take, for example, the production of a Meridian watch case. The back of each watch is engraved with a stylised globe and United Kingdom centred on Greenwich; in order to ensure that the Meridian remains vertical, and that the watch far exceeds the stated 1000ft WR, each screw-down caseback must be machined precisely to fit a corresponding case. In practice, this means that the case and back are milled in Norfolk from a single piece of metal, and must be numbered so as not to lose the pairing through the extensive treatment process. These numbers never make it to the finished watch, being removed before the final polish, but it illustrates the approach taken by Simon and his watchmakers.

The handwound movement, so callously covered by the caseback, is built from new old stock (NOS) ébauche parts. I’d never really considered what it means to assemble an ébauche Unitas movement before, but having spent some time with Meridian, I have a new-found respect for their watchmakers. Unlike the simple, “regulate and drop-in” approach taken by so many manufacturers, each part must be inspected, cleaned, polished, bevelled, treated, frosted, engraved and coated. It’s a lengthy process which includes the bevelling of the bridges by machine and by hand (the inside edges cannot be done any other way), the removal of the original plating and re-frosting in the traditional English style, hand-engraving of the "Meridian" lines (which then require a complete re-strip, clean and replate). The screws are meticulously cleaned and blued by hand, and the movement assembled and timed (max -1s / +4s per day overall). And all of this takes place in a few rooms in a large warehouse outside Norwich. The price of these watches reflects the work put into them, but there is an approach taken by Meridian that borders on the obsessive. There's a new 100 Hour Power Reserve model on the way (they're getting between 103 and 108 hours out of each movement at the moment), which is driven by two, end-on-end barrels, with the power being regulated by a hand-made differential. And then there's the in-house automatic... It's all rather impressive, to be honest.

When I was first loaned the MP-12 prototype, I really wasn’t sure that it was my kind of thing. It’s huge, for a start, and almost wilfully utilitarian; the hands are thickly lumed, and lack the finesse that one might expect from a watch that costs a shade under £5k; the massive crystal is treated with an anti-reflective coating that picks up every smudge, and therefore requires polishing almost constantly; the Gasgasbones canvas strap that is supplied as a secondary option doesn’t quite hold the watch in place on my wrist, perhaps due to almost excessive lug-to-lug dimensions. But I still wear it. And wear it a lot. It’s not perfect, but it is fun.  It’s tough, reliable and it makes me smile; from what I hear from Richard, there are quite a few others like me.

I’ll be sad to give it back, to be honest: I’d not expected to bond with it quite so much. But that’s one of the reasons I like watches – these mechanical marvels still have the capacity to surprise.

the #watchnerd

Building the Grand Complication 5 "Concentrique"

Here, courtesy of Peter Roberts Watches, are a few photos of Peter's first production model, the Grand Complication 5 "Concentrique". As you can see, the dials, cases and bezels are coming along very nicely indeed, ready for their debut at BaselWorld 2013 later this week. As you may have gathered, I'm very attached to this watch already; it's not just the story, but the wonderful people behind this watch. We can sometimes get carried away by technical advances, new materials, obscure complications and bizarre designs, but for me, it's often the people, the watchmakers themselves, and the families that support them, that make this hobby such a pleasure. It's difficult to apply superlatives to watches; with the advent of social media, every post on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook or the like, comes with exclamations, outlandish claims, capital letters or hyperbole.

We seem to be diminishing the impact of the words we write by their sheer overuse. But for me, this piece represents a truly wonderful occasion:  the release of a limited edition, hand-crafted, unique design, that was first developed by a WOSTEP student over forty years ago, and is now finally seeing the light of day. The price? Well, it remains high: £18k for one of the forty stainless steel-cased pieces; or £28k for one of the four gold-cased versions. I am incredibly sorry not to be at BaselWorld to see the unveiling of these cased-up prototypes, and I'd ask anyone who is visiting to pop in and see Peter if they can.

Here is a closer look at the bezel and case of the "Concentrique". As you can see, the twenty-four hour markers remain on the bezel, with the calendar markers being moved to the outer ring of the dial. The watch itself is 42mm across, and each hand-wound Valjoux 88** is being finished by Peter. I've not yet seen a close-up of the movement, but hope to be able to spend some time with Peter and his watches when he returns from Switzerland. Many thanks again to Peter, Marie-Louise and all involved in the "Concentrique" for the use of these photos. It's an honour to see these before the watches are revealed later this week. I hope you'll agree that this looks to be a very special watch indeed.

the #watchnerd 

**A #watchnerd fact for you: approximately 13,000 Valjoux 88 movements, or 88 VZHCL as they were more formally known, were made. This compares with over a quarter of a million 72/72C movements.

Near-exclusive: Peter Roberts Prototype Dial #3

Peter Roberts announced last year at SalonQP that he would finally be putting his WOSTEP watch into production as the Grand Complication 5. Here, in a near-exclusive (our friends Fratello Watches also have the story) is a first look at prototype dial #3, and I must say, it looks pretty good to me. While the dial still has quite a sombre feel to it, there are sparks of colour (for example, the orange calendar markers, the bright blue Complication 5 logo and the red accented surrounds). In addition, the subtlely guilloché-d sub-dials provide a degree of lightness that breaks up the matte black finish. The orange 1-31 calendar markers were originally on the bezel, but look rather good in their new position - although it's often difficult to tell from uncased dials exactly how the finished piece will look. Overall, I'd say it's rather an austere dial, that, while lacking some of the frivolity of the original, now feels like a more coherent design.

Prototype Dial #3 - the Grand Complication 5

For those of you wanting to compare this dial to the original WOSTEP watch, here's a snap I took at SalonQP of the watch on Peter's wrist (see below). You'll notice a few differences, not least the addition of the moonphase complication and the triple date feature  (I'm sure you'll recall that the watch will be powered by reworked NOS Valjoux calibre 88 movement, rather than the 72 in the original). 

The original WOSTEP watch that Peter made 40 years ago

A fully cased-up version is expected at BaselWorld 2013.

the #Watchnerd

Refractionary Thinking

The Ressence Type 3

Sir Isaac Newton once asked whether "blind chance [knew] that there was light and what was its refraction, and fit the eyes of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it?" I'm not qualified to answer Newton's question, but what is obvious is that Benoit Mintiens has been pondering refraction for some time. Benoit appears to have come up with a technically challenging, but incredibly elegant solution to a perceived weakness in the display of his previous design - the SeriesOne. With the Type 3, Benoit has created a liquid-filled dial-space that creates the illusion of an almost two dimensional display. Thermal expansion has been considered, with an integrated valve system. Not content with conquering light and heat, Benoit also adds two more complications to the Type 3 (a day indicator on the main dial, and a date running around the perimeter of the dial-space) while taking away something else - the crown.



Operating the crown-less Type 3



The crown-less Type 3 is now operated by rotating the back portion of the watch through a number of combinations to achieve different results: the Type 3 is wound, for example, by turning the case back. "To change the date, it is simply necessary to make a longer rotation through 200° in order to arrive at the date quadrant. The hour is set by starting from the neutral position and turning in the direction indicated." It's all very clever, and looks to be relatively intuitive. Benoit has even carried over some of his magnetic trickery into the rear of the watch: a gravitational gearing system allows time setting to be disconnected by simply inverting the watch. The lugs are now fixed, but I've been unable to get a decent picture of the new straps that go with the Type 3.

To be honest, I'm astounded by this piece: I've always had a soft spot for Ressence, and with the Type 3, Benoit has produced a design that is both beautiful and strangely practical. Best of all, the watch appears to be a diver - it's called Le Scaphandrier - although perhaps this is better translated as aquanaut than deep diver? At EUR23K, this is not going to be a watch for everyone, but them, as there are only going to be 50 built, you're going to be in pretty limited company anyway.

the #watchnerd

Pebble's wearable tech, via @GreatDismal

Back in 2011, I wrote about the MetaWatch, an interesting piece of wearable tech that appeared to be struggling with its Bluetooth power consumption for a while, but now appears to be focusing on "reinventing the watch as a stylish and relevant mobile accessory." In the meantime, the phenomenon that is Pebble took the world by storm, drumming up millions on Kickstarter and launching wearable tech for the masses. One of the earliest to Tweet about Pebble was Wiliam Gibson (@GreatDismal), who has recently received his Pebble. The Tweets below are taken from his stream, in a slightly stalky way. I hope this is okay - I assume it is - but if not, I'll delete. I particularly like his Sandbenders idea - something I'd like to see in mechanical watches, if the innards weren't so awfully expensive...

"Pebble has landed! Have set date and an analog face with nicely retro dauphine hands. Yay Kickstarter! #pebblewatch"

"Old person, new tech: Gets Pebble Bluetooth epaper watch, uses it to tell time!"

"Just sent a self-congratulatory text to my new wristwatch."

"RT @met2art @GreatDismal How is battery life on it? [Mileage reports vary, I gather]"

"@junkyardmessiah Too black to photograph effectively, but utterly clean design & matte silicone (?) strap is pleasantly tactile."

"Almost incidentally a watch, the Pebble is a highly customizable *smartphone peripheral*."

Perhaps Gibson has finally exorcised his Tamagotchi gesture? Or perhaps it just has a new home?

XenoPhage I like the strap; good balance with weightless plastic head. I think you could also wear it on a 22mm Maratac Zulu nylon."

"RT @cold_fashioned @GreatDismal reading reports that early deliveries have some bugs to iron out. [Perfect so far]"

"@Pebble, please make an app for simultaneous display of three world time zones, thanks! iPhone already has that, so seems a natural."

"@Pebble x a trad watch company, Sandbenders-style; steel or titanium cases intended to last through generations of (replaceable) innards?"

"Very uncharacteristic for me to be a proto-consumer of anything electronic, but… 

 

#thatwasagoodkickstarter"

Making faces

Technical drawings (C) Michlmayr

There's a smiley that's been bothering me (:-S). It's meant to signify worry, or perhaps, mild concern, and it's popping up all over the place. Increasingly, I see it typed as a codicil to Tweets, Posts or other social media comments about English watchmaking, and appears to denote a mistrust of, or even disbelief in, the preceding statement, which often refers to claims from watchmakers about the English-ness of their wares. This distrust is not new - there have been many such similar responses to the Swiss watchmaking industry over the past decade (and increasingly in the past few years as online watch-related fora and 'blogs have proliferated). However, it sometimes feels more like a knee-jerk reaction, rather than a considered response. I was therefore especially intrigued when I was first lent a watch by newcomers, and very "English" watchmakers,  Meridian for long-term test and then invited to visit them in Norfolk.

On an unassuming light-industrial estate on the outskirts of Norwich sits the headquarters, showroom and workshops of the Meridian Watch Company. The purpose-built facility was actually assembled around a huge, ten-ton safe (purchased from eBay, no less) that sits squarely in the centre of Meridian's small office. Meridian employs about a dozen employees in the UK, many of whom multi-task, working on watch and clock repairs for co-founder Simon Michlmayr's other business. Fans of external / public clocks may already be aware of Simon's work, both in Norwich and elsewhere; Simon himself is a WOSTEP-trained BHI-member and second generation clock and watchmaker. Meridian's other co-founder is Richard Baldwin, CEO of Arcadia, with links to Bunter and Fleurier. Richard is a keen collector, who has been dedicated to the industry for almost twenty years; he's a fantastic foil to Simon's technical brain - a Waldorf to his Statler, or is that Statler to his Waldorf?

A sample of prototype Meridian watches

The visit began with a trip through the history of Meridian - three prototype watches that were designed over the previous few years since Simon and Richard first had the idea to produce a watch. It's clear that a few things have remained constant during the planning and prototyping - Meridian watches are not for the faint of wrist; at at least 46.5mm, each of the prototypes has a mass, a weightiness, that is not unimpressive. Working with diving buddies, the pair created a couple of watches with locking bezel mechanisms (neither of which was entirely successful from a cold-water diving point of view), as well as a pilot-style model in which the beginnings of the modern Primes can be seen. The lockable dive bezels were particularly interesting; it's always fascinating to see how manufactures / designers approach dive bezels. With Meridian, as you can see from the photos opposite, the focus was on a sprung device to stop the bezel from turning accidentally. While divers found these hard to use even when not wearing neoprene, there are further plans afoot to create a different style of bezel that is more easily operable.

The Meridian watch box in white oak

The Meridian workshops are working repair centres, specialising in the repair of both watches and clocks. The building has therefore been subdivided into various areas: a repair workshop; a clock-making area; cleaning rooms; and the watchmaking area itself. Each is dotted with equipment - both new and old - ranging in size from a rather nice brass spotting machine to a cherry picker. I must admit to getting a little (over?)excited at the sight of so many cool bits of kit - vintage lathes, a topping tool, a sonic cleaner from the seventies - Simon has just about every tool for every job. And this goes some way to explaining the approach that Meridian has taken to watchmaking: they really do make a large proportion of their watches in-house. In fact, they probably make too much. Richard was explaining that they had recently been looking at a watch box to accompany the wallet in which each Meridian Prime arrives. But they were unimpressed with the hinges that were commercially available. So they made some themselves. The results are impressive - possibly the loveliest hinges I've seen - and this relentless attention to detail (or rather, attention to producing exactly what they want, and refusing to compromise) is something that appears to underpin the Meridian watchmaking philosophy. 

A prototype 100 Hour version of the Meridian Prime

Rather than buy in complete Swiss-made movements, Meridian have used a source of new old stock ETA ebauches from the past fifty years. This allows them to literally build their own movements, from the bottom up, customising some components, decorating others: frosting, bevelling, polishing, plating and assembling. Ken Kessler, in his piece for QP Magazine, has recently written that Meridian use the "raw Unitas 6497/8 in component form." When I first read that article, I had assumed that they were "modifying" movements, in much the same way as many others - perhaps adding a moulded rotor, or speccing the ETA at source. But what I saw was a revelation. Richard has described the process to me a number of times over the past months, but for some reason it hadn't really sunk in (perhaps there was also an element of (:-S) in me as well?). Meridian really do "make" watches, hand-blueing the screws, sending the bridges off to be hand-engraved and even crafting the cases and casebacks from a single piece of steel (which have to be labelled throughout the process to ensure that the matched pair are able to be successfully reunited).

It's wonderful to see a company like Meridian having a go at such things. The Unitas movement that drives the Prime is but one of many fires that are currently in the fire: while I was there, I saw a hand-cut differential being assembled for the forthcoming 100-hour Power Reserve model (results show an average of 103-108 hours), as well as an automatic movement on a test bed. There's a glass caseback in the works (see above) and plans for a variety of dial designs, layouts and even a truly in-house movement. It's wonderfully ambitious - a property that Meridian appear to have in spades. But how about the watch itself? I'll get to that in the next part of the story.

A Prime Candidate

The Meridian "MP-12" Prototype

Back in the early summer of last year, Meridian Watches appeared on Twitter. There wasn't a huge fanfare, just a few announcements that promised hand-built English watches, with a Swiss movement. Of course, being something of a #watchnerd, and a complete anglohorophile**, I not only began to follow them, but also struck up a conversation. A few months later, I Tweeted Meridian to ask how the build was going and received a rather nice response from them, and was sent a few tidbits during the ensuing months. It was only in the autumn, a few weeks before SalonQP 2012, that the significance of this contact became apparent: Richard called me to give me something of a Meridian-sized scoop. It was wonderful to see the launch at SalonQP - even if the sightly officious security guards ensured that I missed the actual reveal at 1800 - but it was only afterwards that I learnt that Meridian would be sending me one of their watches to wear and feedback to them on my experiences. So here it is: an "MP-12" - it's actually a model without a designation, being the first to be treated with DLC, and a new, metallic dial that I've not seen before. Of course, I'll be recording my thoughts via Twitter, and on the 'blog, but I should like to thank Richard - and watchmaker Simon Michlmayr - for entrusting me with this piece. You've made a #watchnerd very happy!

**I may have just made that up, but you know what I mean. Probably.