You could be forgiven for assuming that when it comes to mechanical watches, making the movements is the hard part, and everything else just falls into place. Sometimes that might well be true, and Swiss brands certainly put enormous emphasis on the whirring of the set of wheels and springs that tells the time.
But when the rest of the watch needs to reach the same level of quality, even the most superficially modest components can prove surprisingly difficult to achieve, as Blancpain discovered when it set out to develop a ceramic bracelet for its Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe.
Photography: Blancpain
After years in the making, the bracelet makes its first appearance today in a new collection of Bathyscaphe dive watches, the Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe Quantieme Complet Phase de Lune: a calendar complete with moon phases, that is, a watch that displays the day, the date and month. and lunar cycle, but still requires manual adjustment at the end of each month.
It’s an accomplished watch in its own right, with a silicon escapement, a three-day power reserve and that signature diving bezel with a “liquid metal” inlay for text.
But what really excites Blancpain is that, for the first time, the Bathyscaphe, which has been available with a ceramic case since 2015, can now come with a matching bracelet.
It could have happened years ago; Blancpain’s parent company, Swatch Group, owns a specialist company, Comadur SA, which produces ceramic bracelets for sister brands Omega and Rado. But Blancpain’s list, as one of the group’s most prestigious names, was very particular and led to the development of a completely customized bracelet, including two new patents.
Top of the list was a bracelet that was as durable and rugged as a high-end dive watch would demand. The zirconium oxide used is known for its surface hardness (test score of 7.5). mohs scalebelow diamond, with a 10, and above titanium, with a 6), and its strength-to-weight ratio is superior, but it can be fragile.
The Blancpain team explained that bracelet designs with multiple links are prone to failure if the space between the links is too narrow and the pieces are allowed to rub against each other. But if you make them too loose, not only will the bracelet look cheaper and less secure, but your links will collide in other ways.
The answer was a complex system of links held together by titanium bars, each hand-screwed into position. Inside the bracelet, each bar has a patented cam-shaped section that sits within a flared recess on the side of the center link. As the bracelet flexes, the titanium cam can move within its recess, but not beyond, meaning the bracelet is flexible within a controlled range.