Bridgework is perhaps the most arduous of movement finish, especially in the modern day in which watches can have more than five bridges. This is perhaps most apparent with the fact that the distance between each bridge should be equal and parallel at all places, even through curves and bends. This poses significant difficulty for modern day watchmakers because parts made by machined process typically turn up with straight edges and sharp points; and it is the watchmakers that labor with files to make these bridges more elegantly curved, with even anglage on each side, and a mirror polish as well. Corresponding bridges should echo the same finish, and with the more elaborately designed bridges like those in the Vianney Halter, H Moser, watchmakers have a real headache in their hands.
The Vianney Halter Classic and the H.Moser & Cie Mayu feature extremely interesting bridge design.
Coming back to modern day finishes and practicality, one cannot discount the fact that modern day know-how has played a significant role in the preservation of the age-old skill of watchmaking. For example, rhodium plating not only makes the bridges look more beautifully clean, but it also protects the bridges from corrosion over periods of time. The same process that makes costume jewelery and silver free from tarnish is now applied in watchmaking, something that perhaps many antique watches could have benefited from in the past.
However, the watchmakers of yesteryear still managed to used different materials from the norm, and such was the case of German silver, or untreated nickel. This highly reactive metal even tarnishes with the oil of human fingers, and could only be worked on with artisans wearing finger gloves. Of course, the sheer beauty of using this warm yellow metal for bridges makes looking at a movement even more human, and many say the effort taken to make them so is certainly worth it.
When it comes to movement finish, skeletons are always welcome in the closet. In my view, there are very few watches that can demonstrate as much of the purity of watchmaking and watch finishing as a top-grade skeleton watch like eg eg.
The slow etching away of of metal bit-by-bit down to a pre-determined design that shows as much of the mechanical workings of a watch as possible is sheer dedication; where every little mistake results in instantly ruined parts.
Very few watches are quite as stunning as the skeletonised Tourbillon under Three Gold Bridges.
Skeletonized versions of watches take so much more time and skill to make than their non-skeletonized counterparts, and thus fewer and fewer artisans can, or will, perform this dying skill. It is indeed sad that for the thousands and thousands of new watches that debut during the annual watch fairs in Basel and Geneva, less than 1% of them account for skeletonized watches, with less coming out every year.
It is on this sad note that this article be concluded. Whilst more and more people have taken to mechanical watch collecting in the past ten years, fewer and fewer watchmakers are graduating from Watchmaking School. It would be very sad indeed, and not just a little ironic, that modern day processes and machinery invented to aid watchmaking might kill the very trade that they were invented for. |