Finishing Touches

Mechanical watches are beautiful machines and, at their best, it is this beauty that speaks to us. There is a lot of talk about technical challenges and such but, honestly, beauty is found not in technology but in the poetry of traditional craftsmanship. It is one thing to talk about technology in a performance car, quite another to discuss it in a traditional device such as a mechanical watch. No, the soul of the watch lies not in its springs and gears but in the human hands that have so lovingly nurtured it

For hundreds of years, the Swiss have been the acknowledged masters of the delicate craft of watchmaking and their skill lies primarily in their attention to detail. It is this attention to detail – what has been called artisinal integrity – that continues to preserve the traditions of watchmaking in Switzerland.

Of course, aesthetics is one of the main reasons why watchmakers can spend hours angling a single part, amongst hundreds, in a mechanical watch. Yet it must be remembered that most people won't understand what anglage, for example, is all about, and many of the parts that are tediously angled by hand will eventually be completely hidden beneath other parts. Thus, is there another reason, besides beauty, why in a top-notch mechanical watch, all parts are angled instead of leaving them sharp and rough?

Watchmakers present the following case – that the parts such as bridges and levers cannot have sharp corners because during the assembly of the hundreds of parts within a tiny working area, there is bound to be some contact, and even the steadiest of hands may cause the part being installed to touch another adjacent part causing scratches.

These scratches are minute – as invisible to the naked eye as inclusions in diamonds – but artisinal integrity keeps watchmakers working hard to bring their work just a little closer to perfection. Thus, besides beauty, one practical reason why anglage is performed is that when a watchmaker installs a part, he or she minimises scratching done to other parts. Bear in mind that the parts we are discussing are tiny and as delicate as the gossamer wings of a dragonfly.

Notice how the anglage along the bridge is perfectly even and perfectly polished.

Aside from the difficulty of working on such a scale, the precision required is similarly demanding. The actual angle of the anglage must be consistent throughout – typically, the anglage is mirror polished as well.