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After launching the P1lot One, a non-profit pilot’s Omega replica watches exclusively for 52 forum members, some of the members of the construction team joined forces and started SUBDELTA, handbuilt Dutch watches. Every year, a maximum of 100 handbuilt watches will be issued.

The first crowdfunding watch project for SUBDELTA is the Periscope. Designed and built in the Netherlands,this Periscope model commemorates the Dutch submarine legacy. Design elements that grab back to that submarine legacy can be found in the dial for example. Submarine crew can now see the time (and whether it is day/night) in one glance of the dial, due to the day & night indicator and the single hand. The SUBDELTA Periscope comes in two sizes, in 39mm (13mm height) and 42mm (14mm height). However, even the smaller version is by no means a small Breitling fake watches uk with a lug-to-lug size of 49mm. More dimensions and specifications can be found below.

Reading time with just one hand is really easy, and has been a success for other brands (like MeisterSinger) as well. The dial has a 24-hour scale and with the 24-hour movement it means that the single hand makes one rotation every 24 hours. At first glance, it might appear that the dial looks a bit cluttered because of this, but it is actually really easy to read time this way and not in the last place convenient.

For the movement, SUBDELTA will be using a modified top-shelf self-winding Russian movement. They call it the SUB 2624-1 movement (which is a heavily modified Petrodvorets 2624) with 40 hours power reserve, decorated with “Côtes de Genève”, “dorage noir” and sporting a rotor with SUBDELTA logo. All SUBDELTA (Periscope) watches are designed by a Dutch team and will be built & assembled in the Netherlands. The replica Breitling watches will be personalized with initials of the owners, a date and a unique number.

From today till June 15th, crowdfunding will take place the SUBDELTA webshop. The normal price between June 1st and 15th will be € 1,750 (inc. 21% Dutch VAT for EU residents) or € 1,446 (with 0% VAT for non-EU residents). Early Birds can however back this project for € 1,500 (inc. 21% Dutch VAT for EU residents) or € 1,240 (with 0% VAT for non-EU residents) in the first two weeks. Worldwide free shipping.

Specifications:

• 39 mm: 13 mm high, 49 mm lug-to-lug
• 42 mm: 14 mm high, 51 mm lug-to-lug
• 22 mm lug width
• weight: < 100 gr
• 6 ATM water resistance
• grade 5 titanium (the highest grade) case, screw-in caseback, buckle and screw-in crown
• day/night sandwich dial setup with crosshair, filled Swiss Super-LumiNova on DIN font (day: submarine blue, night: pitch black)
• front crystal: double-domed 2 mm sapphire, AR-coated on inside
• back crystal: flat 1.5 mm sapphire, AR-coated on inside
• automatic SUB 2624-1 movement (heavily modified Petrodvorets 2624) with 40 hours power reserve, decorated with “Côtes de Genève” and “dorage noir”, rotor with SUBDELTA logo
• personalizations: initials in leather strap, personal date & build number laser-engraved in the case
• straps: one-of-a-kind black/orange handmade leather strap by 7T2Straps.com & orange “1968” Isofrane
• strap changing tool: Bergeon 6767F
• packaging: modified black Nanuk 903 waterproof explorer case
• crowdfunding: May 13th – June 15th
• production start: mid June
• shipping: before Christmas

In my book, a minute repeater is the ultimate complication. Of course, a tourbillon is a feast for the eyes, and a perpetual calendar dial filled with apertures for day, date, month, year and moon phases is brilliant, but a minute repeater, to me, offers the most sensational experience. Most minute repeater movements have hammers hitting gongs to indicate the hours, quarter hours and minutes. This year, however, A. Lange & Söhne came out with a decimal minute repeater, which strikes every 10 minutes instead of on the quarters, as you have likely guessed. The Cartier replica watches online — A. Lange & Söhne’s Zeitwerk Minute Repeater — is not the first timepiece that uses this concept; other brands such as Breguet and Seiko have also created decimal repeaters, though they remain exceedingly rare.

So, let’s have a look at this new wonder from Glashütte, Germany, built by the manufacture that moves so many watch enthusiasts. Whether they can afford one or not. many aficionados hold a special place in their heart for A. Lange & Söhne, not least because the company is run by passionate Germans determined to compete on the elite level of their Swiss peers. We at Fratello Watches are big fans of this brand, so let’s take a look at this latest version of the already beautiful Zeitwerk timepiece.

The A. Lange & Söhne Zeitwerk Minute Repeater works a bit differently from most other minute repeaters, and most other decimal repeaters as well. The Zeitwerk Minute Repeater is activated by a pusher instead of a slide. It consumes the necessary energy from the mainspring so it doesn’t need to wind an alternative power source for the minute repeater function. Unless the remaining power reserve is less than 12 hours, the Zeitwerk Minute Repeater will strike the hours, 10-minutes, and minutes in low tones — double strikes for the 10-minutes, and high tones for the single minutes. For maximum pleasure, you need to set the time to 12:59. The Zeitwerk Minute Repeater will take approximately 20 seconds to perform all 31 strikes (12x low tone, 5x a double strike (=10), 9x high tone).

The power reserve of the Zeitwerk Minute Repeater is 36 hours, so the wearer is limited in the number of minute repeater activations. The beautiful dial of the Zeitwerk Minute Repeater shows, besides the digital display of the time, a power reserve indicator with the German ‘Auf’ and ‘Ab’ indications. The power-reserve scale of 36 hours also has a small red dot at the 12-hour mark to indicate whether you can still use the minute repeater complication without additional winding of the movement.

According to A. Lange & Söhne’s head of development, Anthony de Haas, it was very challenging for the brand to translate the digitally displayed time into corresponding chimes. The struck time will always correspond to the digitally displayed time. After the Zeitwerk Minute Repeater does its job, the disks will advance to the current time — especially interesting to witness when you activate the decimal repeater at 59:59, for example.

Besides being a mechanical wonder, the A. Lange & Söhne Zeitwerk Minute Repeater is also very pleasing to the eye. The platinum case measures 44.2 mm in diameter and has a thickness of 14.1 mm. Although it is a large watch, it is the weight of the replica Swiss Breitling watches that surprised me. It is a heavy piece of engineering on your wrist. The dial is made of solid silver and has digital indicators for hours and minutes. A subdial for the seconds is located at 6 o’clock and the power reserve indicator is located at 12 o’clock. As you can see, the ‘time bridge’ as Lange calls it, is made of a different material than the rest of the dial. This is black rhodiumed German silver. Also visible through the sapphire crystal are the hammers and the gong.

As with all A. Lange & Söhne watches, the mechanism is as beautiful as the dial. The hand-wound caliber L043.5 has a lot of depth when being observed through the sapphire case back. This movement is decorated and assembled by hand and features the famous 3/4 plate made of German silver. There is hand-engraving on the balance cock of course. The L043.5 movement has the patented constant-force escapement, which delivers the same amount of energy during the entire 36 hours of power reserve.

As you can see on the photo above, the balance wheel has six eccentric poising weights. These weights can be rotated to adjust the “poise” (balance) of the wheel. The balance spring is manufactured in-house at Lange. The L043.5 movement consists of a whopping 771 parts in total, including 93 jewels. Finally, the movement has a rate of 18,000 beats per hour.

The price tag on this stunning Zeitwerk Minute Repeater is €440.000. It will not be a limited edition; the only limitation is the watchmaking capacity of A. Lange & Söhne to create these pieces for its customers. The complexity of the movement requires highly skilled and specifically trained watchmakers: something which takes time.

This Zeitwerk Minute Repeater from the Glashütte village in Germany was, for me, one of the highlights of this year’s Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie in Geneva. I have a weak spot for A. Lange & Söhne watches and basically all the timepieces in its catalog are beautiful. This is a rarity, as I normally tend to select only a few pieces from Breeitling replica watches for bently manufacturers that I truly like and enjoy. In that respect, there is no other brand that operates at the same level as A. Lange & Söhne that offers so much magic to me personally. The Lange  Zeitwerk Minute Repeater only reinforces my feelings about the brand.

Watch straps usually play second fiddle to the Breitling fake watches online they hold in place. Not at La Montre Hermès, which takes its leather goods as seriously as it does its watchmaking. In this feature, Gisbert Brunner explores how a fine leather watch strap is crafted.

For many watch fans, connoisseurship stops at the case lugs; the watch strap, a temporary, easily replaced accompaniment, is no more worthy of study than a paper napkin. That isn’t fair. Fine watch straps reward scrutiny the same way fine watch movements and cases do. Equipped with a little knowledge of leather-crafting techniques, a connoisseur can become as expert a judge of the former as of the latter.

A good place to start one’s study is at the world-famous, crème-de-la crème leather goods company Hermès. The company makes some 120,000 straps per year, not only for its own collection of Hermès-brand watches but for those of Parmigiani Fleurier as well.

The company developed its leather-making prowess long before the wristwatch came along. In 1837, Thierry Hermès, a saddler and maker of other equestrian tack, opened a workshop in a back courtyard on Rue Basse de Rempart in Paris. The quality of his products soon earned him an enviable reputation. He moved to the Faubourg Saint-Honoré and, over the decades, Hermès and his descendants diversified into wallets, handbags, belts and luggage, earning the family brand considerable renown. In the early 20th century Hermès began marketing wristwatches manufactured by outside suppliers and equipped with its own leather straps. It introduced its first Hermès-brand wristwatches in 1928.

Today, Hermès makes its watch straps in two facilities. One is in Switzerland, in the town of Brügg, near Bienne, where Hermès’s watchmaking offshoot, La Montre Hermès (founded in 1978), assembles its watches. There, in a small atelier in the big, modern-looking factory, 12 highly trained strap makers ply their craft. The other facility, where 30 of the company’s strap makers work, is in Paris.

One-third of the company’s straps are made from alligator; the rest are made of calfskin, buffalo or ostrich hide. As is true of all of Hermès’s leather goods, the watch straps are made from only the most meticulously selected raw material. Only about 40 straps can be made from each calf hide because Hermès uses only the skin from the calf’s back. No more than four straps can be made from an alligator skin because only the belly portion is used; the remainder of the scaly skin is incinerated.

It takes at least two hours to make each standard strap, and considerably longer to make customized ones. Each strap consists of three layers: the upper leather, visible when the best Panerai replica watches is worn; a textile lining beneath it; and the lower leather, which comes into contact with the wearer’s wrist. Once the leather blanks have been stamped, their edges are beveled until they are paper-thin. This ensures that they don’t bulge after they are folded over and stitched down.

Glue is an important bonding material for strap making, but stitching plays an even bigger role. There are two main varieties of seams: machine-stitched and saddle-stitched. The latter requires two needles plied in opposite directions. The thread is knotted in the last few millimeters of the strap, where the “tunnel” for the spring bar is located. Artistry and technical skill are equally important in sewing a saddler’s seam. The strap’s loops are particularly challenging: the craftsman makes six perfectly placed stitches to merge the loop’s ends. Machine-sewn seams also require deftness and experience: each material must be stitched at its own particular angle, so the machinery must be adjusted prior to sewing.

After the needle comes the hammer. Hermès will not accept protruding seams, so the strap makers gently rap and tap with their hammers until each strap is flat and smooth.

The next step, processing the edges, usually requires at least 15 separate tasks. Each is executed by hand: abrading, waxing in the desired color, heating to between 176 and 212 degrees Fahrenheit, and polishing. Depending on the strap, the entire procedure must be repeated as often as five times. Afterward, slim grooves are embossed into the upper leather parallel to the strap’s margins.

Finally, the atelier’s director scrutinizes each strap under a loupe. If he discovers no flaws, the strap is punched with marks specifying its material and year of manufacture. The letter “K,” for instance, denotes bands made in 2007. An “L” means the strap was made at La Montre Hermès in Bienne and a “V” means it was made in Paris.

Before a particular strap style goes into serial production, it has already been tested for durability. This process occurs off-site, at the Laboratoire Dubois, an independent material-testing institute in La Chaux-de-Fonds. There, the straps undergo the so-called “Chronofiable” trials, which check their long-term performance under conditions straps rarely encounter in the real world. The strap must stand up to these torture tests in order to be approved for serial production.

In all likelihood, Hermès will one day shift all of its strap production to  the La Montre Hermès facility. Right now, there is not enough floor space there to do so. Fortunately, Hermès owns a neighboring lot where it plans to build an annex. When completed, it will house a capacious leather warehouse and new workbenches.

Hermès will then need to find and train qualified personnel. Artisans such as these are at least as valuable as watchmakers; Hermès suffers a major loss whenever an employee departs because it takes so long to bring new employees up to the company’s high standards. Steve Scheuber, head of the strapmaking atelier, says, “At least one year passes at any new replica Breitling watches strap manufacturing site before 80 percent of the straps made there are acceptable.”