On January 21, Greubel Forsey unveiled the Hand Made 2, an ultimate dedication to the art of hand-crafted fine-watchmaking.
With the aim to save the soon extinct traditional watchmaking know-how that once shaped timepieces, Greubel Forsey has been re-discovering traditional techniques since 2012. The Naissance d’une Montre projects and the Hand Made 1, presented in 2019 (a tourbillon watch made by hand or by hand-operated tools) were important milestones on that road.
The new Hand Made 2 is a 40.9mm timepiece incorporating 270 components, 96% of which are entirely handmade.
‘Hand-made’ to Greubel Forsey’s standards is when all components, except five – sapphire crystals, case gaskets, spring bars, mainspring, and most jewels – are crafted by hand using traditional tools, each component is manually machined with tolerances of just a few microns resulting in precision comparable to modern CNC machines, every visible and hidden component is meticulously hand finished and each watch is assembled entirely by hand and a single watchmaker.
The timepiece has a hand-frosted German silver dial and Grand Feu enamel sub-dials for the hours, small seconds, and power reserve. The blued hands, deep red rubies and the golden tones of the wheels and barrels emerge in a contrast to the frosted, black-polished and grained surfaces of the while gold plates.
With the 5000 hours required human effort in each, only two to three such watches can be crafted each year.
Photo credits: Loupiosity.com
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