Calibre III · La Chaux‑de‑Fonds · Allocation open
Every mechanical watch is a negotiation between a spring that wants to let go all at once and a wheel that insists it happen politely. That negotiation is the escapement — and after eleven years, ours is entirely our own. Forty watches a year. One watchmaker per movement. Drawn here at working scale, beating at 4 Hz.
I · The argument
Most manufactures buy their escapements by the tray. We spent eleven years learning to cut, poise and finish ours — because the escapement is not a component of the watch. It is the watch. Everything else is storage.
The mainspring stores five days of force. The train delivers it. But the moment time actually happens — the moment a locked tooth is released, gives its push, and is caught again — happens here, 691,200 times a day, on two slivers of ruby narrower than a grain of rice. Calibre III is our third movement built entirely in the atelier, and the first where every part of that moment, from the drawn hairspring to the black-polished fork, is made by the same four hands that will assemble your watch.
II · Specification
The two components we do not make: the sapphire crystal and the mainsprings. We have opinions about both. Ask us at the bench.
III · Finissage
No photograph does finissage justice, so we will not pretend one can. Read these with a loupe in mind — every surface below is worked by hand, and every drawing on this page, like the movement itself, is made from first principles.
Every bridge edge is bevelled to 45° with a file, then brought to a mirror with gentian wood and diamond paste. Calibre III carries fourteen interior angles — the corners a machine cannot turn. Each one costs about an hour. Each one is why you are here.
Stripes laid across the bridges at 11.2° — the same angle as the lever’s draw. They are cut wide, seven to the movement, so the light rolls across them slowly when the wrist turns, rather than flickering. Decoration should keep time too.
The mainplate is stippled with overlapping circular grains, each set by hand against a rotating peg. Under the dial, where perhaps three people will ever look. We count 641 of them on Calibre III, because we placed 641 of them.
The pallet fork and escape-wheel cap are lapped on tin until the surface is flat to the wavelength of light: black from one angle, white from the next, never grey. Move your eye across this panel — that refusal to be grey is the whole discipline.
IV · The edition
Forty is not a marketing number — it is the honest output of two benches, four hands and a thirty-day adjustment protocol. Each square below is a watch in the 2027 delivery book. Burgundy squares are allocated and confirmed; open squares remain.
31 / 40 allocated as of this quarter · 09 positions remain · movements numbered III‑001 through III‑040, engraved under the balance cock
V · Correspondence
No deposit is taken and no algorithm ranks you. Antoine reads every note on Friday afternoons and replies personally, usually within a fortnight. Tell us a little about how you collect — it genuinely shapes the conversation.
Your note is in the Friday pile. Expect a letter — a real one, from Antoine — within a fortnight. In the meantime the drawing above will keep the beat: it has not missed one since you arrived.