Independents

A visit to Montres Romain Gauthier
Don Corson, August 2008

The Vallée de Joux has one of the worlds highest incidences of watchmakers. On the way to visit Romain Gauthier in Le Sentier, I drive through Le Lieu and see the factories of Dubois Depraz and pass Le Solliat, home of the Phillipe Dufour shop. Entering into Le Sentier Jaeger-LeCoultre's construction site next to their existing factory dominates the scene. Looking for a parking space near Romain Gauthier's shop I end up in front of the new building of Daniel Roth/Gerald Genta.

It is in the midst of this heritage that Romain Gauthier has made his career. Educated as a fine precision mechanic he was responsible for a shop making watch parts with a park of top of the line automatic machines before deciding to work for himself and not just for others. Montres Romain Gauthier SA was founded in 2005 and in the mean time employs 3 watchmakers and an engineer with 2 more new employees coming in the next months.

With his background he is very aware of the problems of part acquisition that plague the watchmaking industry and is intent to make everything in his movements himself; a goal which he will reach (excepting the hair- and mainsprings) in the near future.

At the present his shop is producing on the series of his first model and delivering about 3 watches a month. Let's make a little visit in his shop and take a look at not only the work of the watchmakers, but of the extent of the shop which allows Romain Gauthier his independence from suppliers.

Here we are in the watchmakers atelier. Todays work is bridge finishing, in the picture below polishing the jewel hole bevels. Many of todays fully automated high end shops are doing polished bevels using diamond tipped milling tools. Romain is not convinced and does polishing with diamond paste on wood, the old fashioned way. When you think about it, polishing with a milling tool can never be as good as the traditional way as there will always be vibrations and the effect of the tool turning such as one sees on wood planed with a modern rotating plane. The surface will never be perfectly smooth. There are always wavy patterns because of the radius of the tool turning and the movement of the work piece below, no matter how fast the tool turns and slowly the work piece moves.

The jewel and screw holes are beveled and polished, now the edges are polished by hand.

Here a bridge is being cleaned between finishing steps.

A movement waiting for final assembly

Parts for 3 more movements awaiting their turn to be assembled.

Binocular microscopes are used to check the work often and completely to ensure finishing perfection.

Here the perlage on the inside of the plate.  Note the very fine patterns on a practically polished surface and the precise coverage of the "pearls".

This is the machine that is used to do this pearlage.  The machine aids in the positioning, but it is in the feel of the operator to have the right pressure and time to make a perfect pattern.

Below is the machine used for making the côtes de Genève.  Mr. Gauthier does not use a grinding surface to make the côtes as most makers do, but cuts the very fine arcs, each individually with a very fine tool to make a perfectly regular and brilliant finish.

Checking the work again under a binocular microscope.

A quick look out the window of the watchmakers workshop to rest our eyes a little.  Behind the mountain ridge in the distance is the border to France.

The moment we have been waiting for, the first close look at a Romain Gauthier watch.

Rhodium movement plating with rose gold plated wheels and the Romain Gauthier exclusive crown on the back of the case.

Here the movement with hand made frosting. I have seen previous comments on the forums complaining that the frosting does not have a perfect clean edge. But if you think about it, a perfect clean edge is impossible to make by hand. If the edge is perfect it is the proof of machine made polished beveling. Just imagine for a minute. You have a flat surface that you are frosting. The edges of your work piece are polished curved bevels. You are frosting with abrasive particles that are all as close to the same size as possible, but not all identical. Where the last mark is and how deep it is will depend on the exact size of the particle and the position a long the down-curving edge. There will necessarily be a transition area. And you can not polish the bevel by hand after doing the frosting. How to eliminate the transition? Take a diamond milling tool to do the polishing and cut a step of a couple of 1/100ths of a mm at the edge of the frosting. You will not notice the step except under high magnification, but if it is the depth of the maximum roughness of the frosting so you will see a clean edge to the frosting. But this is now machined and no longer made by hand. You pay your money and make your choice, as they say.

Now that we have seen the watches, time for a trip through the rest of the shop.

Below the balance and hairspring workspace, machines for dynamically balancing balance wheels.

A Grainer Spiromat for setting balance springs and a tool for positioning pallet stones.

Romain Gauthier does his watch design himself with the help of state-of-the-art CAD programs.

The second Romain Gauthier watch model is well on its way, but I wasn't allowed even the tiniest little hint as to its looks and/or features other than the comment "it is a logical step forward".

We now leave the main shop premises to head out to the machine shop. Here parts are made on fully automatic CNC lathes. These hugely expensive machines work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to pay their rent. They are tended at least to 3 times a day with never a vacation. Below we see two samples of the kinds of parts that are made in series of several hundred to many thousands. A part can include turning, milling and cutting teeth. A very complicated part can take up to 30 minutes to finish.

There is the lathe, over 4 meters long with its automatic charger to be able to take the standard 3 meter long bars as raw material.

This lathe is presently making hours wheels.  About half of a run of 5600 pieces is now finished.  Of course these parts are not all going into Romain Gauthier watches, but he is a dependable supplier for many of the watch brands.

With its automatic charging system the lathe can work continuously with little supervision.

Mr. Gauthier will be receiving before the end of the year a lathe that will accept material of up to 40mm diameter and has automatic changing of up to 60 tools. This will allow him to make all his plates, bridges and every complex component. To maintain accuracy at the level of thousandths of a mm the entire structure of the lathe is water cooled to eliminate the effects of the expansion of the parts of the lathe itself as the lathe warms up.

This harmless looking equipment is maybe the most important in the shop, the metrology station. Without being able to guarantee the dimensions being able to make many identical parts is quite useless. With this equipment it is possible to directly compare the finished part with the drawing on the computer and verify the dimensions.

A selection of the tools that can be used on the lathe with the microscope to check cutting edges before mounting.

Guesses as to what this machine is for?

Yes, this is for sharpening tools !

Just below the grinding wheel in the middle of the picture can be seen the tiny bit being sharpened.  With this machine hard metal carbide tools can be sharpened to almost any imaginable geometry and with an accuracy of 1/1000ths of a mm.

There are many roads leading to haute horlogerie and like Volker Vyskocil Romain Gauthier is initially coming from the road of the precision mechanic. As we can see, in both cases this is leading to the production of exceptional watches with a fine eye for every detail.

I would like to thank Romain Gauthier for his kind reception in his shop and wish him all the best for the future of his endeavors.

Don

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