bernard cheong
7182
Part 1 The maker of Opus 3 rests...and works again.
One of history's most challenging and among many insider's views....IMPOSSIBLE to make....mechanisms is the now legendary and infamous Opus 3.
Facing almost insurmountable problems of mathematics and geometry, thnak goodness it is not physics ( meaning that once problems solved, the watch will work reliably)...Vianney Halter et al have been working for the past 18 months on the project.
A special team ( the Opus 3 team ) dedicated to solely Opus 3 works day in and out on the maths.
Vianney is fixing a watch winding box which he persoanlly designed and made with his own hands for the Antiqua, as I had a few minutes to speak with him...
The box seems OK now...I said...this is the original box with a winder that Vianney used for his AHCI submission piece, a platinum Antiqua No.00, the small drawer that houses a very unique pusher, also designed with careful anatomical details, like a tapered handle and a fibre tip to prevent accidental scratching of the watch case...the drawer was stuck.
Vianney " No..no...this drawer must slide out when pull like so..." he demonstrates with the box on the table " the box must not slide to follow the pull." meaning that the drawer must come out without the box moving along with it.
He begins to fiddle with a metal strip that is attached to the side of the drawer....he has a fine Swiss Army knife. " This box must be humidity to expand it in Singapore." He slides the drawer back in.
There is a whole lot of admirers and curious people crowding around, but Vianney is in a world of his own when he is at work.....totally absorbed in details, like the way a drawer of a box moves...." it must move slowly and smmoth....no?"
I must say that all boxes I have seen ( and I have quite a few good ones) , are not made by the watchmaker and do not have a small stainless steel strip along the side that acts as a kind of tactile "slide"...to give it a feel...Vianney made the entire box, including the wood and the deer skin covers!
Vianney: " Now this good!" He now holds the box up in the air and flips in sideways to see if the drawer falls out...it does not. " Very good!"
Vianney: " I make all the metal parts like the hinge and the handles because I cannot find any good hinges of the quality I want. The motor is a model of my construction following some old machines I find....it wind this watch , the antiqua, according to the rotor movement construction."
To those who are fortunate to have one of the few Antiquas made around the world, you will notice the finely milled steel parts that make up the box's hinges, lid, and assorted parts....they are watch grade components.
It is this obsessive attention to perfection that I feel is burning up Vianney's talent and creative resources....work on the Opus 3 is consistently set back by extreme demands on tolerances that are of the scale of 1/100mm and less, each disc must have clearances of an exactitude never before tried on a JUMPING device, the mechanism also demands an exact timing of 7, yes seven, jumping devices and whips.
Recent personal tragedy, involving the loss of his brother and 12 year old niece in a plane crash just weeks ago has thrown unexpected demands on Vianney's time....he is really tired...and now he may have to manage the family's propellor making business till more help is available.
Never the less, I would be proud to have any watch made by this man...like Volker Vyskocil , they are obsessive about quality and transalation of their work into final products, and are extremely hands on.