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Mark in Paris
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[SiHH 2016] De Bethune: new DB25 World Traveller

Fellow Independents enthusiasts,

De Bethune has just unveiled a new model based on the DB25 line-up for the SiHH2016: the DB25 World Traveller.

As its name suggests, it is a model showing a second time zone (thus "local" and "home" times are both displayed). This is something that wasn't yet available in the brand's collections.


THE WATCH

The watch is made of a 45mm white gold case from the DB25 family.

Aside from the usual blued leaf-shaped hands, you can see on the picture the little ball showing the "home" time while the usual hands are helping reading the "local" one. This little ball is made of two half spheres (as the moonphase sphere in other references) showing day time (pink gold) and night time (blued steel). Hence, when the sphere reaches 6:00 and 18:00, it switches from one to the other (yes, welcome to the club: next to people already waiting for the end of February to see the date switch on their Perpetual Calendar, we'll now have the ones staring at their watch each day at 6 and 18:00...)






THE MECHANISM

The DB25 World Traveller is powered by the manufactured and assembled in-house DB2547 manual wound movement (28 800 vph, 430 parts and 5 days power reserve).

The new decoration pattern is called "Côtes De Bethune" and is based on the Microlight technique already used in the DB25 Power Reserve with blue dial (if I'm not wrong).

As you noticed, De Bethune has also included a new balance wheel. It is still made of Titanium but the gold inserts are now in white gold. Titanium helps limiting disturbances due to temperature variations. Finally, the escapement wheel is in Silicon.

We still have a triple pare-chute system with a Titanium bridge playing as a shock-absorber to protect the escapement system.






HOW IT WORKS

As the description suggests, the setting is quite easy, which is a good thing considering that an owner on his way to reach another time line doesn't want to struggle with setting his watch.

When it comes to setting, the local hour hand (main blued hour hand) jumps clockwise by 1 hour increments when pushing the button placed at 8 o'clock. The reference hand (sphere) is set via the crown on its 24 hours scale.

On the outer ring, the owner is able to read the date thanks to the discreet hand. This is a jumping display which is set by a corrector at 10 o'clock and linked with the local time hand.






 As a conclusion, I'm very eager to see the pictures from our friends in Geneva as the dial looks gorgeous as always with De Bethune.

Do we prefer dual time or World Time displays... this is very personal but while they did so with a practical mechanism, I think they especially propose a very interesting and exciting way to display both time zones, as usual...

Please feel free to share your impressions about this new reference. Did you expect a Dual time watch from De Bethune this year? I didn't but I understand that many watch owners are travellers and that a part of them really wishes to have a useful dual time indication. I think they succeeded (from these first pictures) in proposing a very attractive version for this kind of complications (in a quite wide dimension though), in the complete line of the brand's DNA, remaining original and without just copying previous models.

Great job.

Cheers, Mark