Independents

nickd
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Finishing...

Hi Andrew,

I think the point TCP was making is that the finishing of the acting surfaces is essential - meaning the finish of pivots, acting surfaces of teeth, sink holes, etc. And as the majority of these are to all intents and purposes not visible, I'm not sure they enter into the criteria most collectors use to evaluate the finish of a movement.  In fact, thinking back through all the reviews I've read of movements, it's only the rare take-apart reviews from people like Suitbert and John that mention this kind of thing.  Apart from that, there's the occassional mention of sink hole finish when a close-up photo shows something obviously wrong.  Grand Seiko and (the old) IWC produce excellent movements that have good or excellent functional finishing of acting surfaces, but with no "fancy" finish of bridges.

I've seen arguments that black polishing helps make small components more resistant to corrosion (I have no proof either way if this is correct), that anglage stops damage to components during servicing, that perlage on the baseplate traps dust, but I don't know if these are old watchmakers' tales or have an element of truth.

It seems obvious to me, as a non-professional simply stating his unsupported opinion , that the finish of non-acting surfaces has no impact whatsoever on longevity or chronometric performance.  For example, I have difficulty imagining that the degree of perfection of the polishing of the anglage makes a ha'aporth of difference to the performance, or that a higly polished tourbillon resists gravity better than a less unpolished one.

I'm not belittling the design work in any way, just pointing out that I dislike the tendency to use extremely high-magnification images to evaluate the quality of the piece, and that I find it can lead to excessive praise or criticism of something that was not intended to be seen out of the context of the overall design.

As for the performance itself, I'd love G&F and others to publish the hard, quantified data proving the improvements, but as far as I'm aware, nothing has ever been published (correct me if I'm wrong).  In the good old days, any manufacturer who produced a significant improvement through technological advances would publish the details in Chronometrie or the BHI and there would be a long debate around it.  Nowadays, the published info is little more than marketing blurb.  With the return of the observatory competitions, it would be good to have the return of published quantitive data to support the claims.

 nick