Independents

Great post and interesting read, many thanks indeed for your insights. Also congratulations on your watch!

I would just like to add a little bit to the discussion:

1.

If we go back in time to the beginnings of horological history, we will see that all advances have been accomplished in an accretionary manner.

That is to say: you will be very hard pressed to find complete and totally perfected new ideas popping up in movement design, perhaps with some rare exceptions.

We can trace this accretionary development in many mechanical designs, for example the first integral winding system which could not turn the the hands backwards when setting the time, to the first split seconds

chronograph construction of Th. Winnerl which did not have a heart cam to reset to 12, etc. etc. 

This is why one can follow a trail for nearly every development in horology back to some earlier version, the Valjoux and Patek movements are no different in this respect. The Valjoux is know as a widely mass

produced ebauche (and movement design layout) but also is based upon other earlier developments, which we tend to forget. All this is quite normal, and heathy for horology (see 2)

2. 

Kari, with 30 years as a watchmaker and many of those years as a restorer at Parmigiani had plenty of time to see many fine old pieces - as well as where they became worn out and difficult, 

which mechanical solutions withstood time the best and what was still working perfectly after many years of use. This is a guiding principle behind all of his designs and his methods of working.

And watchmakers tend to be pretty conservative when it comes to movement designs for reasons of stability. If something has worked for 30, 40, 50 years and survived beautifully, why change it - only to attempt to be 

different? So I would say that being inspired by a great old movement is an important decision as a foundational concept for a stable design. I have to recall a conversation I had with Giulio Papi from APR&P about 

9 years ago. He said:

"You know, we can't put new movements on a test bank like a car and lock the gas pedal down for 1,000 kilometers and then take the engine apart to analyse what should be different.

With a watch movement, you have to wait it out and hope for the best." 

This is in essence why Patek, Rolex and many others prefer to continue using many base movements that are 50-60 years old because they are known to be stable and have no issues to deal with (except production hiccups perhaps?). For a watchmaker like Kari, the lessons of the past are extremely valuable, and he cherishes such lessons highly. 

3.

We oftentimes forget that the spatial conditions of a round watchcase often do not allow any extravagances in the placement or development of mechanical solutions. 

(Unless you dramatically increase the diameter and the height of the movement that is. Or make a whole new shape of movement baseplate, and therefore case).

Nonetheless, a column wheel, winding barrel, balance, escapement and going train all take up a basic amount of space.

In the case of a split seconds chrono this situation is even worse than in a chronograph like yours, because the column wheels will have to be fairly far apart in order to allow the arms and springs space to move.

If you want the pushers in the classical positions, even more space is used in a certain way. All this dictates your layout plan as a movement designer.

What I am trying t say here is that once you have decided that you want pushers here and the going train there and the balance wheel there and the winding barrel there…very few decisions can be 

taken with regard to the rest of the movement layout, which will mostly have to concentrate on bridge placement and shape and the shapes of pieces that communicate with the column wheel.

This is another reason why a lot of (classical) movements also almost always show several kinds of similarities to each other - somewhere, somehow.

Ciao tutti, 

Theodore

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