The case measures in at 44mm, will be available in rose gold, and is water-resistant up to 30m. The dial is totally skeletonized with double balances set against C?tes de Genève stripes, providing a wonderful contrast and extra girth. The time zone indicators, as with previous models, differ with Roman and Arabic numerals against an increasingly popular smoked background. I believe that these add an eclectic touch to almost identical parts of the watch. Since the movement does feature independent time zone components, every time zone is handled by its own crown, or “ears” as many enthusiasts refer to them, at 3 and 9 o’clock. Each time zone is set with its personal crown, while the watch is wrapped solely from the crown at 3 o’clock. All in all, the aesthetic refinements to the dial along with the symmetry of the Arnold & Son DBG Skeleton watch will refresh and breathe new life to the Arnold & Son DBG. It manages to display the intricate and impressive details of quite a complicated timepiece without delving into the “too busy” class that many tend to fall into if tackling such a intricate endeavor. While I could definitely find a white gold or platinum option later on, I think that this is a welcome addition to the collection, and one I would be excited to wear. The Arnold & Son DBG Skeleton Ref. 1DGAP. S10A.C120P will probably be limited to 30 pieces and will carry a cost of $38,850 which is actually a couple million dollars less than what the initial DBG watch in gold cost.
Rather than the power from the mainspring flowing right into the escapement, it must first pass through Arnold & Son’s constant force mechanism. The already regulated power supply charges a small hairspring, which releases a constant amount of power to the tourbillon once a second. With this mechanism, there’ll nevertheless come a point once the power released by the twin barrels and the continuous force mechanism falls below a point that is sufficient to maintain a regular output. While this happens, the watch stops instead of letting an isochronal error to creep in the timekeeping.In accession to this intriguing solution, the Arnold & Son Continuous Force Tourbillon comes with a deadbeat seconds complication, which leads to the seconds hand to “tick” instead of sweep as you might expect in a mechanical timepiece. Exceptional consistency is attained as a result of the symmetry of the movement’s construction, in addition to the fact that the continuous pressure escapement remains stationary throughout operation, whereas the tourbillon cage rotates once a minute. This is in an effort to decrease the influence of gravity on the escapement’s functioning. Assuming, however, that this watch is not likely to be worn out in the presence of strong magnetic fields (it’s barely acceptable for use on a construction site or while flying a helicopter, by way of instance), the negative perfectly matches the intended application.The Arnold & Son Continuous Force Tourbillon watch is a limited variant of that only 28 will be made. The A&S5119 motion has 39 stones, a depth of 6mm, a 90-hour power book, and works at 21,600vph. The motion is almost perfectly symmetrical, and all the specialized elements are visible on the dial-side. The three-dimensional motion structure is intended to echo the English tradition of marine chronometer construction. The watch is water resistant to 30 metres and includes a hand-stitched brown leather alligator strap. Cost is available on request.
At 12 o’clock is a day/night index for both GMT time and home time, using fitting skeletonized and stuffed palms to tell them apart. The bottom half of this indicator is darkened, which assists the visual representation of the “night” part of this disc. I do wish the Arnold & Son emblem was found elsewhere though, as its place interrupting the seconds monitor at 12 o’clock could make exact time-setting difficult. Another niggling difficulty I found was that the next hand counterweight closely emulates the look of the home time palms, which may sometimes cause a moment of confusion once you glance down and watch three hands pointing at the dial. In an ideal world, I’d have loved to see that the minute hands on each dial extended only a bit further to correctly reach the minute trail, and the hour hands shortened a bit to not overlap the hour markers, but this is a little aesthetic qualm which doesn’t affect utility.On the opposite side of this Arnold & Son DBG Skeleton, the base plate of the manufacture caliber A&S1309 is revealed. The movement is made from nickel silver (also known as German silver or Maillechort, an alloy of copper, nickel and zinc) that was rhodium-plated and decorated with C?tes de Genève. The wheels are satin-finished and provide a contrasting three dimensional texture into the bottom plate, and involving the chamfered edges of these bridges, the gold gear train can be seen. The motion is hand wound obviously, which leads to its thinness at a mere 3.9mm. It features 42 jewels and offers a 40 hour power reserve whereas the twin accounts oscillate at 21,600vph, or 3Hz. This is definitely a highly refined movement, but in contrast to the thickness of detail given by the skeletonized dial, the reverse side of the movement almost feels like a letdown.
Skeletonizing a watch is no simple feat. And it’s doubly hard for an ultra-thin movement, mainly because the motion is already so thin that eliminating any more material is likely to affect structural rigidity. As a result, the A&S8200 calibre in the Arnold & Son UTTE Skeleton watch needed to be thoroughly redesigned and re-engineered. The result is that the A&S8220 calibre, which steps 3.3mm thick. The extra thickness, based on Arnold & Son, is necessary to ensure rigidity as they sought to skeletonized the movement. Still, let us face it, 3.3mm for a tourbillon movement with two barrels and a power reserve of 90 hours is seriously impressive.The new A&S8220 calibre boasts a few significant revisions. As an example, the main plate was greatly modified to show as much as you can of the inner workings. But maybe what is most visible to owners is that the tourbillon cage was totally reworked to show off more of this mechanism when retaining the three-dimensional layout which has become a signature of the earlier Arnold & Son UTTE watch. Additionally, the tourbillon cage is relatively large when compared with this movement. It measures 14mm across, while the motion itself is 32mm. This means it is the single most dominating element of the dialup, and in addition to that is the fact that the cage is fully hand-polished and chamfered, which makes it a true visual treat for owners.And because you’d expect, the A&S8220 calibre can also be treated to the best haute horlogerie finishing: The main plate and bridges are built using nickel silver and completed with C?tes de Genève rayonnantes; The edges are also polished and chamfered; The steel parts, gears, and ratchets are satin-finished with their edges polished and chamfered; The screws have bevelled and polished heads, and ultimately, the stones are put in polished countersinks; exploring of the period is performed off a sapphire disk with printed numerals at 12 o’clock; The hour and minute hands are golden and feature white lacquered hints.
Regardless of the big 44mm instance, the Arnold & Son DBG Skeleton wears quite well, with its slender 9.89millimeter profile easily slipping below a shirt cuff and the tapered lugs nicely hugging the wrist. The case is made from 4N increased gold along with the sapphire crystal has anti-reflective coating on both sides to help remove distracting reflections. The watch is water resistant to 30m, and comes with a hand-stitched brownish or black alligator strap. My mind went to the Jaeger-LeCoultre Duomètre versions, but in which they provide twin barrels controlled by precisely the exact same balance wheel, the Arnold & Son DBG Skeleton goes full monoblock mode for every dial, in the event the Hi-Fi analogy is at all apt for describing a wristwatch.Minor legibility and aesthetic caveats aside, the Arnold & Son DBG Skeleton is a handsome watch that manages to walk the fine line between attention-seeking and refinement with its daring, yet slender case and gold-on-silver palette. A ton of performance is on offer for travelers that can utilize the well-executed GMT complication, and fans of mechanical watches are rewarded with views of those double balance wheels with each glance at the wrist. It’s good to see the historical title of Arnold & Son still producing timepieces that push the boundaries of movement design, and do so in a well implemented, thoughtful way. The Arnold & Son DBG Skeleton watch is being offered in a limited run of 30 bits, with an asking price of $38,850.
The Arnold & Son HM Double Hemisphere Perpetual Moon’s crystal is anti-reflective sapphire and the case back allows for more accurate adjustments to the moon phase by showing a third moon during eight distinct phases. Once installed, the precision should hold for 122 years, after which an easy adjustment will ensure it to get another 122 years. The hand-wound motion is an Arnold & Son fabrication A&S1512 that defeats at 21,600 bph with a 90-hour power reserve. As if the case back weren’t beautiful enough, the C?tes de Genève shown throughout the movement is merely lovely.The Arnold & Son HM Double Hemisphere Perpetual Moon comes with either a black or brownish hand-stitched alligator strap and is guaranteed to grab the eye of many an eye buff. When trying to solve a issue, the beginning is always a good place to get started. That is precisely the procedure followed by Arnold & Son in their endeavor to get rid of isochronal mistake from one of their newest bits, the Arnold & Son Constant Force Tourbillon. Arnold & Son’s heritage exists in the legacy of John Arnold and his son, two of the greatest watchmakers to come from England. Having packed off his son to learn in the back of the maestro, Arnold turned his attentions to the issue of these times: the pursuit for chronometric precision at sea.
Do you prefer for me to remind you what the greatest problem is really on watches with fully skeletonized dials and moves? It’s that you can often go through to your skin and arm hair. Yes, these sexy-looking timepieces using skeletonized movements and dials can seem amazing in theory (and pictured independently), but put them on your wrist at a real-world situation and only those people with the most beautiful of wrists will not have a reason to complain in any way. This is really a common “item” which watch fans can and do complain about.So, to cure this situation and respond to the issue, Arnold & Son has done a little experimentation with this new version of the Time Pyramid watch in steel in the model reference 1TPAS. S01A.C124S “Translucent Back” variant. This version will also outright replace the first version of the Arnold & Son Time Pyramid in steel using the traditionally translucent front and rear crystal.Arnold & Son did an amazing job for this watch but gave it no special name – that has been rather lazy. “Time Pyramid Translucent Back” is the title that I’m giving it whereas the nearest thing Arnold & Son gets to a exceptional name (besides the mention amount) is “Time Pyramid Translucent-Grey Coated Sapphire Case Back.” Ugh… Anyways, even with no proper name, the watch remains precisely what you want because the caseback is actually just one-way mirror material.
The dead (or sometimes deadbeat) seconds first appeared on clocks sometime in the 18th century, dividing the motion of the seconds hand into discrete jumps, making it easier to measure elapsed times. In clocks the gear for the seconds hand could often be linked directly to the escapement, thanks to a pendulum that swung with a one-second period. The invention of chronographs in the early 19th century provided a better solution for measuring elapsed time, but the independent seconds was still found in some pocket watches made for scientific measurements.
A translation of the French term seconds morte, the dead seconds was revived (no pun intended) for a brief spell in the 1950s when such wristwatches were fashionable. They were marketed as ideal for doctors and engineers to measure short periods of time; Omega introduced the Synchrobeat in 1954, with Rolex debuting the Tru-Beat the same year. Movement maker also produced a family of movements (the calibres 115, 116 and 7400) with a dead seconds feature, that it supplied to several brands, most notably Doxa. None of these sold well, and the dead seconds fad, well, died before the decade was up.
These early deadbeat seconds wristwatches required additional gearing for the ticking seconds, so as to convert the oscillations of the balance wheel (eight ticks per second in a 28,800bph watch) into one-second steps. This is the same set-up found in most contemporary dead seconds wristwatches, including the Jaeger-LeCoultre True Second, as well as the offerings from Arnold & Son, Habring2 and Jaquet Droz.
Because these movements need extra mechanics for the jumping seconds, they are not “natural” dead seconds as known in watchmaking parlance. Movements with dead seconds that are a consequence of an intrinsic function of the movement are natural dead seconds. Examples of such watches include the F.P. Journe Tourbillon Souverain and Chronometre Optimum, both of which have escapements that operate such that the seconds hand naturally moves in one second intervals thanks to a constant force mechanism.
One of the highlights of the 2016 line-up from A. Lange & Söhne, the Richard Lange Jumping Seconds, has a constant force mechanism, but is not a natural dead seconds. Visible through an aperture on the main bridge, the constant force mechanism has a small blued steel spring that releases power from the mainspring in one-second intervals, ensuring the power driving the movement is constant even as the mainspring winds down.
The L094.1 movement has two gear trains: the constant force mechanism is part of one gear train that delivers power to the balance wheel, while the other gear train is for the dead seconds. The second gear train, which includes a five-pointed star visible underneath a small sapphire lens, translates the motion of the balance wheel into the one second steps of the seconds hand. Both gear trains are linked by a slim lever touching the five-pointed star that controls the release of energy to the deadbeat seconds.
One advantage of the constant force mechanism, besides ensuring consistent torque even when the barrel winds down, is to do the same each time the seconds hand requires an impulse to tick.
To a dead stop
Besides the constant force and jumping seconds, another unusual feature is the zero-reset hack seconds. Pulling the crown stops the seconds hand and sends it back to 12 o’clock, in order to aid time-setting.
Though a simple feature, the reset seconds requires a significant amount of mechanics, resulting into the somewhat untidy looking cluster of levers and springs beside the balance wheel. For this reason, the movement, while gorgeously decorated and impressive looking, is not beautiful. The seconds reset mechanism looks unkempt, partially sheltered under an irregularly shaped bridge.
The bridge for the seconds reset mechanism is beautifully finished, despite its odd shape.
The long curved lever that stops the balance when the crown is pulled.
The last feature of the Richard Lange Jumping Seconds is the power reserve display, or more specifically, the low power reserve indicator. A triangular window at six o’clock on the dial turns red once the mainspring is down to its final 10 hours of power reserve (fully wound it’ll run for 42 hours). This is meant to remind the wearer that the watch needs rewinding, but it does not imply deterioration timekeeping as in an ordinary movement, thanks to the constant force mechanism.
All the functions of the Jumping Seconds make a lot of sense when combined together, since each is conceived to make timekeeping and setting more precise; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Unlike most other contemporary dead seconds watches this is more than just extra gearing for the aesthetics of a jumping seconds hand.
But at the same time, the Jumping Seconds is not as intellectually pure as a natural dead seconds, since it has extra mechanics solely to achieve a ticking seconds hand. Its validity is premised on the fact that a dead seconds is useful or desirable, requiring a constant force mechanism to keep torque level even with the ticking seconds. There is some circularity in the logic.
The subtle look
The Richard Lange Jumping Seconds is styled after a pocket watch made by Dresden watchmaker Johann Heinrich Seyffert, which had an unusual regulator dial with three-overlapping sub-dials. Lange used the same dial layout for earlier watches like the Richard Lange Tourbillon Pour le Mérite, but on the jumping seconds the seconds sub-dial is enlarged and positioned at 12 o’clock, highlighting the key feature of the movement.
Though the dial appears monochromatic from a distance, it actually has a more nuanced colour scheme. The tracks for each sub-dial are a pale blue, a shade lighter than the blued steel seconds hand, while the lettering and markers are black. And there’s a splash of red on the minutes sub-dial.
It’s a pleasing look enhanced by the size of the case – 39.9mm in diameter and 10.6mm high – large enough to be sizeable but not being clumsy. The platinum case also gives it added heft. Though it feels solid, the Jumping Seconds is unlike most other current Lange complications, which tend to the enormous side of large.
Pricing and availability
The Richard Lange Jumping Seconds is a limited edition of 100 pieces in platinum, though it is exceedingly likely other variations (rose gold or Handwerkskunst editions) will be introduced later on. It’s priced at €78,700 including 19 percent European tax, and expected to reach stores in October 2016.
