Post by CHIP on Jun 20, 2007 12:20:00 GMT -6
Full credit: Avalon
So now on to one of the bigger houses we visited on the trip. In fact this was the first stop on our tour, and it made a positive impression on me in most respects. We arrived at Blancpain in the Vallee-de-Joux in the morning and were greeted by a very lovely girl named Suzanne (you may notice a redhead in the photos). She was our tour guide and although not very technical, was willing to get answers to any questions we had. We were also joined by Jeff Kingston who is a huge Blancpain fan and author of some writings on the brand, and he also helped to answer technical questions.
As I mentioned in the Hublot report, Blancpain was a dead company and not much more than a name when Jean-Claude Biver bought the company in 1982 for $15,000. He sold it 10 years later and it is now controlled by the Swatch group. Unlike the previous 2 companies I’ve reported on, I own a Blancpain and it is one of my favourite watches, and one of the few brands that I like the majority of the models that they make. Here is a shot of our group outside the facility (photo credit goes to Stan Sirody of TZ for this picture):
I need to stop here and give a short explanation about how these tours work. For the most part we were not in control of what areas we looked at, and not all of the factories showed us the same level of detail. At Blancpain for instance, we were not shown any of the rough manufacturing, but more of the assembly areas. On other tours we saw more of the making of the base components and I’ll show you some of that later.
After a short introduction and discussion in a conference room, we moved on to the various workshops. The first workshop we went to was the Tourbillon Room. Here they assemble the tourbillons for the complicated watches, and we were told that it takes one watch maker 2 to 3 weeks to completely prepare one tourbillon assembly for use in a watch. Here you see a watch maker working on one and assembling it into a test movement…
Shot of a wall clock in the BP Flyback form....almost every place we went had wall clocks patterned after the brand's watches:
Here you see a tourbillon assembly under a microscope. Many of the companies we went to did this sort of thing for our benefit so we could see small items up close, and I used my point and shoot digital to shoot through the eye piece to get this shot.
Here is a wide shot of the same part…
We then made our way to the Grande Complications Room, where of course the complex watches are finally assembled.
I snapped this photo of a woman oiling a perpetual calendar movement under a microscope:
Here is the lubrication chart she was using to guide her in the task. The various items that looks like small arrows indicate the type and amount of lubricant required, and this is a common method of identifying what goes where in terms of lubricants in the industry (I’ve worked off charts like this before):
Here a watch maker is assembling a minute repeater…..
Here is the movement – it is completed in a rough state (why it is brass coloured) with each watch being worked on by only one person. Once all the functions have been fine tuned, the watch is disassembled, sent for final finishing, and then reassembled and tested again before shipping.
Once again they had a set-up that helped us see things in more detail. In order to show the goings and striking mechanism for the minute repeaters, they had a video-microscope that displayed on a large screen. Once again my small digital camera came in handy and I shot this video – if you listen you can hear the watch striking as our guide is explaining the gongs.
media.putfile.com/BP-Minute-Repeater
Of course the grandest of the Grande Complications is the 1735 model. This display board has pockets that show all of the parts that go into the watch – 744 in total.
Here is the dial side of the 1735…..
Here is the movement side…….
One can be yours for a mere 750,000 Swiss Francs.
Now I know Rolex says it takes a year to make a Rolex, but this one also takes a year. Hmmmm……does that mean Rolex needs to take some lessons from Blancpain?
How could a Date Just take as long as this……
LOL – just kidding. ;D This one actually does take a year for one watch maker to assemble, tweak, disassemble, reassemble, and fine tune, from start to finish.
We then moved on to the finishing room where people were working on putting the nice finish on those complicated watch parts. Here is a shot I took of a girl working on the “anglage” of a piece. “Anglage” is the French term for a chamfer on the edge of a part such as a bridge. This work is done by hand on the parts for the complicated watches.
And a view over her shoulder……
Another watch I was interested in there was there EOT (Equation Of Time) watch. For those who might not be familiar with the term, the equation of time is the difference between local “clock” time, and solar time. Here is a chart that gives you an idea of the concept – note the shape of the actual earth orbit around the sun that is similar to a bean:
Most watches that tell the difference between solar time a clock time use a “plus and minus” hand that moves back and forth across the 12 o’clock position. You then have to look at where the hand is, and either add or subtract from the current local time to get solar time. In this style of watch, this hand is driven by a cam that is shaped a lot like the orbit shown in the diagram above (like a bean) and this cam makes one full rotation per year to move the EOT hand to the correct spot on the plus or minus side of 12. Blancpain has released a model that has a hand that goes fully around the dial like a normal minute hand, and shows the solar time directly so you don’t have to do the math. They went into some detail about how this is done, and this is much more complex than the normal plus and minus hand as this hand either gains or loses time depending on the time of year. The Blancpain design has to mesh with the actual timekeeping portion of the movement, so requires a lot more work to get it right. It was quite impressive.
And a closer look at the dial….very nice!
We then had a lunch hosted by Blancpain back at our hotel, and since I don’t often eat rabbit I thought I would take a quick snap of my plate…..it was very good!
We went to another facility in the afternoon that I will post about in detail at another time, but after that we were back to Blancpain for a product presentation. Back into the conference room, and they showed us a video of how their watch makers compare with a top chef’s work. They gave us a DVD of it but it is in PAL format, so I will try to peel it off and upload it to post here at some point. Just need the time to dig into it…..
So then the watches came out. I didn’t take a lot of pictures of the various models floating around, but I did snap 2. One is something every diver needs, and that’s a tourbillon dive watch. When someone asked “why?” the answer was “because we can!”
Fair enough! 
The other is the new alarm watch with second time zone.
When we left they gave us a bag full of books, and also a nice set of crystal wine glasses with the Blancpain logo on the foot of the glass. We managed to get them home in our luggage without them breaking!
I really did enjoy the tour and certainly Blancpain treated us all very well.
Thanks for looking.
So now on to one of the bigger houses we visited on the trip. In fact this was the first stop on our tour, and it made a positive impression on me in most respects. We arrived at Blancpain in the Vallee-de-Joux in the morning and were greeted by a very lovely girl named Suzanne (you may notice a redhead in the photos). She was our tour guide and although not very technical, was willing to get answers to any questions we had. We were also joined by Jeff Kingston who is a huge Blancpain fan and author of some writings on the brand, and he also helped to answer technical questions.
As I mentioned in the Hublot report, Blancpain was a dead company and not much more than a name when Jean-Claude Biver bought the company in 1982 for $15,000. He sold it 10 years later and it is now controlled by the Swatch group. Unlike the previous 2 companies I’ve reported on, I own a Blancpain and it is one of my favourite watches, and one of the few brands that I like the majority of the models that they make. Here is a shot of our group outside the facility (photo credit goes to Stan Sirody of TZ for this picture):
I need to stop here and give a short explanation about how these tours work. For the most part we were not in control of what areas we looked at, and not all of the factories showed us the same level of detail. At Blancpain for instance, we were not shown any of the rough manufacturing, but more of the assembly areas. On other tours we saw more of the making of the base components and I’ll show you some of that later.
After a short introduction and discussion in a conference room, we moved on to the various workshops. The first workshop we went to was the Tourbillon Room. Here they assemble the tourbillons for the complicated watches, and we were told that it takes one watch maker 2 to 3 weeks to completely prepare one tourbillon assembly for use in a watch. Here you see a watch maker working on one and assembling it into a test movement…
Shot of a wall clock in the BP Flyback form....almost every place we went had wall clocks patterned after the brand's watches:
Here you see a tourbillon assembly under a microscope. Many of the companies we went to did this sort of thing for our benefit so we could see small items up close, and I used my point and shoot digital to shoot through the eye piece to get this shot.
Here is a wide shot of the same part…
We then made our way to the Grande Complications Room, where of course the complex watches are finally assembled.
I snapped this photo of a woman oiling a perpetual calendar movement under a microscope:
Here is the lubrication chart she was using to guide her in the task. The various items that looks like small arrows indicate the type and amount of lubricant required, and this is a common method of identifying what goes where in terms of lubricants in the industry (I’ve worked off charts like this before):
Here a watch maker is assembling a minute repeater…..
Here is the movement – it is completed in a rough state (why it is brass coloured) with each watch being worked on by only one person. Once all the functions have been fine tuned, the watch is disassembled, sent for final finishing, and then reassembled and tested again before shipping.
Once again they had a set-up that helped us see things in more detail. In order to show the goings and striking mechanism for the minute repeaters, they had a video-microscope that displayed on a large screen. Once again my small digital camera came in handy and I shot this video – if you listen you can hear the watch striking as our guide is explaining the gongs.
media.putfile.com/BP-Minute-Repeater
Of course the grandest of the Grande Complications is the 1735 model. This display board has pockets that show all of the parts that go into the watch – 744 in total.
Here is the dial side of the 1735…..
Here is the movement side…….
One can be yours for a mere 750,000 Swiss Francs.
Now I know Rolex says it takes a year to make a Rolex, but this one also takes a year. Hmmmm……does that mean Rolex needs to take some lessons from Blancpain?
How could a Date Just take as long as this…… LOL – just kidding. ;D This one actually does take a year for one watch maker to assemble, tweak, disassemble, reassemble, and fine tune, from start to finish.
We then moved on to the finishing room where people were working on putting the nice finish on those complicated watch parts. Here is a shot I took of a girl working on the “anglage” of a piece. “Anglage” is the French term for a chamfer on the edge of a part such as a bridge. This work is done by hand on the parts for the complicated watches.
And a view over her shoulder……
Another watch I was interested in there was there EOT (Equation Of Time) watch. For those who might not be familiar with the term, the equation of time is the difference between local “clock” time, and solar time. Here is a chart that gives you an idea of the concept – note the shape of the actual earth orbit around the sun that is similar to a bean:
Most watches that tell the difference between solar time a clock time use a “plus and minus” hand that moves back and forth across the 12 o’clock position. You then have to look at where the hand is, and either add or subtract from the current local time to get solar time. In this style of watch, this hand is driven by a cam that is shaped a lot like the orbit shown in the diagram above (like a bean) and this cam makes one full rotation per year to move the EOT hand to the correct spot on the plus or minus side of 12. Blancpain has released a model that has a hand that goes fully around the dial like a normal minute hand, and shows the solar time directly so you don’t have to do the math. They went into some detail about how this is done, and this is much more complex than the normal plus and minus hand as this hand either gains or loses time depending on the time of year. The Blancpain design has to mesh with the actual timekeeping portion of the movement, so requires a lot more work to get it right. It was quite impressive.
And a closer look at the dial….very nice!
We then had a lunch hosted by Blancpain back at our hotel, and since I don’t often eat rabbit I thought I would take a quick snap of my plate…..it was very good!
We went to another facility in the afternoon that I will post about in detail at another time, but after that we were back to Blancpain for a product presentation. Back into the conference room, and they showed us a video of how their watch makers compare with a top chef’s work. They gave us a DVD of it but it is in PAL format, so I will try to peel it off and upload it to post here at some point. Just need the time to dig into it…..
So then the watches came out. I didn’t take a lot of pictures of the various models floating around, but I did snap 2. One is something every diver needs, and that’s a tourbillon dive watch. When someone asked “why?” the answer was “because we can!”
Fair enough! 
The other is the new alarm watch with second time zone.
When we left they gave us a bag full of books, and also a nice set of crystal wine glasses with the Blancpain logo on the foot of the glass. We managed to get them home in our luggage without them breaking!
I really did enjoy the tour and certainly Blancpain treated us all very well.
Thanks for looking.