Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe Quantieme Complet Phase de Lune: price, specs, availability

You would be forgiven for assuming that with regards to mechanical watches, making the actions is the tough half, and all the pieces else simply slots into place. Typically which may properly be true—and Swiss manufacturers definitely place an infinite quantity of emphasis on the whirring ensemble of wheels and comes that tells the time.

However once you want the remainder of the watch to match as much as the identical stage of high quality, even essentially the most superficially unassuming parts could be surprisingly difficult to get proper, as Blancpain discovered when it set about growing a ceramic bracelet for its Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe.

Years within the making, the bracelet makes its first look as we speak on a brand-new assortment of Bathyscaphe dive watches, the Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe Quantieme Complet Section de Lune—an entire calendar with moon section, that means a watch that shows the day, date, month, and lunar cycle, however nonetheless requires handbook adjustment on the finish of every month.

It’s an achieved watch in its personal proper, with a silicon escapement, three-day energy reserve, and that attribute dive bezel with a “liquidmetal” inlay for the textual content.

However what Blancpain is basically enthusiastic about is that, for the primary time, the Bathyscaphe—which has been obtainable with a ceramic case since 2015—can now come on a bracelet to match.

It might have occurred years in the past; Blancpain’s dad or mum firm Swatch Group owns a specialist firm, Comadur SA, which produces ceramic bracelets for sister manufacturers Omega and Rado. However Blancpain’s guidelines, as one of many group’s most prestigious names, was very explicit, and led to the event of a very bespoke bracelet, together with two new patents.

Prime of the record was a bracelet that might be as sturdy and resilient as a high-end dive watch would demand. The zirconium oxide used is thought for its floor hardness (scoring 7.5 on the Mohs scale, beneath diamond, at 10, and above titanium, a 6), and its superior strength-to-weight ratio—however it may be brittle.

The ceramic bracelet is constructed with a number of hyperlinks joined collectively by pins. The pins of the Blancpain bracelet have a patented form to each improve flexibility and stopping over flexing.

{Photograph}: Blancpain

The bracelet hyperlinks are lined up for the heating course of, known as “sintering,” throughout which the items can shrink by roughly 25 p.c.

{Photograph}: Blancpain

Multi-link bracelet designs, the Blancpain crew defined, are vulnerable to failure if the spacing between hyperlinks is just too slender and elements are allowed to rub towards one another. However make them too free, and never solely will the bracelet really feel cheaper and fewer safe, its hyperlinks will collide in different methods.

The reply was a posh system of hyperlinks held collectively by titanium bars, each hand-screwed into place. Throughout the bracelet, every bar has a patented cam-shaped part that sits inside a flared recess within the aspect of the middle hyperlink. Because the bracelet flexes, the titanium cam is ready to transfer inside its recess, however no additional, that means the bracelet is supple inside a managed vary.