The Fourth Wheel, Issue 122

Everything I learned about hairsprings from a visit to Minerva

Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that went to Switzerland for the first time in a while this week. I feel like in doing so I’ve renewed my ‘proper watch journalist’ card. I’ve also had to try and do five days’ work in three, so forgive me if this is landing a little late.

This issue is mostly about hairsprings. But it’s also got my thoughts on the GPHG Jury, Christopher Ward’s collab with Seconde/Seconde/, Brooklyn Beckham, Donald Trump’s $100,000 tourbillon, custom Casios, a Moser rip-off and much more. I also recommend, as I do every week, the most interesting things that have been written in the watch world this week. Enjoy!

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The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

Review: Zenith’s Expensive Orange Dive Watches
Ask Me Anything: Issue 120
Hall’s Gastronomy of Watchmaking
Fresh Detail On Chanel’s Investment In MB&F
World Exclusive: Horological Dicktionary On The Record

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‘Scot nothing to do with him…

We begin this week with a visit to Corrections and Clarifications Corner. You may remember that in Issue 121 I saw fit to take a little shot at Scottish Watches, I believe the world’s most popular horological podcast, for posting rather positive descriptions of Horage watches on Instagram while being co-hosted by Dave Sharp, who works for Horage, without declaring the connection.

A short time after this went out, I had a chat with Rikki Daman of Scottish Watches. Rikki’s the CEO and founder of the podcast, and what followed was a masterclass in dealing with criticism. I can think of a few watch brands that could learn a thing or two.

Firstly, Rikki outlined some points I wasn’t fully aware of: despite the popular perception that he and Dave are a double-act and contribute to the podcast on an equal basis, he made it clear that Dave co-hosts one of the two weekly episodes on a freelance basis and is not otherwise involved in the business. Specifically, he’s not involved in the social media output.

Rikki also pointed out that the number of social posts about Horage was a tiny percentage of Scottish Watches’ overall output on Instagram, that the podcast works with a large number of other contributors with ties to various brands and sees the two as quite separate.

He ended by flipping the premise of my criticism on its head: never mind Horage benefiting unduly from Dave’s role on the podcast, how many watch brands can you think of that would let one of their key employees regularly go on air to praise, promote and talk about products from other brands?

I have to say Rikki’s got a pretty good point here. I don’t think the point about percentages proves a great deal other than the old adage that you can make statistics tell any story you want; my feeling was that Scottish Watches posted about Horage more than other people did, but without an exhaustive and nigh-on impossible analysis of all Instagram activity, I’ll admit I can’t be entirely sure. The one area I think there’s still scope for ambiguity is doing exactly as I did: if you know Dave appears regularly on the podcast and works for Horage, you might reasonably think a positively-worded Instagram post on the brand’s latest watch is in some way connected. Do I think it’s the worst example of a potential conflict of interest in watch media? Certainly not. Do I think it could be made clearer that Scottish Watches’ social posts are editorially independent from their hosts and guests’ interests and connections? Probably. Am I one of the only people who cares? I think at this stage, almost certainly yes.

I hope that sets things straight.

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Ain’t nothing but a spring thing

On Monday, I flew out to Geneva for a visit to Montblanc (the company, not the mountain; that would be Mont Blanc, and my pristine New Balance 992s would have been far less suitable). I was there to visit the brand’s watchmaking site in Villeret, one of two locales responsible for Montblanc’s horological output.

The other is in Le Locle, and is in many ways the main hub; it houses more of the corporate functions and is where processes like quality control take place. This is where Montblanc’s lower- and mid-tier watches are designed and assembled (a lot of the movements come from ValFleurier, so not all of that work is done on-site).

In Villeret, however, you are really visiting Minerva, rather than Montblanc. The brief historical summary goes like this: Minerva was founded in 1858, became a specialist in chronograph calibres, survived the quartz crisis, wound up being bought by the Richemont group in 2006 and given to Montblanc to bolster its nascent watchmaking operation¹.

I was in Switzerland to write a piece for QP magazine, which will come out later this year, so you’ll have to wait for that to hear me talk about my wider impressions, my interview with managing director Laurent Lecamp and the connections between the different families of watches. We also talked a great deal about running, mountaineering, the power of the mind and suchlike - Lecamp is a very keen acolyte of the open air. But that’s all for another time.

The Minerva ‘Pythagore’ calibre MB 14.08, released in 2021

Today I’m going to write about a very particular part of the visit, one of Minerva’s proudest attributes, and something that’s not going to form part of the piece in QP - at least, not in anything like this level of detail.

You will occasionally read or hear that when it comes to hairsprings, there is only one name in town: Nivarox. These days that isn’t quite true, as quite a few of the luxury group entities and significant independents have taken it upon themselves to produce their own. Rolex and Seiko make their own hairsprings; Atokalpa, part of the Sandoz Foundation’s portfolio, makes them, as does Concepto, and a company called Precision Engineering AG, which is a sister to H. Moser & Cie. Patek Philippe makes its own silicon hairsprings as a result of the joint venture with Rolex and Swatch Group via an entity called CSEM. Ulysse Nardin worked with a company called Mimotec to make its own silicon hairsprings. At a more artisanal level, Bovet makes its own, and I have just found out that Schwartz Etienne has a sister company called E20 Engineering that does it. At Richemont, ValFleurier makes them on an industrial level, and JLC, A. Lange & Sohne and - I think - Roger Dubuis also have their own hairsprings, as well as today’s subject, Minerva. There are overviews of the hairspring landscape here, here and here if you want to read more about the others. But it is true that Nivarox is the oldest and I am told, the largest maker, and although it no longer hsa a total monopoly, it is definitely the case that hairspring production on a volume level rests in the hands of a small number of suppliers; by the same token, making hairsprings on an artisanal level is generally seen as being prohibitively expensive, fiddly and time-consuming for most. But Minerva makes them, and I found out exactly how (and why).