Month: March 2015

Corum – Admiral’s Cup AC-One 45 Bois

Inspired by its nautical origins, the Admiral’s Cup collection welcomes a new model resolutely anchored in the contemporary era. Sailing onto the scene with an innovative case developed by Corum, this newcomer cut out for great achievements asserts an eminently virile style that makes it a must-have on the contemporary Breitling replica watches uk scene. Spotlight on the Admiral’s Cup AC-One 45 Bois, an accessible mechanical model combining power, elegance and performance.

With the launch of the AC-One line,Corum is writing a new chapter in the history of its iconic Admiral’s Cup born in 1960. While its lines have been redesigned, the identity codes that have forged the legend of this horological icon have been jealously safeguarded. The bezel of the Admiral’s Cup AC-One 45 Bois takes the original twelve-sided shape, while the 45 mm-diameter case is more strongly rounded than ever, within an integrated structure combining polished and satin-brushed finishes. The construction is built on several layers, with black PVD-coated titanium inlays alternating between the back and the middle and then between the bezel and the middle, in a perfectly mastered play on volumes. Technical and contemporary, the case made of steel houses the automatic CO 116 chronograph caliber, also powering a date display. The movement revealed through the sapphire crystal caseback features an original openworked and steel-coated oscillating weight. The circular shape of the Panerai replica watches uk latter occupies the entire surface of the caseback opening and proudly proclaims its contemporary nature.

Stemming from lengthy aesthetic research conducted in-house, the Admiral’s Cup AC-One 45 Bois highlights an iconic and original material on its dial: teak. The natural warmth of wood marks a vibrant contrast with steel coating. Technicality and history come together in a maritime direction where the material breaks with the form. From the black inner bezel ring stand the famous nautical pennants, the unmistakable signature of the Admiral’s Cup collection.

Like the openworked and faceted hands, the applied hour-markers are filled with black Superluminova. Sporty, powerful and water-resistant to 300 meters, the Admiral’s Cup AC-One 45 Chronograph offers an appealing set of performances. Fitted with a “Mad Max” leather strap with kevlar embossed pattern fastened by a triple folding clasp, this model is interpreted in an all black version when its steel case – black PVD-coated – is topped by a Breitling fake watches uk carbon bezel. The dial is then all blacked out with vertical guilloché pattern and colored nautical pennants printed on the flange.

Hublot launches the Big Bang Unico Italia Independent

This is the fruit of the partnership between Italia Independent announced in November 2014, the fusion of Texalium® – a brand new material – and the iconic design of the BIG BANG.

Hublot is launching the new Big Bang UNICO Italia Independent, designed in collaboration with the Italian brand, of whom Lapo Elkann is Chairman and Co-Founder. This collaboration has created a case featuring a brand new material, Texalium®, whose design is exclusive to the Swiss Breitling replica watchmaking brand.

By now well accustomed to carbon fibre cases, Hublot wanted to go even further in its search for this material, to achieve even more colour variations. Texalium® is unique in that it is aluminium-coated carbon fibre; the great advantage of this is that it can be designed in different colours and has a remarkable brilliance, with all the lightness of carbon fibre.

This new Big Bang Unico Italia Independent is available in two colourways – grey or blue – and is guaranteed to electrify the wrist of anyone wearing it. A 500-piece limited edition of each of these two versions will be produced.

Each watch comes in a customised Italia Independent display case, complete with a pair of Italia Independent sunglasses as a bonus gift for Big Bang customers; as high-tech as the IWC fake watches online itself, the frame of these stylish sunglasses is also made from Texalium®. Handmade in Switzerland and Italy, these sunglasses benefit from the highest level of expertise. They are the fusion of a unique, pure, elegant and contemporary design, exclusive to Hublot, with high-performance adaptable lenses and a high-tech Texalium® frame – a remarkable technical feat.

The strap itself is made from denim fabric with grey or black studs, as typically seen on luxury shoes. The strap benefits from the interchangeable “One Click” system, which enables its wearers to choose from a wide range of straps as they like.

Once again, this Big Bang Unico Italia Independent also features Hublot’s manufacture chronograph movement – the UNICO. It is THE house engine. It has been entirely designed, developed, machined and assembled by micro-mechanics, engineers and Breitling fake watchmakers at Hublot. The movement is a flyback chronograph which can be reset at any time, and which is unique in the watchmaking industry, two push-buttons, with date indicator, and featuring a uniquely positioned mechanism with dual coupling and the famous “column wheel” visible on the dial side.

Corum – Heritage Bubble

In the year 2000 Corum introduced the Bubble, an oversized Breitling replica watches uk with an even larger crystal. It was so radical it became the must-have timepiece of the new millennium. Now, exactly 15 years later, the Bubble makes a triumphal return, sealing its place as a pillar of Corum’s watchmaking heritage.

At the turn of the century watchmaking was a universe away from what it is today. Big watches were scarce, unconventionally shaped watches almost unheard of. The tectonic shift began as the 21st century dawned, with Corum riding on the top of the wave that would soon sweep watchmaking.

At Baselworld 2000 the Bubble was unveiled, an unparalleled 44 mm in diameter with a towering sapphire crystal so tall it distorted the dial. With a size and shape totally unprecedented in Swiss Breitling fake watchmaking, the Bubble was an instant hit.

The Bubble was the brainchild of the late Severin Wunderman, a relentlessly creative entrepreneur who acquired Corum that very same year. Wunderman, who survived both the Holocaust and cancer, had a roving, creative mind. In one instance, he was inspired by an experimental deep-sea dive watch from the 1960s, which was fitted with an enormous domed crystal to withstand the pressure of the ocean. That formed the genesis of the Bubble, one of the most recognizable wristwatches of its time.

While the Bubble was unquestionably unique, its unorthodox design was merely an extension of Corum’s long-established philosophy. Since its founding in 1955, Corum consistently excelled at designing totally original timepieces, ranging from the Rolls-Royce, shaped like the luxury automobile’s front grille, to the Golden Bridge, distinguished by its remarkably tiny, baguette-shaped movement.

Despite being a mere 15 years old, the Bubble is major part of the brand’s heritage, deserving of elevation into a hall of fame. The Bubble has now been revived as part of the Corum Heritage collection, putting it alongside other landmark timepieces like the extra-thin Coin cheap Cartier replica watches.
While retaining all the design codes of the original, the 2015 Bubble is not a mere replica of its predecessor. Fitted with a rubber-ringed, spherical crown, the case is a collection of smooth, rounded lines, just like the original.

But it has been enlarged to 47 mm, lending it impressively striking proportions, especially as it stands some 18.8 mm high, crystal included. But, as always, practicality was high on the mind of the development team, which paired the oversized case with short, curved lugs, allowing it to hug the wrist snugly.

A remarkable 8 mm high, this sapphire crystal is one of the largest of any watch. Sapphire is a material so extraordinarily hard it has to be cut with a diamond-tipped tool. This in itself is challenging enough that even when machining ordinary, flat Breitling fake watches uk crystals the job can take hours. Crafting the mountainous crystal of the Bubble requires exponentially more work. The task starts with cutting a block of crystal, then grinding it into a bubble-like shape, and finally polishing the crystal to flawless clarity with absolutely no optical imperfections.

Because the sapphire crystal is so tall, it acts as a lens, both magnifying and distorting the dial. Corum’s designers took advantage of this by designing a dial with a clever, op art (short for “optical art”) motif. Taking inspiration from Hungarian-born French artist Victor Vasarely, founder of the op art movement, the dial is decorated with squares in graduated sizes that grow larger toward the center of the dial.

Op art desired to create static patterns that gave the impression of movement or surprising, contradictory perspectives. Likewise, the dial of the Bubble is perfectly flat, formed from a lacquered, brass disc stamped with the cube motif, but appears sharply domed. In fact, it looks so rounded it might pass for the top of a sphere.

This arresting op art dial will be fitted only to a pair of limited edition, PVD-coated versions of the Bubble, each made in an exclusive run of just 350 pieces. The first is the Bubble Vintage, housed in a bronze-tone, PVD-coated case paired with Super-LumiNova treated for a vintage effect. A modern cheap Breitling replica watches made to look like an antique from an indistinct era, the Bubble Vintage is a nod to the original Bubble now 15 years old.

Taking another perspective is the Bubble All Black, clad entirely in a glossy black PVD coating, matched by a matte black dial, along with charcoal-colored indices and hands. The Bubble All Black removes all distraction, making a monochromatic statement that emphasizes the iconic shape of the Bubble.

Part of the regular collection of timepieces, the third model in the Bubble collection does away with the dial entirely. A skeletonized movement takes its place, with the domed sapphire crystal providing a magnified view of the exposed wheels of the CO0082 self-winding movement.

All of the Bubble timepieces are fitted with rubber straps topped with leather: calfskin for the op art editions and alligator skin in the case of the skeleton. And each is fitted with a buckle matching the case finish.

Girard-Perregaux – Minute Repeater Tourbillon with Gold Bridges

Deeply attached to its origins and to watchmaking traditions since 1791, Girard-Perregaux regularly shows in its Breitling replica watches uk creations to what extent innovation can contribute to the dynamism of the watch industry. By giving a totally new dimension to the mechanical structure of the striking mechanism, the Minute Repeater Tourbillon with Gold Bridges watch underlines the Swiss Manufacture’s constant determination to advance technically while respecting the aesthetic conventions and time-honored expertise that are so close to its heart.

The mechanical structure of this Minute Repeater Tourbillon with Gold Bridges offers an original opportunity to simultaneously observe on the dial side both the components of the striking-mechanism and the hammers that produce its sound by striking the wires of the gongs. In a major innovation, this positioning of the components facilitates optimum sound transmission when the cheap Breitling replica watches uk is on the wearer’s wrist. This underlines a desire not only to create a mechanism that is as attractive as it is efficient, but also to place it clearly on display for the enjoyment of one and all.

Girard-Perregaux took the ambitious decision of asking its teams of watchmakers and engineers to create a brand new type of caliber with a totally original mechanical structure that makes the invisible visible. Underlying this approach is an implicit desire to perpetuate the Firm’s expertise and watchmaking tradition, embodied by the Tourbillon with Gold Bridges also found in this model.  This emblem of the Girard-Perregaux brand, the design of which was patented in 1884, is today perceived as the aesthetic, technical and even symbolic essence of one of the most venerable Swiss watch manufactures still in existence.

Innovation through tradition

How to produce a strong, clear sound from a wristwatch equipped with a minute repeater mechanism only too often continues to be a stumbling-block for many Breitling fake watchmakers.  Scores, if not hundreds, of different solutions have been proposed in order to perceptibly improve the volume of sound produced by these timepieces, the principle of which first emerged at the turn of the 17th century.  However, Girard-Perregaux purposely chose not to implement any of the previously existing solutions.  None of these succeeds in both beguiling the ear by diffusing a powerful melody and delighting the eye by giving the wearer the opportunity to observe the components of the striking-mechanism during the course of their movements.

With its desire to infuse a spirit of creativity into the notoriously tradition-bound world of watch complications, the Girard-Perregaux Manufacture proposes a classic watch that displays on its front side not only a Tourbillon with Gold Bridges, but also, still on the same side, the majority of the components that enable the minute repeater complication to produce a strong, clear sound, even when in position on the wrist. To achieve such a result, the watchmakers were obliged to re-design not only the entire manual caliber, but also its method of construction and operation.

Giving sound the quality it deserves

The approach adopted here, which is as complex as it is original, perceptibly improves acoustic performance while offering observers the opportunity to appreciate the subtle mechanism of the minute repeater complication not only with their ears but also with their eyes. It should be noted that this is set in motion by sliding a bolt traditionally placed at 8 o’clock on the left-hand side of the case-band.  Sliding this trigger-piece rewinds the spring contained in the minute repeater barrel.  Once the maximum limit has been attained, this minute repeater winding mechanism releases the “on-off” control – an organ designed to prevent the striking-mechanism from starting if the winding of the trigger is not fully completed, thus preventing an incorrect acoustic indication of the time. The enhanced structure that allows the components of the striking-mechanism to be seen through the opening cut into the dial and the astute positioning of the hammers and gongs on the same side, enables the observer to follow the triggering operations with his gaze, while at the same time also new Breitling replica watching the hammers strike the gongs. It will be seen that, of all the minute repeater components, the only one that remains both invisible to the eye and almost undetectable by the ear is the complex organ known as the flywheel. Designed to regulate the hammers’ striking speed, it operates on the case-back side so as to limit any sound emissions, however feeble they may be, and thus guarantees this watchmaking musical instrument’s acoustic qualities.

In these enhanced conditions, the delicate components of the striking-mechanism, each given their own traditional finishing, wind up and then release the hammers so as to strike with absolute consistency first the hours (in a low tone), then the quarter-hours (in a combination of high and low tones), and finally the minutes (in a high tone).

The decision to position the two gongs facing the inner side of the hour circle crafted in 18K gold, and to also place here the hammers (the shape of which is inspired by the Gold Bridges first patented in 1884), goes beyond mere aesthetic considerations.  This positioning enables the acoustic wave, duly regulated at a carefully calibrated frequency, to reverberate harmoniously and not, as is only too often the case, to be confined by the excessive proximity of surfaces such as the skin, well known as possessing a density that easily absorbs sound waves.   In addition to this, the relationship between the size of the case and that of the caliber has been carefully studied so as to offer the best possible volumetric arrangement, as in the case of musical string instruments. Even better, the inside of the case has been specially crafted and finished so as to limit any acoustic interference that might arise.  And since there is no room for false notes in a musical performance, the sapphire crystal case-back has been crafted to give it the delicate curvature found in the majority of musical instruments equipped with a sounding-box, and the aim of which is to maximize the volume in which the sound can reverberate.

Half musical instrument, half kinetic sculpture

It is the highly unusual structure of the striking-mechanism, together with the adoption of a number of subtle technical solutions for this complication that has allowed the Minute Repeater Tourbillon with Gold Bridges to perform so exceptionally well.   Thus, in order to enhance the transmission of the sound wave between the heels of the two gongs, the link between the main plate and the 18K pink gold case-band has been stiffened. This is not all, however. To increase the speed of the hammers and consequently their striking impact, they are each mounted on a pair of jewels acting as ball-bearings so as to reduce friction.  The design of this structure has such a harmonious visual impact that it may seem simple.

However things that look easy are in fact often exceedingly complex to achieve. No fewer than 270 hours of painstaking labour by a master watchmaker are required to assemble and adjust this magnificent mechanism. This work is made all the more arduous by the fact that the method of production of the minute repeater complication, with its hammers placed on the same plane as the racks used to wind them up prior to striking, makes it necessary to adjust the hammers outside the movement using a special tool simulating their future position.  Nevertheless the final result is there for all to see, and these small components made from black polished tempered steel and beveled to highlight their original design inspired by the best replica Breitling watch‘s three gold bridges, produce thanks to their high degree of inertia a clear, powerful note at each strike.

A mechanical structure inspired by the Girard-Perregaux tradition

To house this exceptional mechanism, Girard-Perregaux has chosen a round case with a domed case-band prolonged by the slender lugs that are characteristic of models in the Haute Horlogerie collections.  Its gently inclined bezel allows for a wide opening out over the movement and facilitates the captivating spectacle of the minute repeater mechanism, of the hammers, gongs and Tourbillon. The emblematic arrow-shaped gold Girard-Perregaux Bridges and marking-plates identify the pedigree of this mechanism, with its irreproachable finishes, crafted in accordance with the long traditions of the Manufacture. The caliber is also revealed on the case-back side with a third Gold Bridge and the Girard-Perregaux logo engraved on the main plate.

A black alligator strap with a pink gold triple folding clasp adds the finishing touch to this timepiece.