Moser Introduces The Endeavour Tourbillon Skeleton

Although Moser has clearly established identities for each of its main collections, there is within the broader character of each collection plenty of room for evolution and improvisation – the Endeavour collection, for instance, is the closest thing Moser has to a classic dress watch, but the company has created some models in that collection which emphasize the traditionalist elements of the case design by contrast, rather than by following a traditional dial design language. At the last Watches & Wonders, the Moser launched a new limited series of watches in the Endeavour collection which were about as unconventional in design as could be: the Concept Pop collection, which played to the popularity of colored stone dials, but with a pastel palette and Pop-art inspired geometry.

The latest from Moser is no less unusual, although in a way that’s diametrically opposed to the bright, candy-colored appeal of the Concept Pop collection – the new Endeavour Tourbillon Skeleton brings the openworked caliber HMC 814, last used in the Streamliner Tourbillon Skeleton, to the Endeavour collection.

There are a couple of different ways in which you can approach making a skeletonized watch. One is to take an existing movement, and painstakingly remove as much metal as you can from the movement plate, bridges, and larger components like the mainspring barrel cover, without compromising the structural integrity of the movement. This is very difficult to do and the old-school way to do it is to use a piercing saw and file to cut out most of the metal, leaving what in some cases is little more than an outline of the original part.

Such an approach can produced almost unbelievably transparent movements, but the technique does not lend itself to series production, although there is a high wire drama to the method which is hard to match with more contemporary techniques. One way that many modern companies approach openworking existing movements, is to use CNC or wire erosion machines to remove excess material– this is faster, and generally lower risk, and it still allows the company making the watch to exercise manual craft in the beveling and finishing of the exposed inner surfaces (if it wishes to do so).

The third approach is to design a movement from scratch, as an openworked movement. Strictly speaking I guess you can’t really say the movement has been openworked or skeletonized, because you don’t start with a functioning, non-openworked movement but the term “skeleton” can be and is often applied, for obvious reasons.  Although such movements don’t have the same sense of risk-taking that traditionally openworked movements have, they are potentially much more diverse in design possibilities and the designers are constrained only by the basic requirements of the mechanical layout of the watch. The movement is still produced with the same basic technology as all modern movements – CNC machining and spark erosion – however, the production process is necessarily much more complicated thanks to the extra steps involved in machining the components, and finishing them as well.

Caliber HMC 814 is a skeleton version of Moser’s caliber HMC 804, although Moser has not simply produced a version of HMC 804 with cut-outs in the bridges and plates. The entire movement architecture has been redesigned, to allow the greatest possible degree of transparency consistent with maintaining the rigidity of the movement, and also with a view to providing a visually pleasing and harmonious arrangement of shapes. These redesigned components are arranged around the same going train found in the HMC 804, but the openworking results in a completely different experience in HMC 814 (HMC 804 is, at least seen through a caseback, essentially a 3/4 plate movement, although there is a separate bridge for the automatic winding gear train).

Moser caliber HMC 804

The result is a movement which has all of the technical attributes of HMC 804, but with a much more lyrical and lighter presence. The caliber HMC 814 has all the transparency you could wish for from a skeleton movement; even the mainspring barrel has been opened up, and the spiral of the mainspring barrel becomes part of the composition as well.

The design of the movement also allowed Moser to create an openworked watch which is considerably more legible than is usually the case for skeletonized movements. The basic color scheme for the movement is anthracite, and gold colored hands and indexes give you enough contrast to tell the time easily, but not so much as to be jarring or incongruous with the rest of the design, and the colors of the indexes and hands pick up the color of the case as well. Notably, caliber HMC 814 has two balance springs, which are pinned to their studs on opposite sides of the balance. The double balance spring arrangement helps cancel out poise errors and reduces the disturbing effects of gravity on the oscillating system – reinforcing the function of the tourbillon, which is designed to address the same issues.

At 40mm, the watch is large enough to act as a generous frame for the movement, but not so large as to diminish the classical appeal of the design. The tourbillon has been with us since Breguet filed his original patent in 1801 but Moser’s take on the invention shows that both technical and design innovation are still possible, and that thinking outside the box, even after two centuries, can have considerable appeal.

The H. Moser & Cie. Endeavour Tourbillon Skeleton, ref. 1814-0400: Case, 5N red gold, 40mm x 10.7mm, with sapphire crystals front and back. Open dial with 5N red gold finished hands and indexes. Movement, skeleton caliber HMC 814, automatic, 32mm 5.5mm, running at 21,600 vph in 28 jewels; bi-directional winding with gold skeletonized winding weight; one minute flying tourbillon with Moser double balance springs; diamond-beveled; mainplates and bridges with anthracite finish. Price, $99,600.

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