The De Bethune DB28YT Yellow Tones
Gold, for much of the history of watchmaking, has been an essential element in watch cases (and even, occasionally, in movements — in the modern era, F. P. Journe famously makes their movement plates and bridges out of red gold). The practical reason for casing watches in gold is that under normal circumstances, it will not corrode or discolor, so it’s ideal for both wristwatch and pocket watch cases. It also seems to exert a deeper and much more visceral fascination — as Auric Goldfinger says, “This is gold, Mr. Bond. All my life I’ve been in love with its colour… its brilliance, its divine heaviness.” This has also meant that for almost as long as there have been solid gold watch cases, there have also been simulated solid gold watch cases — usually, base metal plated with gold, but there have also been substitute alloys like pinchbeck, a zinc-copper alloy that became synonymous with anything fake.
The De Bethune DB28YT Yellow Tones, on the other hand, while not gold, is about as far from an ersatz gold watch as you can get. The watch is indeed a range of brilliant yellow and yellow-brown colors, but the effect is achieved through the use of heat-treatment, not plating, and the color is in its own way as native to titanium as cornflower blue is to heat-blued steel.
The DB28 has been part of De Bethune’s collections since 2010 and it made quite a splash when it debuted; the year after it came out, the watch won the grand prize — the Aiguille D’Or — at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève. If you are looking for a watch which is both technically distinguished and strikingly visually different from more run-of-the-mill, tradition-driven, classic fine watchmaking, it’s hard to think of anything substantially better in the category than the DB28, although every successful design that starts out as a radical departure from business as usual, often ends up becoming a classic in its own right, and an established fixture in the landscape of watchmaking (just look what happened to Richard Mille, which has gone, over a couple of decades, from enfant terrible to respected elder statesman).
Still, the DB28 has not lost its ability to seem fresh and surprising. Its appeal is partly due to the elements of its design, and partly due to the generous canvas on which they are deployed — cases for DB28s usually come in at 42.6mm and the articulated lugs, which are hinged at the middle of the case, give the watch even greater visual impact, while at the same time making them much more comfortable to wear, across a wider range of wrist sizes, than you might think from the numbers. The crown’s located at 12:00, pocket-watch styled (a placement first used at De Bethune in the 2005 DBS) and the movement inverts the usual arrangement of movement bridges and mainplates. Normally, the mainspring barrels, going train, escapement, and regulating components (the balance and balance spring) are under bridges on the back of the watch (the back of a watch, by the way, is called the top plate by watchmakers, since those components are on top when a watch movement is on the bench being serviced).
In the DB28 watches, on the other hand, all the sexy bits are on the front of the watch (except for the 6 day power reserve indication, which is on the back) and form an essential part of the overall composition. The large, central triangular bridge covers the two mainspring barrels as well as the going train, and just beneath it, there’s De Bethune’s patented “triple pare-chute” antishock system — surely one of the most beautiful solutions to protecting the balance from sudden impacts in the history of watchmaking, and the balance itself is as aesthetically compelling as the rest of the movement, in heat-blued titanium with white gold timing weights. The balance spring is De Bethune’s patented design, with an outer coil attachment that offers the benefits of a Breguet overcoil balance spring, but without the latter’s disadvantage of additional thickness (the DB28YT is only 9.3mm thick — only slightly thicker than Patek’s newest Calatrava, the 6119, which comes in at 8.8mm x 39mm, in the unlikely event you’re cross-shopping a Calatrava with a DB28).
All of this is by way of saying that the watch has some serious horological chops when it comes to technical features but what really closes the deal, are the aesthetics — although of course, you can’t really separate technical and aesthetic in the DB28YT since the technical features are also design features anyway.
The Yellow Tones is, just as the name says, an exercise in taking the color of buttercups, the midday sun, and yes, yellow gold, and using it in a way no watch brand’s ever used it before. Titanium, like steel and iron, will turn different colors if you heat it. These metals, if heated to incandescence, will glow (say) red-hot because of their temperature, but before they get there their surfaces begin to change color. This happens thanks to the formation of a layer of metal oxide on the surface and depending on the temperature, the thickness of the oxide layer will vary, giving a range of different colors.
Both titanium and steel can be heat-blued — De Bethune does a lot with heat-bluing, probably most notably in its spherical moonphase — but both metals can be tempered to other colors as well. Steel watch hands are usually blued, but you can find them on both vintage and modern watches taken up to a purple or brownish color as well (both colors occur at lower temps than blue). De Bethune, however, also tempers titanium to various shades of yellow, and pretty much every titanium component of the DB28YT is tempered yellow or yellow-brown, except for the blued titanium balance rim.
There are also some steel components taken to a yellow temper as well, including the “dark side” of the spherical moonphase display, which is, like the more often seen blue-white version of De Bethune’s 122-year moonphase complication, made of one hemisphere of steel, and the other, of palladium. The hour and minute hands are flame-treated steel as well, as is the balance bridge.
The hour markers are polished, un-heat-treated titanium cabochons and the inner flange of the dial is yellow, as is the case; the spring-loaded floating lugs are yellow titanium also. There are several different shades of yellow temper found in the watch and taken all together, they produce a much different effect than you’d get just from using gold or gold alloys (as well as producing a much lighter watch). The longer you look at the color of heat-tempered yellow steel and titanium, the more you realize that the resemblance to yellow gold is really superficial and to my eye, much cooler than the overt warmth of yellow (or red) gold. Between the enormous tactile difference between this watch, and a similar-sized one in gold, and the noticeable difference in the colors of heat-tempered yellow titanium and steel, and comparable gold alloys, you get a watch with specific personality that could not be matched by the use of so-called precious metals — an example of one of the deepest truths in watchmaking. Watchmaking often uses very simple materials — steel, oil, jewels for bearings, and brass (usually plated with rhodium) make up the movements of probably 99% of the mechanical watches ever made. But it’s not just what you use, it’s how you use it, and nobody uses titanium quite like De Bethune.
For another example of yellow-tempered titanium at De Bethune, check out Tim Mosso’s video review of the DB28 Yellow Submarine — an extremely unusual DB28 diver’s watch, with an internal dynamo powering the backlight. I’m not kidding, you gotta see this one.