Urwerk UR-105M Iron Knight: Starship For Your Wrist

Urwerk practically invented its own genre: sci-fi haut-de-gamme. When the Swiss haute horlogerie pioneer declares that the Urwerk UR-105M “Iron Knight” was inspired by medieval armor, just smile and nod. Only a Jedi “knight” would look natural wearing a spaceship like this on his wrist.

At 40mm wide, 53mm overall, and just under 17mm thick, the Urwerk UR-105M is big. But with a hull constructed principally of PVD black titanium, the mass is quite reasonable. Perhaps the most exceptional ergonomic feature of designer Martin Frei’s UR-105M is the underslung system of lugs. The pivot points of the straps are beneath and inset from the ends of the case, so the watch wears far smaller than its appearance.

Urwerk co-founder and watchmaking visionary Felix Baumgartner designed the display of the first Urwerk models to read as digital expressions of time. The system endures in the 2014-present Iron Knight, but it has been enhanced by exposing the full system of planetary wheels that allows the scrolling time display to function.

Constructed of aluminum, polymer, and titanium, the four rotating time discs and their carriage allow instant and effortless reference to the current time. The 0-60 scale at the bottom of the “dial” is the minute track; the current hour is the one on the wheel that is tracing the minute track. Constant seconds are displayed on a scrolling barrel visible through the flank of the case.

Beneath the case lies a display as unique as the “wandering hour” dial. The radial power reserve traces the 42-hour autonomy of the in-house caliber 5.01 manual-wind movement. Urwerk uniquely equips the the UR-105M Iron Knight with an oil change interval gauge that would appear more at home on a car than a watch.

But the “fine adjustment index” is the real shock; Urwerk allows the user to manipulate an external balance regulator in order to correct minor timekeeping discrepancies without the intervention of a watchmaker. A fast/slow timing gauge guides the user through the adjustment procedure.