The response from you, our community has been overwhelmingly positive with our recent announcement of taking the tourbillon development in-house.
From emails to phone calls it has been a pleasure connecting with you all again. All the feedback has created an incredible amount of motivation within our team.
Our tourbillon development has kicked into high gear and the team is doing a superb job of breaking down the tasks and tackling them one at a time.
This is an incredibly difficult project given the timeline however we have a highly skilled and knowledgable team moving the needle forward.
Why is this?
And why are we able to scale so quickly?
It boils down to the way decisions have to be made and the relevant core knowledge base needed to make those decisions without ending up in an endless circle of trial and error. A sound understanding of escapement development is a deep seated core attribute of our team and a primary reason we can move forward with such a project.
Most other movement makers are utilizing geometries and escapement technologies that were developed decades ago. A plug and play type scenario and in order to develop a new tourbillon cage from the ground up a team must have an understanding of the mathematics involved. This is why escapement development is regarded as a highly coveted achievement in horology.
I recently listened to an episode of Scottish Watches where Hodinkee's chief editor, Jack Forster said the greatest surprise in horology for 2020 was Grand Seiko’s new escapement.
Jack understands the limited knowledge base around escapement development and there are few with the know-how to develop them. And only with escapement understanding can one develop a new tourbillon cage.
Furthermore this is not just any tourbillon escapement, but one that utilizes silicon and silicon must have its geometry tuned to meet the tourbillon’s performance goals. Silicon out performs steel and jewel constructions in many regards, but working with this material is still a mystery to most. We have invested years into working with silicon and are of the limited few able to work and design with it.
As you can imagine, taking on such a project is not for the faint of heart. Without a team of engineers with deep seated knowledge in escapement development and the will to pull it off, this project simply would not be possible.
The pace has all hands on deck and moving towards completion of our engineering drawings soon.
We recently filmed a video update with Horage founder Andreas Felsl (Andi). It is currently in the editing room and once complete we will send this out to you.
Here are a few stills of Andi and Silvan digging into the details and for those that like to zoom in you might just see some interesting details.
Our second and final tourbillon pre-order date is still to be determined, however we have our eyes set on mid-autumn. This is of course dependent on COVID-19 and travel restrictions being lifted and remaining open. On the upside it was announced that international travel will open to the EU and Switzerland as of July 1st and this provides us with optimism for getting out and seeing you all again soon.
As always I look forward to connecting with you in the comments.
Till next time…
Landon Stirling