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You could be forgiven for assuming that when it comes to mechanical watches, making the movements is the difficult part, and everything else just slots into place. Sometimes that might well be true—and Swiss brands certainly place an enormous amount of emphasis on the whirring ensemble of wheels and springs that tells the time.
But when you need the rest of the watch to match up to the same level of quality, even the most superficially unassuming components can be surprisingly complicated to get right, as Blancpain found when it set about developing a ceramic bracelet for its Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe.
Years in the making, the bracelet makes its first appearance today on a brand-new collection of Bathyscaphe dive watches, the Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe Quantieme Complet Phase de Lune—a complete calendar with moon phase, meaning a watch that displays the day, date, month, and lunar cycle, but still requires manual adjustment at the end of each month.
It’s an accomplished watch in its own right, with a silicon escapement, three-day power reserve, and that characteristic dive bezel with a “liquidmetal” inlay for the text.
But what Blancpain is really excited about is that, for the first time, the Bathyscaphe—which has been available with a ceramic case since 2015—can now come on a bracelet to match.
It could have happened years ago; Blancpain’s parent company Swatch Group owns a specialist company, Comadur SA, which produces ceramic bracelets for sister brands Omega and Rado. But Blancpain’s checklist, as one of the group’s most prestigious names, was very particular, and led to the development of a completely bespoke bracelet, including two new patents.
Top of the list was a bracelet that would be as durable and resilient as a high-end dive watch would demand. The zirconium oxide used is known for its surface hardness (scoring 7.5 on the Mohs scale, beneath diamond, at 10, and above titanium, a 6), and its superior strength-to-weight ratio—but it can be brittle.
Multi-link bracelet designs, the Blancpain team explained, are prone to failure if the spacing between links is too narrow and parts are allowed to rub against each other. But make them too loose, and not only will the bracelet feel cheaper and less secure, its links will collide in other ways.
The answer was a complex system of links held together by titanium bars, each one hand-screwed into position. Within the bracelet, each bar has a patented cam-shaped section that sits within a flared recess in the side of the center link. As the bracelet flexes, the titanium cam is able to move within its recess, but no further, meaning the bracelet is supple within a controlled range.
Building a bracelet to such specifications requires incredibly fine tolerances in the size and shape of each individual part—down to fractions of a millimeter. In this regard, it is not so different from a metal bracelet, but the ceramic manufacturing process makes uniformity a greater challenge.
Why? Zirconium oxide powder is sintered at a high heat in a precisely-shaped mould; in the process it shrinks by approximately 25 percent. Each bracelet link must therefore be measured individually before assembly, to ensure it comes out just right: Blancpain would not share an exact failure rate, but highlighted that it was not uncommon for as many as 50 percent of ceramic watch cases to be rejected.
Once sintered, the links must be finished—polished and beveled to achieve the level of comfort and visual appeal befitting a luxury watch. Beveling the edges of such a brittle material poses its own challenges: Comadur’s second patent associated with the project came in the form of a diamond-based brushing process that could finish Blancpain’s links as desired. The brand says that it alone in the watch industry hand-machines a ceramic bracelet in this way.
The end result is a bit like the old adage about five-star service: When it’s done right, you shouldn’t notice it at all—but somewhere in a Swiss materials lab, there’s a team that knows how much work has gone into it.
The bracelet opens and closes as you’d hope, with a double-hinged folding clasp in titanium, and links can be removed for size like any other. It can be interchanged for sail cloth or NATO-style straps, but that’s a job you’ll need Blancpain to do for you, as it says fitting a now fashionable quick-release mechanism would be too likely to result in damage to the case or bracelet.
Like the five-star service, it comes at a price: the Bathyscaphe Quantieme Complet Phases de Lune costs $26,000, or £24,200, on the bracelet and £17,100 on a fabric strap. Naturally, fans of the brand uncomfortable with such an RRP can plump instead for the recent $400 (£340) Scuba Fifty Fathoms collaboration with Swatch, of course.
For now, this Bathyscaphe comes only in black ceramic, with a choice of black, blue, or green dials. But a final piece of good news is that the patented ceramic bracelet is backwards-compatible with the Bathyscaphe Chronograph and Bathyscaphe Automatic in the same colors.
