The Watches of Armin Strom with Claude Greisler – Co-founder and Master Watchmaker

One of the ways you guys describe your watches is not skeletonized so much as transparent mechanics.

Those are words that I'm borrowing from you.

And I think that's a much better way of describing what you're doing.

You could certainly argue what Mr. Armstrong was doing was hand skeletonization.

Many other brands today still do skeletonization.

And it typically starts generally with there is something we have, a watch or a movement that was not designed to be skeletonized that we're opening up.

And that's an inherently compromised approach because you're taking something that was developed one way and sort of forcing it in another direction versus what you guys do, which is design everything from the ground up to be transparent and to be open.

And in particular, what's so fascinating is it's intentional.

There's always an idea behind it.

And let's start with gravity equal force because just as important as the transparent mechanics are is also the name of the watch and those things work together.

So in the gravity equal force, I'm wearing a collaboration we did a few years ago on the gravity equal force.

You have gravity and equal force in the name.

And you have gravity and you have equal force visible on the dial side of the watch.

So tell us a little bit about this idea of transparent mechanics, this philosophy, and how it comes to life as an example in the gravity equal force.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, as you mentioned, I mean, first we have to understand this is two ways of how you engineer movement.

Most of the time, the design team creates a wonderful looking watch.

They create a case, they create the dial hands, a strap and a clasp.

And then basically the engineer has to create a movement which allows the watch to give the information that the designer needs to have on the dial so where they have the hands where they have the date window or whatever they want moon phase etc versus in Armin Strom it's a completely different approach we want to create the movement let's say the gravity equal force so we say okay it should be automatic winding and we want to have a better torque control because with long power reserve there's always a problem that you have a very weak section at the beginning and there's a little bit too much energy at the end so there is like the there is some solutions which do that job never got combined with the automatic winding watch So this is what, okay, let's create a new automatic winding watch.

And then we said, okay, micro rotor or like a regular rotor.

Micro rotor fixed a little bit more to our philosophy because the big rotor would cover half of the movement.

And when you spend hours and hours doing hand finishing, That's not what it's supposed to do.

So we said, okay, micro rotor, of course, yes, we're going to go for micro rotor and we have to find a way of delivering a more equal force to the gear train.

And then once the first elements were brought together, we were thinking about, okay, how can we, how can we build that watch to, where should we, where should we put the elements that they become part of the design? You know, it's a little bit form follows function.

It's a bit, okay, where do I put, should we have a balance between the micro rotor, the barrel and the off-center dial? Yes, because, okay, let's put them, how do we put them in a line? Should we create a triangular design? And this was the first, like, okay, there's three, particular elements micro rotor barrel and the time display and then everything else is like okay how should we bring bridges and design of bridges design of the main plate together to hold the micro rotor to hold the barrel in place and yeah this is how we how we design it's literally it's like we try we design we we put things together and Yeah.

One of the ways you guys describe your watches is not skeletonized so much as transparent mechanics.

Those are words that I'm borrowing from you.

And I think that's a much better way of describing what you're doing.

You could certainly argue what Mr. Armstrong was doing was hand skeletonization.

Many other brands today still do skeletonization.

And it typically starts generally with there is something we have, a watch or a movement that was not designed to be skeletonized that we're opening up.

And that's an inherently compromised approach because you're taking something that was developed one way and sort of forcing it in another direction versus what you guys do, which is design everything from the ground up to be transparent and to be open.

And in particular, what's so fascinating is it's intentional.

There's always an idea behind it.

And let's start with gravity equal force because just as important as the transparent mechanics are is also the name of the watch and those things work together.

So in the gravity equal force, I'm wearing a collaboration we did a few years ago on the gravity equal force.

You have gravity and equal force in the name.

And you have gravity and you have equal force visible on the dial side of the watch.

So tell us a little bit about this idea of transparent mechanics, this philosophy, and how it comes to life as an example in the gravity equal force.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, as you mentioned, I mean, first we have to understand this is two ways of how you engineer movement.

Most of the time, the design team creates a wonderful looking watch.

They create a case, they create the dial hands, a strap and a clasp.

And then basically the engineer has to create a movement which allows the watch to give the information that the designer needs to have on the dial so where they have the hands where they have the date window or whatever they want moon phase etc versus in Armin Strom it's a completely different approach we want to create the movement let's say the gravity equal force so we say okay it should be automatic winding and we want to have a better torque control because with long power reserve there's always a problem that you have a very weak section at the beginning and there's a little bit too much energy at the end so there is like the there is some solutions which do that job never got combined with the automatic winding watch So this is what, okay, let's create a new automatic winding watch.

And then we said, okay, micro rotor or like a regular rotor.

Micro rotor fixed a little bit more to our philosophy because the big rotor would cover half of the movement.

And when you spend hours and hours doing hand finishing, That's not what it's supposed to do.

So we said, okay, micro rotor, of course, yes, we're going to go for micro rotor and we have to find a way of delivering a more equal force to the gear train.

And then once the first elements were brought together, we were thinking about, okay, how can we, how can we build that watch to, where should we, where should we put the elements that they become part of the design? You know, it's a little bit form follows function.

It's a bit, okay, where do I put, should we have a balance between the micro rotor, the barrel and the off-center dial? Yes, because, okay, let's put them, how do we put them in a line? Should we create a triangular design? And this was the first, like, okay, there's three, particular elements micro rotor barrel and the time display and then everything else is like okay how should we bring bridges and design of bridges design of the main plate together to hold the micro rotor to hold the barrel in place and yeah this is how we how we design it's literally it's like we try we design we we put things together and Yeah.