Ornatus-Mundi[Zenith]
7136
Delving deeply into the Chopard L.U.C Full Strike Minute Repeater part 1 of 3 - Intro and Manufacture
Jul 31, 2017,06:00 AM
With the L.U.C Full Strike, Chopard has created one of the most
advanced and accomplished minute repeaters currently on the market, in
both musicality, technology as well as user-friendliness. The piece
presents a holistic tour de force improving on the status quo of
repeating watches in almost any of their main features, precisely:
- Crystal
clear sound: World's first sapphire gongs, as integral part of the
watch glass. Thus, sound source and amplifier form one single unit
- Consummate cadence: Perfect musicality with defined intervals between notes
- Indefatigable
power: Reserve for 12 full sets of 32 gong strikes at 12:59 and
60-hours of separate timing autonomy. COSC certification
- Unmitigated security: Built-in safeguards against user error breaking strike mechanism, with water resistance to boot
The watch has been featured here on PuristSPro quite extensively, just to list a few articles:
With
the wealth of information already there, I will refrain myself to just
the absolute necessary piece of information to make sense of this
article.
In pure data and numbers, the Full Strike is described like this (source: Chopard website):
REF. NUMBER:
161947-5001CASE & DIALCASE DIMENSION(S): 42,50 mm
CASE MATERIAL: 18-carat rose gold (fairmined)
STRAP & BUCKLESTRAP: black alligator vegetal tanning (matt square plate) with hand sewn matching tones, lining: alligator brown
BUCKLE MATERIAL: 18-carat rose gold
BUCKLE TYPE: pin buckle
FUNCTION(S): hourly strike
INDICATION(S): hours and minutes, small seconds, power-reserve indicator
CERTIFICATION(S): Poinçon de Genève quality hallmark, Chronometer certificate issued by the COSC
LIMITED EDITION: 20
MOVEMENT: L.U.C 08.01-L
TYPE OF WINDING: hand-wound mechanical movement
POWER RESERVE: 60 hours
FREQUENCY: 4 Hz (28,800 vibrations per hour)
JEWELS: 63
CASE-BACK: see-through sapphire crystal
But nothing, really nothing beats the real deal:
The Full Strike is visually exceptional in the sense that its partly
open-worked dial follows a stringent logic, and is designed to showcase
the aesthetic mastery and its finishing excellence at Chopard...
... and finally the profound mechnical personality of this piece.
Minute repeaters, by nature of their complication, are judged not only
on their design and finishing excellence, but obviously also on their
audible qualities. Here, Chopard chose a decidedly idisoynchratic path
for its very first minute repeater - a solution which upon closer
inspection immediately justifies the decisions on the dial layout:
Chopard implemented an ingenious and proprietary solution to improving
the musical qualities of this piece - a solution which was fraught with
risk: Front crystal and gongs are crafted from a single block of
sapphire, thus instantly offering two world firsts: (i) the first time
that sapphire is used to create repeater sound and (ii) the frist time
that sound source and its amplificator are one single piece.
The movement, Cal. L.U.C 08.01-L, is without doubt one of the finest in
industry, and entirely developed and crafted in Chopard's workshops in
Geneva.
The finishing is exactly as one would expect with such a piece: subtle, creamy, flawless.
Chopard's first minute repeater movement not only borrows tremendously from Grand Sonnerie mechanisms (i.e. its own mainspring barrel enabling
operation close to the latter movements), it also comes with a wealth
of original features which increase listening pleasure and and prevent
accidentally inflicting damage - thereby sparing the owner's as well as
the manufacturer's nerves and resources.
In fact, this minute repeater looks like the child of experienced
parents - its a tremedous feat to pull this off, and even more so for a
company that just presented its first such complication ever!
In this series of articles, I shall delve deeply into the ingredients which make the magic sauce of this watch, separately for:
- manufacturing capabilites at Chopard
- technological details
- design consideration
Today, I'd like to start by recapitulating the essentials of the Chopard manufacture, as this is the foundation upon which, Chopard, could build this outstandinging piece.
Thanks for reading
Magnus