Horological Meandering

elliot55
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My Chinese Tourbillon - One Year Later...

It has been almost a year since the purchase of my first Chinese-made tourbillon and I thought it’d be a good idea to revisit this rather inexpensive example of one of watch makings most difficult-to-execute mechanisms.  And so, I have been wearing the watch for the past couple of weeks and I’ve got some things to share with my Purist friends.

First and foremost, the watch keeps excellent time and gains maybe a second, to a second-and-a-half in a forty-hour period.  The power reserve is good for about 46 hours, which is actually quite impressive for a tourbillon running at 4Hz (28,800bph), but the manual winding system does not lend itself to the screw down crown.  When fully wound the winding stem does not disengage making it difficult to screw down the crown.  From a full stop one must take care not to exceed twenty “winds” so as to not damage the winding stem while screwing down the crown.

Certainly the lack of attention to detail and minimal amount of finishing is to be expected, but at the end of the day this is a solidly built timepiece that runs great.  And where the Swiss are charging upwards of a hundred grand for watches with tourbillon-regulated movements, the Chinese are doing it for a whole lot less.  I have seen pieces priced in the twelve hundred to thirty-four hundred dollar range, which is roughly 95% less than a Swiss-made tourbillon!

The watch came with two straps:  a tan rawhide thick strap and a black leather strap with white piping.  The black strap is on the watch now but it was a bee-awtch to switch.  I’m not sure if the blue-ish crystal comes through on the video, but that’s okay because I am also not sure why the crystal is blue in the first place.  It certainly does not make any functional sense and at times can reflect the light in a strange way.

Front View:

Back View:

Overall I am very happy with my Chinese Tourbillon and for a relatively small sum, many of us can now enjoy a watch movement traditionally reserved for a lucky few.