Marcus Hanke
[PuristSPro Moderator]
11296
Additional information on Rainer Nienaber's Tri-Retrograde ...
Senior AHCI member Rainer Nienaber from Bünde in Westphalia is an expert in making fine retrograde indications. While retrograde hands have become a somewhat fashionable accessory of watches, collectors of vintage pocket watches will be aware of their main problem: the mass of the hands and the energy set free by the spring when the retrograde hand snaps back. Sooner or later, most retrogrades will suffer from misalignment, and/or sticky hands.
Rainer Nienaber knows about these problems, and invests much effort to avoid them in his watches. In his latest creation, the Tri-Retrograde, he introduced a special mechanism dampening the 'impact' of the hour and minute hands upon jumping backward; on the last millimetres, their speed is reduced by a wheelset. Additionally, he reduced the mass of the hands, by making them himself, from heat-blued titanium. The Tri-Retrograde complete set of hands weighs less than 0.3 grams!! The path of the hands was designed in the way to assure a vertical orientation at 12 o'clock, resp. at the full hour (minute hand) and the full minute (second hand).
The base movement is an ETA/Unitas hand-winding movement.
The prices are above the level that we are used to from Rainer. However, one has to take into account the high amount of parts that are made by Rainer himself, and that several hundred hours of work have to be invested into every single watch. The steel version costs 18,000 Euros, the 18k gold variant 27,000 Euros. I assume these prices already include the German sales tax, that has been raised to 19% beginning this year.
Regards,
Marcus