Independents

This photo was lurking in a dark recess of the hard drive and it might be of interest to some of you Habring² fans out there if you have not already seen it. It's a "Richard Habring" tourbillon (photo by M Friedberg, from PPro), from the days before Habring².

will check and see if he can send photos

http://www.network54.com/Forum/125316/thread/1089982306/Richard+Habring+Tourbillon+N%B013 This message has been edited by alex on 2011-09-28 01:41:10

Good to see the watch; even better to be reminded of an old-style Network 54 post!

...before he settled on the design of his Habring 2 tourbillon, including the one he developed for IWC's Il Destriero Scafusia.  You can see these on his web site.

My watch, to which Alex posted a link, is N. 13, and the one you posted, if I recall correctly, is number 14.  The watch movements varied from time to time, though I understand that a few were various IWC pocket watch movements, to which Richard had easy access while at IWC.

Mine is based on a Cal. 98, as at the time I was collecting Portugiesers and IWC did not yet have a tourbillon in their product line.  It was made using a full titanium cage for lightness, but preserving the very large original balance wheel of the movement, thus yielding a very large tourbillon.  I had also asked Richard to make it free-sprung in order to make the top of the cage as clutterless as possible, and thus weights were added to the balance wheel.

The dial was of my own design, in order to approximate the look of the IWC portugieser watches of old (in fact it was largely based on one of the vintage purtugiesers I had at the time).  Interestingly enough, as we were going through with this project, IWC launched its own Portugieser tourbillon based on the Cal 5000, and Richard offered me the possibility to back out of this one, in case I wanted the "original".  I obviously refused, and I was very glad of my choice once I later saw the IWC one at SIHH!

While I have since sold most of my Portugiesers, this is one of the watches which is still in my collection, and which will likely never get sold!

...I had forgotten the Panerai-like one:
http://www.habring.com/en/private-customers/the-tourbillons-1989-2002-

 

Thank you for bringing us the story of your watch and those details of the early Habring tourbillons. All credit to you for your vision.

Cheers,
pplater.

ahci.watchprosite.com

Don

Thanks Don - as they say, "you just can't buy stuff like that"!

Much appreciated.

 

Cheers,

pplater.

One from the archives that deserves to see the light of day more often!  You can absolutely see the direct link aesthetically from this early piece from Richard to today's Habring² Tourbillon 3D.

Cheers,
Daos