In-House Calibre Manufacture
The Movement
312 components. One purpose.
Within our atelier in Geneva, a single movement undergoes six months of uninterrupted attention before it leaves our hands. Every wheel is cut to tolerances measured in micrometres. Every surface is finished by hand to a standard that a machine cannot replicate. This is not manufacturing. This is devotion.
Manufacture Calibre
The Art of Assembly
Scroll to explore each component of our in-house calibre.
Parts will highlight as you scroll through the sequence.
Components
312
Jewels
45
Frequency
4 Hz
Power Reserve
72 h
Scroll
01 — The Escapement
Where Energy Becomes Rhythm
The lever escapement is the mechanical heart of horology — the mechanism that divides the continuous release of mainspring energy into discrete, countable beats. At CALIBRE, our escapement is hand-finished to a standard that exceeds chronometric specification.
Each pallet fork is individually fitted and tested in the assembled movement. The impulse faces are mirror-polished to reduce friction to a theoretical minimum. Our watchmakers spend upward of four hours on the escapement alone — before the movement is wound for the first time.
The result: an escape wheel that completes one rotation every sixty seconds, its fifteen teeth hand-beveled under a loupe, each facet angled to reflect the same stripe of light.
4+ hours of hand-finishing per escapement assembly.
02 — The Balance Wheel
The Beating Heart
At 28,800 alternations per hour — eight beats per second — our balance wheel oscillates with the metrical constancy of a heartbeat. It is the most human element in a mechanical movement: variable, sensitive, alive.
Our balance wheel is crafted from a proprietary glucydur alloy that resists magnetic fields and thermal variation. Eighteen gold regulation screws allow our watchmakers to fine-tune the rate across five positions — dial up, dial down, crown left, crown right, crown up — achieving a positional variance of less than ±2 seconds per day.
The hairspring is hand-shaped. Its terminal curve — the outermost coil, which must open concentrically — is adjusted with a watchmaker's peg until it breathes in perfect circles. This adjustment alone can take an afternoon.
03 — Surface Finishing
The Art of Light
A movement bridge reveals its quality in how it reflects light. Our bridges receive Côtes de Genève — the parallel striping pattern that has defined fine watchmaking since the nineteenth century — applied by hand on a rotating lapidary wheel, each stroke parallel to the last within a tolerance of a fraction of a millimetre.
Beneath the bridges, the base plate receives perlage: overlapping circular polishing applied with a rotating peg loaded with abrasive paste. Each circle is deliberately placed to create a uniform texture that catches and scatters light. A full base plate can require several hundred individual applications.
All angles — the sharp corners where surfaces meet — receive anglage: beveling followed by high-polish finishing. A skilled finisher will spend a full day beveling a single large bridge, drawing a sharpened steel tool along each edge until it glows.
“Light does not lie. A poorly finished surface cannot hide.”
Côtes de Genève
Perlage
Anglage
By the Numbers
Every movement is a study in obsessive precision.
500+
hours
total production time per movement
0.001
mm tolerance
CNC and hand-finishing combined
21
jewels
sapphire bearing jewels per movement
5
positions
chronometric testing positions
Every movement we produce carries the hands of the watchmaker who finished it. Not metaphorically — literally. The oils, the adjustments, the infinitesimal decisions made at the bench. That is why we sign each movement.
— Maison Calibre, Geneva