It is hard to find someone - watch enthusiast or not - who remains indifferent to the appeal of the A. Lange & Söhne mechanical movements.
Watch connoisseurs are particularly impressed as they also consider the mechanical complexity of these ensembles but even people without a specific knowledge about watchmaking are immediately fascinated by their aesthetics. What makes these mechanical movements so attractive?
The Saxon watchmaker has its own beauty recipe. Let’s examine some of the key "ingredients" used for the finishing and the decoration of its movements keeping in mind that each component, whether it is visible or not, must comply to the highest artisanal and aesthetic standards.
Hand-engraved balance cock
The balance cock of every watch is engraved by hand with the Lange-style floral pattern and bears the unique signature of the artisan's own work making each A. Lange & Söhne watch truly unique.
Ribbing
The typical three-quarter plate in German silver is decorated with uniform stripes (ribbing) which are created using a slightly inclined, rotating grinding wheel that is guided along the component in straight, parallel lines. The stripes must be perfectly parallel and regular.
Perlage
Applied to the inside surfaces of plates and bridges, perlage is a decoration pattern consisting of small circles (pearls) applied to a surface by grinding. It is generated with a rotating abrasive peg that only briefly stipples the component with each stipple overlapping the previous one. The uniform distance between the individual stipples depends on the dexterity of the finisseur.
Solarisation
The spiral pattern of solarisation is applied principally to mainspring barrels and other larger round surfaces or wheels and it is produced by rotating the part and the grinding wheel in opposite directions.
Straight graining
Used for steel clicks, springs and yokes, straight graining is a surface finish that is accomplished through rubbing an abrasive on a workpiece in a linear fashion. Straight and regular movements are essentials to obtain the best result.
Circular graining
Smaller wheels are finished with circular graining. The regular circular contours are produced when the part is rotated on abrasive paper.
Chamfering
All of the edges of plates, bridges and levers of the A. Lange & Söhne movements are chamfered, a process that involves both bevelling and polishing. Only highly skilled artisans can produce chamfers (also known as anglage) with a uniform width and angle on every edge. Whether using files or grinding wheels, the bevels are then polished entirely by hand.
Flat polishing
Up to two hours of precision work are needed to mirror-polish the surfaces of a whiplash spring, the endpiece of an escape wheel and other parts of the movement. To flat-polish a component, the finisseur presses it into the pith of an elderberry shoot and guides it in figures of eight on films coated with progressively finer diamond powder. This process requires great concentration as even a tiny grain of dust between the part and the polishing film, or excessive pressure on the part, can wipe out hours of work in a second.
Black polishing
Only very few and select parts are decorated with the intricate and time-consuming - it can take several days - black polishing technique. Using special abrasive pastes, the respective parts are manually polished on a zinc or tin plate until they appear to be black at a certain angle of incident light.
Gold chatons and blued screws
The blued screws add a touch of aesthetic elegance to the movements but they also offer higher corrosion resistance. The steel parts are blued by slowly and carefully heating (annealing) them to 300 °C. In the process, the metal is coated with an ultra-thin layer reflecting a cornflower blue hue.
Contour grinding
This technique is used to embellish the vertical edges of the frame elements of a Lange movement.
Using a rotating abrasive peg, the contours of all framework components are given a matt finish to create a vivid interplay with the polished edges.
The highest aesthetic qualities alone would not be sufficient to create the “magic” of these complex mechanisms without being matched to flawless assembly of several hundred parts.
And each A. Lange & Söhne movement is not assembled just once but two times. After the first assembly pass, it is taken apart and cleaned again in a quest for perfection.
In the second, final assembly phase, one single watchmaker is responsible for the entire movement. It is in this second assembly that all gold chatons are carefully inserted in the plate and the jig screws are replaced with thermally blued screws and the movement is finally ready to be housed in a precious metal case.
Watch connoisseurs are particularly impressed as they also consider the mechanical complexity of these ensembles but even people without a specific knowledge about watchmaking are immediately fascinated by their aesthetics. What makes these mechanical movements so attractive?
Hand-engraved balance cock
The balance cock of every watch is engraved by hand with the Lange-style floral pattern and bears the unique signature of the artisan's own work making each A. Lange & Söhne watch truly unique.
Ribbing
The typical three-quarter plate in German silver is decorated with uniform stripes (ribbing) which are created using a slightly inclined, rotating grinding wheel that is guided along the component in straight, parallel lines. The stripes must be perfectly parallel and regular.
Perlage
Applied to the inside surfaces of plates and bridges, perlage is a decoration pattern consisting of small circles (pearls) applied to a surface by grinding. It is generated with a rotating abrasive peg that only briefly stipples the component with each stipple overlapping the previous one. The uniform distance between the individual stipples depends on the dexterity of the finisseur.
Solarisation
The spiral pattern of solarisation is applied principally to mainspring barrels and other larger round surfaces or wheels and it is produced by rotating the part and the grinding wheel in opposite directions.
Used for steel clicks, springs and yokes, straight graining is a surface finish that is accomplished through rubbing an abrasive on a workpiece in a linear fashion. Straight and regular movements are essentials to obtain the best result.
Circular graining
Smaller wheels are finished with circular graining. The regular circular contours are produced when the part is rotated on abrasive paper.
Chamfering
All of the edges of plates, bridges and levers of the A. Lange & Söhne movements are chamfered, a process that involves both bevelling and polishing. Only highly skilled artisans can produce chamfers (also known as anglage) with a uniform width and angle on every edge. Whether using files or grinding wheels, the bevels are then polished entirely by hand.
Flat polishing
Up to two hours of precision work are needed to mirror-polish the surfaces of a whiplash spring, the endpiece of an escape wheel and other parts of the movement. To flat-polish a component, the finisseur presses it into the pith of an elderberry shoot and guides it in figures of eight on films coated with progressively finer diamond powder. This process requires great concentration as even a tiny grain of dust between the part and the polishing film, or excessive pressure on the part, can wipe out hours of work in a second.
Black polishing
Only very few and select parts are decorated with the intricate and time-consuming - it can take several days - black polishing technique. Using special abrasive pastes, the respective parts are manually polished on a zinc or tin plate until they appear to be black at a certain angle of incident light.
Gold chatons and blued screws
The blued screws add a touch of aesthetic elegance to the movements but they also offer higher corrosion resistance. The steel parts are blued by slowly and carefully heating (annealing) them to 300 °C. In the process, the metal is coated with an ultra-thin layer reflecting a cornflower blue hue.
This technique is used to embellish the vertical edges of the frame elements of a Lange movement.
Using a rotating abrasive peg, the contours of all framework components are given a matt finish to create a vivid interplay with the polished edges.
The highest aesthetic qualities alone would not be sufficient to create the “magic” of these complex mechanisms without being matched to flawless assembly of several hundred parts.
And each A. Lange & Söhne movement is not assembled just once but two times. After the first assembly pass, it is taken apart and cleaned again in a quest for perfection.
In the second, final assembly phase, one single watchmaker is responsible for the entire movement. It is in this second assembly that all gold chatons are carefully inserted in the plate and the jig screws are replaced with thermally blued screws and the movement is finally ready to be housed in a precious metal case.
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