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Brian M. Afuang

What Romain Gauthier Did To Meteorite

Watchmaker’s first steel piece flaunts “otherworldly’ feature

IN THE new limited-edition Romain Gauthier watch (only 10 exists), “otherworldly” describes a feature literally not from Earth. And, oddly, its presence is juxtaposed against a material that, next to plastic, is the humblest, most commonly used in timepieces.

What Romain Gauthier’s new Prestige HMS Stainless Steel claims to is being the brand’s first model encased in, well, stainless steel. But this ubiquity is balanced by the watch’s dial, which is crafted from iron meteorite.

To be specific, it’s from an octahedrite, a nickel-rich class of iron meteorite with a distinct, naturally occurring parallel pattern of broad stripes that came to be called Widmanstatten. The pattern is apparently formed during the cooling period of the asteroid from which the meteorite breaks off. Iron meteorites, though fairly rare, have actually been early man’s source of iron long before he figured out smelting iron on his own, in time relying less and less on rocks falling from the sky.

Romain Gauthier
Romain Gauthier
Romain Gauthier
Romain Gauthier

Speaking of which, Romain Gauthier says the octahedrite that made its way to the special Prestige HMS was discovered in 1931 at the Henbury crater field in Australia’s Northern Territory, a spot well known for bearing the grunt of numerous meteorite impacts. The only other known sample of this Henbury meteorite, according to Romain Gauthier, is housed in the South Australian Museum of minerals, meteorites and rocks in Adelaide (yes, the place exists).

Creating the watch’s dial, Romain Gauthier says, calls for combining three-axe and electrical discharge machining to cut and drill holes in the meteorite. What comes out as a result is a disc 33 millimeters in diameter and 0.8 millimeters thick. An anti-corrosion lacquer coat is then applied to this disc to ensure it won’t go bad over the years.

Set on the foreground of this meteorite landscape are two intersecting subdials displaying what the “HMS” in The Prestige HMS’s name stands for — hours, minutes, seconds. The larger subdial on top reads out the hours and minutes, the one at 5 o’clock is for the small second. Romain Gauthier swears the placement of the small second readout is intuitive. Once the hour and minute indications are read, the eye is naturally drawn to the small second display.

Making the readouts more legible are dabs of Super-LumiNova on the blackened steel hour and minute hands, as well as on the applied white gold hour markers.

Romain Gauthier
Romain Gauthier
Romain Gauthier

Framing the dial layout is a 43-millimeter case defined by varied finishes. Its bezel and sides are polished while the caseback, crown, and the front and back of the lugs are satin finished. A closer look at the Prestige HMS reveals the watch has no conventional crown at its side. Rather, it uses a flat crown (actually resembling a miniature bottle cap) on the caseback. This setup, Romain Gauthier says, can wind the movement faster simply because the winding motion need not shift the energy 90 degrees to the mainspring. Also, an indent on the watch case allows the crown to be wound even when the watch is on the wrist. As crowns go, pulling this one out sets the time.

The engine this crown winds — Roman Gauthier’s 22-jewel cal. 2206 — is on full show through a crystal caseback. Operating at 28,800vph and storing power good for 60 hours when full wound, this movement is lushly decorated. Its bridges and mainplate are black NAC-treated, the gears rhodium-treated and feature circular graining, both sides of the mainspring barrel receive snailing. As much as 60 hours are spent hand-decorating the movement, numerous parts of which exposed. Plus, the meteorite disc itself even peeks through in some sections.

As an in-house movement, it has many of the brand’s bespoke touches. Its balance wheel is propped by curved arms and is fitted with eccentric weights to allow for precise tuning. The regulator also has a triangular pallet lever that should prove more robust. Even the screw heads are different, having an S-pattern slot so more torque can be applied to a screw during movement assembly. That they look great is no bad thing, too.

But such attention to detail can be expected; the Prestige HMS Stainless Steel, after all, is out of this world.

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