Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe Quantieme Complet Phase de Lune: price, specs, availability

You could beryllium forgiven for assuming that erstwhile it comes to mechanical watches, making the movements is the hard part, and everything other conscionable slots into place. Sometimes that mightiness good beryllium true—and Swiss brands surely spot an tremendous magnitude of accent connected the whirring ensemble of wheels and springs that tells the time.

But erstwhile you request the remainder of the ticker to lucifer up to the aforesaid level of quality, adjacent the astir superficially unassuming components tin beryllium amazingly analyzable to get right, arsenic Blancpain recovered erstwhile it acceptable astir processing a ceramic bracelet for its Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe.

Years successful the making, the bracelet makes its archetypal quality contiguous connected a marque caller postulation of Bathyscaphe dive watches, the Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe Quantieme Complet Phase de Lune—a implicit calendar with satellite phase, meaning a ticker that displays the day, date, period and lunar cycle, but inactive requires manual accommodation astatine the extremity of each month.

It’s an accomplished ticker successful its ain right, with a silicon escapement, three-day powerfulness reserve, and that diagnostic dive bezel with a “liquidmetal” inlay for the text.

But what Blancpain is truly excited astir is that, for the archetypal time, the Bathyscaphe—which has been disposable with a ceramic lawsuit since 2015—can present travel connected a bracelet to match.

It could person happened years ago; Blancpain’s genitor institution Swatch Group owns a specializer company, Comadur SA, which produces ceramic bracelets for sister brands Omega and Rado. But Blancpain’s checklist, arsenic 1 of the group’s astir prestigious names, was precise particular, and led to the improvement of a wholly bespoke bracelet, including 2 caller patents.

Top of the database was a bracelet that would beryllium arsenic durable and resilient arsenic a high-end dive ticker would demand. The zirconium oxide utilized is known for its aboveground hardness (scoring 7.5 connected the Mohs scale, beneath diamond, astatine 10, and supra titanium, a 6), and its superior strength-to-weight ratio—but it tin beryllium brittle.

Multi-link bracelet designs, the Blancpain squad explained, are prone to nonaccomplishment if the spacing betwixt links is excessively constrictive and parts are allowed to hitch against each other. But marque them excessively loose, and not lone volition the bracelet consciousness cheaper and little secure, its links volition collide successful different ways.

The reply was a analyzable strategy of links held unneurotic by titanium bars, each 1 hand-screwed into position. Within the bracelet, each barroom has a patented cam-shaped conception that sits wrong a flared recess successful the broadside of the halfway link. As the bracelet flexes, the titanium cam is capable to determination wrong its recess, but nary further, meaning the bracelet is supple wrong a controlled range.