Independents

A spontaneous visit with friends to Romain Gauthier in Le Sentier

 

A spontaneous visit with friends to Romain Gauthier in Le Sentier
Don Corson  11.2009

What do you do with a bunch of watch-crazy friends in the late afternoon as the sun goes down in the early winter over Le Sentier in the Vallée de Joux? ....

..... Visit to the Watch Muesum ?  ... closed Mondays... 
..... drink a glass of wine or two? .... not a bad idea, but not terribly watch relevant. ....
..... visit JLC ?  .... those people are not really set up for spontaneous visits ... and this late in the afternoon ? .....
....     .....    ah  ....    .....
ahemmmm ....
....
Maybe a short call to Romain Gauthier? 

Hey, we are 6 watch-nuts looking for something to do and thought maybe….  We are about a 2 minute walk from your shop…  Could we…..

And 2 minutes later we were there to see the two remaining people in the shop at this late hour.  We take a look around.

Here the bench for bevelling and polishing.  Note the gentian wood used for the final polishing.

Here we see in the foreground the machine for making côtes de Genève and behind it for making perlage.

On the bench a movement being tested for functionality before the very last finishing steps.

A watchmakers bench after sundown.

Some examples of their work.

Checking it out under the binocular microscope.

This frosted finish is not sand blasted, but the sand is rubbed over the surface to get this stunning frosted effect.

Close inspection, but unable to find fault.

All the parts such as this balance wheel, with the exception of only a few pieces, are made in their own shop.  We will shortly take a walk to the building housing their parts-making machinery.

On this anchor we can really appreciate the true meaning of a “black polish”.  Bright white when the light is reflected toward us…

.. and completely black in all other cases.

An escapement wheel.

One of the special screw drivers for the famous screws with the S-shaped slot Romain uses.

Now we move on from the watchmakers shop to the machine shop.  The first thing we notice is the micrometer for measuring parts keeping company with the compendium of the Swiss norms for the watchmaking industry.

Romain Gauthier

In the background is his new 5-axis milling machine.  Using this machine it is possible to mill most any part conceivable.  As Romain's experience includes many years as a micro-machinist his business model includes much parts-making for third parties.  This may be a part of the reason that he seems to be weathering the crisis better than many other independents.  Right now he is making a series of high precision parts in titanium for a third party.  As we can see this brings big smiles.

This impressive machine is used for making and sharpening the cutting tools used in the shop.

Here we see a CNC lathe with its material feeder taking 3 meter lengths of raw material that  automatically charges the lathe.

Here Romain Gauthier along with the 3 axis milling machine used for making the plates and bridges of their movements.  Their communication on their parts production is totally clear.  They use the most advanced machines available today to make their parts.  They do not, however, try to play around and finish the parts by machine as they know it will never give the quality desired.  The parts they make are completely finished by hand by their watchmakers.  As we learned in the watchmaking shop, it takes about 1 month of work for a skilled watchmaker to finish and assemble those parts to a completed watch at the quality level demanded by Romain Gauthier.

I hope you have enjoyed this little spontaneous outing in the Vallée de Joux to visit Romain Gauthier with us.
After the visit we did decide to take up that idea with the glass of wine again, along with a good meal in a restaurant just down the street from the Gauthier shop.
Never waste a good idea
Don

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