Gerber found himself confronted with replacing excellently executed vintage
imitation Cartier watches
Gerber found himself confronted with replacing excellently executed vintage jewels with modern ones, so shaping and polishing a jewel practically from scratch was the best solution. The bearing surfaces of the jewels are slightly domed and the insides of the holes in the jewels are curved. These “olive” jewels have two major aims: to minimize the friction between pivot and jewel, and to assure that the parsimoniously applied drop of oil will be held in place.
The next step was the construction of a new center wheel pinion that could allow the passage of the two new chronograph arbors (for the chronograph and split-seconds wheels). This turned out to be one of the most challenging parts to manufacture since incredibly small tolerances had to be handled with utmost precision.
In a simple watch, this central axis already bears the center wheel, center wheel pinion, the cannon pinion (and minute hand), the hour wheel (and hour hand) and sometimes the seconds pinion (and second hand). In the case of a striking watch, the center axis also has to carry the respective control discs for the striking mechanism. In the end, the final center wheel pinion is a work of art in its own right. It consists altogether of eight parts: the split-seconds arbor, the chronograph wheel arbor, the center wheel pinion and the cannon pinion, which carries the quarter snail, minute snail and surprise piece, and the four-lobed trigger star for the sonnerie. Put together, this complicated piece looks a bit like something out of an automobile engine.
The chronograph wheel arbor and the split-seconds arbor are exercises in precision machining. Less than 0.5mm had to be drilled out of the chronograph arbor. One can imagine how many attempts Gerber had to make to drill a precise hole in the chronograph arbor. In addition to the center wheel pinion, the pinions for the seconds wheel and minute counter had to be made from scratch. A much easier task, but nevertheless it had to be done—several times.
The Power Reserve Lord Arran also wanted to have an indication for the power reserve of both the timekeeping train and the striking mechanism. Gerber fulfilled this desire by placing these indications around the column wheel of the chronograph. The power reserve is a little complex in that it gets information from the barrel and the ratchet wheel with two differential gears (for each barrel). This made it nesessary to add a pinion to each barrel to drive the differential gears.
As you can see in the CAD drawing, the bridge for the power reserve had to curve around the column wheel. In the end, as with the other complications, the power reserve fits perfectly, with beautiful symmetry. It seems to unify the timekeeping and the striking ack in February of this year, I reviewed two books on BRolex, both published by the Schiffer Company. Shortly after I submitted that review to the Bulletin, another Rolex book came my way, The Rolex Report, revised and expanded fourth edition, by John E. Brozek. I was skeptical. In my earlier review, I had stated that the two books combined would cover just about anything you would ever care to know about Rolex. I was wrong.
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