A very interesting Tourbillon

[cruvon]

Was just looking for horlogical sites and came across the British Horological Institutes website. Saw a comparatively very cheaply priced Tourbillon they have come out with for their 150th Anniversary with a Chinese Tourbillon movement. I am quite impressed by the writeup, have a look. From the looks of it and the horological expertise they promote on their website, these guys are no clowns so am sure they might have done their research about the movements quality(they have come out with a second one after running the first one for a while) before stamping the BHI logo on the watch and I don't see any complaints about the watch on googling either, you decide


http://www.bhi.co.uk/Watch.html

The FLYING TOURBILLON, the watch every enthusiast wants...
is usually out of reach for most of us, with a price tag in the thousands. The entire escapement is mounted in a carriage that rotates once a minute and is visible through an aperture in the dial, so the pointer attached to the carriage itself acts as the second hand.

We originally commissioned a special 'BHI 150' edition of the fantastic Flying Tourbillon to mark the Institute's 150th Anniversary. The dial is branded with the Institute's Armorial Bearings, with the 'BHI 150' marking clearly but discreetly showing exactly what this watch is commemorating.

The 36-hour hand-wound 21,600 vph movement carries a 24 month manufacturer's guarantee, and is protected by a stainless steel case, with mineral glass to the front and rear. The watch measures 42mm dia x 11.5mm thick, and comes complete with smart black padded leather strap and deployant clasp, engraved with 'BHI 150'.

For a limited period you can buy this exclusive version of the fantastic flying tourbillon watch direct from the BHI for the amazing price of £385, or just £335 for BHI members! (Postage and packing charges will apply if the watch is not collected - £7 UK, £12 overseas* - deliveries will require a signature.)

The 150 Tourbillon proved so popular that we've commissioned a second watch, the BHI 151 or 'Power Reserve' Tourbillon, again available direct from the BHI, for just £449, or £399 for BHI members! (Postage and packing charges will apply if the watch is not collected - £7 UK, £12 overseas* - deliveries will require a signature.) The 151, also in stainless steel, measures 40mm dia x 11.5mm thick, and has a 50 hour power reserve, and comes with a padded black leather strap with deployant clasp, engraved 'BHI' as standard.

Clearly at these prices, the watches are sourced from China - a European tourbillon would cost many thousands of pounds more - but the quality is exceptional for the price, and the affordability brings this tourbillon into the reach of many watch enthusiasts and collectors who would otherwise never be able to consider owning such a watch. To keep the price to a minimum (and because we know it's the watch itself you'll be interested in) there's no fancy presentation box, but of course we'll carefully pack your watch in bubble-wrap for safe delivery.

Contact the BHI today to order your own FLYING TOURBILLON or download an 150 order form or 151 order form right now!!

Alternatively, you can now place your order online using our secure server, if you wish to pay by VISA, Mastercard or Maestro(UK)

Please note that we will require full payment with your order, and delivery may be up to 3 months.

This offer is subject to availability and may be changed or withdrawn at any time without notice.

*NOTE: We will dispatch watches overseas, but the purchaser will be responsible for any additional duty/tax/etc charged.

and a review of the older 150 Tourbillon BHI watch here (the review was for the prototype before it was released)

(Click on the pic for movement pics)
http://www.koullapis.com/Technical_F...ristwatch.html

A REVIEW OF THE BHI’S COMMISSIONED WRISTWATCH
MONDAY, 10 MARCH 2008

The BHI has commissioned a wristwatch to be made in its name to commemorate the 150th anniversary. After the prototype arrived, The Horological Journal was given the opportunity to review it. There are not many many Members today who possess exotic complicated watches. Even second-hand high-end “Swiss made” tourbilllons normally command tens of thousands of pounds; there are generic, or no-name tourbillons, probably made by the same sort of factories in the Far East as this one, but even the cheapest of these retails for at least two to three times more than the one being offered by the Institute. As such, this watch represents exceptional value.
For those readers not familiar with the principle, the watch has a Flying Tourbillon. A tourbillon is the mechanism where the escapement components are mounted on a tiny carriage, and the whole assembly rotates once a minute. For hundreds of years tourbillons were the epitome of good timekeeping, and their delicacy meant that they were only made by hand by the best watch makers. The flying tourbillon does away with the upper bridge that normally supports a carriage pivot, the carriage now supported on a large concealed bearing on its underside, leaving the exposed part free of obstruction, and open to be admired.
The watch arrived, and was worn for a few days to get a feel for it on the wrist. I was pleased by the phenomenally positive reaction it evoked by everyone who admired it, especially others in the watch trade, collectors, dealers, watchmakers. There was almost unanimous admiration for its appealing technical look and for the price. I was pleased at the reaction, because being something of a horological aesthete, I was worried about certain stylistic features of the watch, but none of the two dozen people or so that examined it remarked upon those elements at all.
The steel watch case is a good solid XXmm, mirror-polished, with a rounded band to the case and plain straight shoulders. The screw-down case-back has a glass for exposing the movement. The dial is a very delicate silver, with a cross-hatched pattern impressed into it. The crown is a good, easy to grip, ‘onion’ style, good for this manual-wind watch. The tourbillon, rotating once per minute, has a seconds-hand attached, that is read off a seconds chapter around the aperture in the dial. There are broad luminised baton hour and minute hands.
I was intrigued by the dial, which is very neatly made. The cross-hatched effect is designed to stop short of all the black-printed areas (Fig 3), so that the printing process doesn’t interfere with the grooves. Given that the Institute’s crest and name appear on the dial, and all the hatching is designed to stop short of any black ink, this very high-level of bespoke attention is a nice surprise.
The strap is padded black leather, and it comes with a double-fold clasp. I have to admit that I did not get along well with the clasp. It’s a very fiddly operation to close. It would have been much better with a simple deployant, where there is one hinge that simply clicks shut. I was please to see that the strap was held on to the case with solid stainless steel double-headed screw.
The watch back opened very easily; it was secure, but not tight. There seems to a slight timidity about the way the watch is assembled that surprised me; I will get to it later, but some screws in the movement were also not particularly tight.
With the movement out, I could begin to examine in earnest. The inside of the case is tidy, although there were some quite deep machining marks inside, but none that would affect the watch.
The pillar plate is at the back of this watch (transposed from its normal position under the dial), with the keyless work and three jewels of varying sizes, one being mounted in a chaton, visible (fig 1). The plate is finished with a pronounced straight pattern of Geneva stripes, which is pleasing to observe. It is a shame that the nickel plating seems very heavy, and has tended to gloss over the ribbed pattern. Perhaps the grain is purposely more pronounced so as to counter the glossing effect of the plating. Upon examination, there was a lot of dirt around the keyless work, in the form of oiliness. There was a hair on the edge of the seconds ring, just visible in fig 2. There seemed to be some inconsistency in the oiling of this watch, to which I will also refer later. There was no sign of oil at the centre pivot, and the large jewel in the chaton, was also perfectly clean, but the third pivot jewel had a lot of oiliness smeared about. I discovered that the large jewel serves no function, it is purely there for visual effect, although it does allow one to observe the function of the carriage (fourth) pinion. There is a very interesting tension in the movement between the constraints of low price and the visual cues of interesting design. Overall, I think that the balance is very well maintained, with neither really getting the upper hand.
The slot in the back gives access to the escape pivot for oiling, and provides further visual interest, but it is milled a bit oddly, in my opinion, being neither a true arc centred on the carriage nor any other other curve, but rather a series of milled recesses that join up more-or-less smoothly.
The movement seems to be designed in a modular way, so that different designs of watch could use the same calibre. With the dial off, the plate below it can be observed to have exactly the same finish as the exposed pillar plate, down to the heat-blued screws, figure 4. The screws used are of a good quality throughout, with very sharp threads, and noses for ease of assembly where appropriate. There is a variable finish to some of the smaller heads, but this is not critical. The screws used on the tourbillon are a not very traditional cheese-head or hemispherical shape. There is some variable quality elsewhere, too. The underside of the hour wheel and one of the set-hands wheels is quite coarse (albeit with a glossy nickel finish), while others are finished to a good, high, industry-standard. The fine-tuning hand of the watchmaker was evident where the canon pinion has two sets of indentations, at different heights. The slope on the centre pinion is not very sharply turned, and so this may be the reason that more friction was needed here.
There is evidence of modularity inside the movement, too, where a defunct jewel can be seen near the edge of the plate, just below the barrel in figure 5, and a mystery pin in the large recess on the opposite side, near the centre wheel.
Turning my attention to the tourbillon, I discovered here, too that there were some very lightly nipped screws. The tourbillon is a ramshackle little thing, with the balance not upright between its bearings, nor was the spring flat over the balance (fig 6). I later found, with the balance out, that the spring was actually flat, it was just assembly methods that caused it to slope badly in the movement (fig 9).
The tourbillon assembly is pivoted on a large ball bearing that runs quite freely, about the size of an automatic rotor bearing (fig 7). There is visual play by the movement designers as in figure 8, with interesting intersecting curves to catch the eye.
The carriage is deceptively designed, in that it appears to be very heavy toward the side where the balance is mounted. I removed the pallets so that it could spin freely, and re-mounted it in the watch, (without the wheel train). It was heavy on one side, but not the side that I’d thought. The side with the seconds indicator is the heavy end. By a clever geometry, most of the metal mass is not where it seems, adding to the tension in the design.
The carriage is made of brass, unlike high-grade models where they are of hardened steel. It is rigid enough to do the job, and in fact there is a slight springiness that seems to keep the bridges in tension, and therefore, more rigid than they would otherwise be (in re-assembling, the bridges have to be lightly snapped into place over their posts).
The balance has been milled on the underside for poising, which caught my attention. It’s good form to have the balance reasonably well poised, even in a tourbillon. When I set it up on the poising tool, (fig 10) there was a definite heavy spot, but not even in a position related to the lightened area. The only conclusion I can draw is that the balance assembly is a generic one that is used elsewhere by the makers. In other respects, the balance is very well made, with very crisp pivots, and a perfect D-shaped hole for the impulse jewel. The balance has proper screwed masses in its rim; this expensive feature is more evidence of the care the designers went to to ensure that the device is as eye-catching as possible when in motion.
The rest of the escapement is very neat, aside from the fact that the curb pins are slanted. Like the rest of the movement, it is very poorly oiled; oil had spread to the whole pallet frame, and there was even oil in the lower pallet pivot hole. The escape wheel was similarly smeared. My assumption this is a combination of problems related to the use of cheap, low-grade watch oil, and the unskilled application of it. The shock-resisting balance jewels bore more evidence of poor oiling, with the oil having been drawn away; a slight ring of oil being visible on the edge of the cap jewel (fig 11). A flaw in the aesthetic quality was that the jewel chosen for the visible end-stone was pitted on its outer surface, which marred the examination of it from the outside.
In any event, once I had cleaned the movement, it came out beautifully. The parts that are well made, are really good, which makes me think that there are various sources for the components, or that some components are being made for a local market and others are remnants of the programme of component export to the West that is becoming quite well-known.
In my examination of the watch I wanted to assess three factors: the subjective but well-documented issue of style, the technical merit of the movement, and the manner of assembly. On the first issue the jury is out. The luminous hands are a poor match for the watch, and the weight of the crest is far too pronounced. The hour wheel and dial washer are visible through the tourbillon aperture. This may not be easy to remedy at all, stylistically, I think it we’ll just have to live with it. As an experiment, I re-cased the watch without the dial, but I think that it’s more pleasing with the dial on, and the eye is drawn to the tourbillon more. I expect enterprising buyers will make their own improvements here. I have been asked to say that if there is sufficient interest, then the BHI will offer a course on re-finishing, so that buyers might turn the watch into something more like Swiss quality. There are some Swiss makers who use this movement and its cousins as base calibres for their own tourbillons. It will be very interesting to see what can be made of it.
From a technical point of view, the watch is just perfect for its price. Yes, there are things about it that might be done differently, but I believe that overall, the quality of the movement is perfectly commensurate with the price. The manner of assembly is somewhat lacking in that cleanliness and the oiling are both found wanting, however I expect that this will be improved upon by the new owners of many of these watches. It must also be remembered that this is the prototype. Some of these problems may be one-offs, and the 24-month guarantee will cover the rest!

[qualizon]

did you end up ordering one?

[cruvon]

Nopes but is surely an interesting looking watch!

[Andad]

I think the review says it all.

[Kokyuryoku]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting.

[qualizon]

Will anyone interested in ordering the watch together? From what I read in the other forum, looks like this watch is sold from a company called millionsmart in hong kong, can you can get one without any logo on the dial.