Blancpain’s Bathyscaphe appears in a fully ceramic construction
Hard Knock Life
If you are looking at the feature image of this article you would have probably come to the same conclusion we did at first, asking why is there a complete calendar with a moonphase indicator on a dive watch? Indeed, the very function of the dive watch is to time a dive in minutes with the core principle of having a unidirectional bezel so this timing mechanism can’t be accidentally interrupted. We had the same thoughts at first but as it turns out, the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe actually does have a historical reason why the collection bears not just the complete calendar complication but also a slew of other functions like a day-date at one point in time and also a chronograph to name a few, and it is not just chalked up to watchmaking now traversing into the realm of luxury timepieces. In this cover story we will take the time to get into it, but first, just to set the stage, I suppose we ought to take a deeper dive into the history of Blancpain’s diving watches.
In 2023 Blancpain celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Fifty Fathoms collection. And to celebrate, they released a slew of fantastic, limited-edition models. As is customary, each time a media outlet decided to write about one of these watches, they dug deeper into Blancpain’s history re-telling the origin story of what many consider the world’s first modern dive watch, the Fifty Fathoms. For the sake of brevity, we will not go in-depth into this story once again. In a nutshell, the impetus for the first Fifty Fathoms came when the then CEO of Blancpain, Jean- Jacques Fiechter, himself a diving enthusiast, had a near-fatal accident whilst diving. He decided then to devote the company’s resources to creating a more reliable tool for divers so they never had to experience what he had. Thus, the Fifty Fathoms was born.
In 1953 around the time that this was happening, it is worth noting that diving was still considered an extreme sport, something that only serious enthusiasts would consider. This is very much the opposite today where one can become a certified PADI Open Water diver in as short a time as three days. The Fifty Fathoms of the 1950s was designed with this in mind and was intended to be sold only in diving shops as an essential element of a diver’s kit or issued to military personnel. Therefore, the watches didn’t quite take into consideration questions like how well they sat on the wrist or did the size fit the trend of watch wearers of that generation. No, it was a dedicated tool, made to serve its ultimate function as a time instrument for use underwater. The term Fifty Fathoms was derived from the measurement of distance. With a fathom measuring 6 feet, 50 fathoms indicate 300 feet which is roughly 100 meters. Even today, the ISO 6425 standard that governs the horology industry’s divers watches also stipulates that if it were to be called a divers watch it must have a water resistance of 100m.
Thus, because the Fifty Fathoms was designed as a tool, the initial watches were made with a 41mm diameter. Today this size may seem closer to a midsize case, especially for a dive watch but considering that most men’s watches at that time measured 32 to 34mm, 41mm was shockingly huge to the general public. It was around 1956 that Fiechter then had the idea to take what made the Fifty Fathoms successful and transform it into something smaller to suit the tastes of the general public. And thus, the Bathyscaphe was born.
It is a little ironic that what was essentially a watch that could be used both as an everyday timepiece and as a casual dive watch would be named after a vessel that would eventually be the first vessel to reach Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on Earth. It is known that Fiechter was an acquaintance of the man who designed the Bathyscaphe submersible, the Swiss Scientist, Auguste Piccard, through his affiliation with diving-related events. Perhaps this is why he named the collection Bathyscaphe, after a friend. Another theory to consider, and this is neither confirmed nor denied by Blancpain, is that perhaps at the time, the Bathyscaphe submersible was built with cutting-edge technology, a representation of modernity which Fiechter likened to Blancpain’s new Bathyscaphe collection branching out from the Fifty Fathoms.
The Blancpain Bathyscaphe debuted with a smaller case size, and in subsequent years since the Blancpain Bathyscaphe launched, they even started adding various complications that would be functional to the everyday user including a date, in some instances, day-date indication and in its modern form, chronographs, and even complete calendars with moonphase indicators. Which, in a roundabout way, answers the question we put forth at the start of this article.
At about this point in the article you might be wondering why we are featuring this collection as it is not exactly new. And the answer to that can be found within its case and bracelet – ceramic. Outside of watchmaking, the ceramics we are often acquainted with are almost all ornate and beautiful, however, they are also incredibly fragile. This simply won’t do for an instrument that was designed to accompany its wearer as they go about their day, or in the case of the Bathyscaphe as they venture to depths unknown.
The ceramics used in watchmaking retain all of their beauty and ornateness, if you will, but shed all notion of fragility. Within the industry, the ceramic material is prized for its durability, lightness, hypoallergenic properties and above all, its hardness which makes it impervious to all but the most forceful attempts at scratching its surface. There is a test in the industry known as the Vickers hardness test which pushes a diamond tip into a material and calculates various parameters to determine hardness. Just as a comparison, gold which is known to be one of softest watchmaking materials, comes in at about 100 Vickers. Traditional stainless steel has a hardness of around 250 Vickers. Blancpain’s favorite Grade 23 titanium is harder at 300 Vickers. But the type of ceramic Blancpain uses for its watchmaking, zirconium dioxide, sits at the pinnacle of hardness with a whopping 1,200 Vickers.
For all its desirable properties, the biggest barrier for watchmakers to use this coveted material is the complexity of its manufacturing process. Imagine, if you will, that this material that boasts such incredible hardness starts off as a fine zirconium oxide powder. The powder is mixed with high-tech pigmentation and binders before being dried in a spray drying atomization process. Then this powder has to be either pressed or injection molded, both at incredibly high pressures into the desired shape.
Probably the hardest part about ceramic manufacturing comes from the sintering process. To obtain the hardness level of 1,200 Vickers, the sintering process puts the raw material into an oven and baked at high temperatures. Although the explanation seems simple, the actual process is anything but. It requires careful management of the temperatures, the length of the sintering process, the rate at which the temperature increases and even how the finished materials cool. Any miscalculation in these parameters and the finished product may not have the intended effect or even worse, be rendered unusable. And if you consider the tight tolerances needed in watchmaking and the shrinking that occurs during sintering, this alone is enough to create a hurdle that many watch manufacturers are unable to cross.
It is also because of this Sintering process that only certain colours can be created for ceramics. The ratio of pigments and the exact recipe needed to achieve the intended colour is one thing but imagine then having to put this whole thing through a high-temperature sintering process, which causes many of the pigments to change colour. For example, the pigment for black ceramic is usually grey or tan before heating. As of now, Blancpain has managed to perfect the recipe for three colours including black, blue and green. There is also a special grey plasma colour that resembles stainless steel. This unique version of ceramic requires an additional heating process at high plasma heat levels transforming the zirconium oxide into zirconium carbide.
As complex as the above steps were, here things get even more ridiculous. Remember we were mentioning just how incredibly hard ceramic is as a material? Well once the case nears the final shape, it now has to be machined to get the precise shape, along with the interior elements that house the bezel, movement and caseback. And because the material is so hard, many of the tools required to cut and grind the case have to come with diamond tips, one of the few commercial materials left that is harder than the ceramic case.
This means that even polishing the case of the Bathyscaphe has to be met with the same fervour. A simple satin finish, normally quite easily done on stainless steel watches now requires many hours of highly skilled handwork. To demonstrate the finesse that Blancpain’s craftsmen have, they even managed to polish the areas between the lugs where no one ever looks. Just as an indication of its complexity, Blancpain estimates more than 50 facets on their case, where each needs to be addressed by the finishing craftsmen, one by one, facet by facet, often several times per facet.
50 facets may seem like a crazy amount to hand-finish but consider that just last year, Blancpain introduced a fully ceramic bracelet. These bracelets are more complex than most traditional bracelet constructions with multiple links, termed “maillons” with connectors on either side. All these components are made in ceramic which means each of these small parts has been meticulously pressure injected, sintered and finally finished by hand. Here with so many moving parts, the tolerances are even tighter because if the fit of the elements is too loose, the bracelet will be sloppy and if they are too tight there is a risk of it binding. Just to produce the bracelet alone, Blancpain has filed for two separate patents on the process and even the metal pin that binds the links, has a patent for its cam-like shape.
Finally, it is only after setting the scene for the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe Quantième Complet Phases de Lune, that we can properly understand what makes this watch worth the nearly MYR 120,000 asking price. Of course a good chunk of this comes from the complexity of manufacturing the ceramic bracelet, we’re talking a nearly MYR 40,000 price difference between this and the sailcloth strap version. There is a cute anecdote that Jeffrey Kingston wrote in the 24th issue of Blancpain’s annual Lettres du Brassus magazine where he mentioned having accidentally left his ceramic Bathyscaphe in a room with a big, 40kg, German Shepard dog. When he returned sometime later, the sailcloth strap was torn to shreds while the watch was still pristine, without even a hint of a scratch or blemish, even under the scrutiny of a watchmaker’s loupe.
Of course, you would want a such sturdy and reliable material protecting the complex Calibre 6654.P movement that beats within the Bathyscaphe. The complete calendar, mechanism within the watch displays the day, date and month requiring only five adjustments a year, for the months that have less than 31 days. This is less complex than the annual calendar complication which automatically adjusts for the months that have 30 and 31 days. The annual calendar still needs to be adjusted once a year during February as it has less than 30 days regardless of whether or not it is a leap year. The next step is the perpetual calendar which we have written extensively about in the last few issues of World of Watches Malaysia. Even with the need to adjust the calendar five times a year with the complete calendar, users don’t need to fret as the Calibre 6654.P has safeguards built in that allow adjustments any time of the day without damaging the delicate internal mechanism.
Additionally, the Calibre 6654.P also brings with it yet another heritage of Blancpain, the moonphase indicator. As the story goes, during the height of the quartz crisis, Blancpain famously stood firm against ever making a quartz-based watch. And to demonstrate that this electronic technology can never usurp the romance of a complex mechanical timepiece they doubled down on the moonphase indicator complication. Today, the Blancpain moonphase stands as a symbol of the revival of mechanical watchmaking. This combination of complications, paired with the new, technologically advanced ceramic case, represents a fantastic marriage between technology and tradition.
Staying true to the Bathyscaphe’s legacy as a dive watch meant for the casual, everyday wearer, the collection also houses other complications originally not meant for dive watches like the flyback chronograph. This complication that allows a quick resetting of the chronograph hand without having to stop the measurement of elapsed time was developed for the aviation industry to measure fuel consumption or the time taken to travel between waypoints. The flyback chronograph finds its way onto the Bathyscaphe collection via the Calibre F385 movement which offers a column wheel system and a vertical clutch for chronograph aficionados. Moreover, the beat rate for this movement is also increased to a higher 5Hz so that the chronographs can be accurate to 1/10th of a second. 5Hz means the regulating organ of the watch is oscillating at 36,000 beats per hour translating to 10 beats per second thus with the right scale, the wearer will be able to track the precision of the timekeeper up to 1/10th of a second. Due to its complexity, the watch is priced similarly to the complete calendar mentioned above.
Finally, for the base Bathyscaphe in ceramic, the model is available with a date indication between the 4 and 5 o’clock position. Interestingly the watch is powered by Blancpain’s Calibre 1315 movement which, like all of Blancpain’s movements, was designed, developed, produced, assembled and adjusted in-house. Additionally, it offers a staggering 5-days of power reserve and this is achieved through the use of three series coupled barrels. The watch is still housed in the same 43.6mm case even with its lack of complication, which is the same size as the flyback chronograph and complete calendar versions. One reason for this could be due to the complexity of manufacturing these cases, it is more cost-effective for Blancpain to make all three variants the same size so they don’t have to recalibrate the machines for each different reference of the ceramic Bathyscaphes.
Although the size of these Bathyscape ceramic watches is considered quite large at 43.6mm, it is worth noting that in stainless steel, the Bathyscaphe still comes in a variety of sizes, even scaling down as small as 38mm to fit practically every wrist size and taste preference. Today, the Bathyscaphe can also be found in a variety of colours and case materials including this ceramic version, 18K gold and even grade 23 titanium. The variance in material, colours and complication continues to propagate the legend of the Bathyscaphe as the more casual cousin of the Fifty Fathoms and this story doesn’t look like it will be changing anytime soon.
