What Goes Into A Vianney Halter Timepiece? A Peek Into The Magical World of Manufacture Janvier ~ Les Montres Vianney Halter

this is something that i chanced upon a while back and on communication with its author he noted that he was fine with me using some text and photos from his experience. the story in full can be found here (CLICK THIS) and i do recommend that you check it out... but over here i just wanted to point out some things that are done at the atelier and some of the photos that interested me from that post. so my hats off to Steyr for his detailed report on his four weeks at the atelier and my thanks to him for letting me repost some of the photos which have been tweaked by the raphmeister... so through his captures and my re-visioning... do come with us through the looking glass :)

the cases of the watch which most people outsource is done in the manufacture and the polishing too...

People who know watches, know that a lot of whats made these days are outsourced or provided by suppliers. A few manufactures do however look to do more parts of the watch in house then others. it goes back to a philosophy i suppose. the best way of ensuring that you get something done right and to the quality that you demand is if u do it under your own roof... so in the next series of photos and text, i will share a bit on what exactly is done under the roof at the Manufactures Janvier...

* Conceptualisation and design of the movement to testing & development
* Creating most of the watch's parts with machines in the manufacture...
* Hand engraving of the dial and case
* Crafting and manual bluing of the hands
* Making and finishing the case (eg. the case of the antiqua is made out of 6 different parts assembled by invisible soldering... and the finishing is pure perfection :)

* Constructing the watchwinder which is also the watch box that the Antiqua comes in
* Finishing the watch movement, application of perlage and cotes de geneve
* Hand assembly

a movement of an antiqua waiting to be cased... it takes over a month of work in pre-assembly and the assembly to get it to this point...

hand assembly done by one of the watchmakers at the manufacture... Christian L

and after it all comes together... an art time piece that can make one dream...

[ click to read the rest of the post... expand or collapse ]

a lot of machines are used as well in the process... example tools are made with machines there and they are used to make many of the parts that go into the watch movement...

vianney showing how its done... hardening some steel parts old skool style...

manual blueing of hands gives the hands a certain consistency vs doing many at one go in a big oven... alcohol lamp and brass fillings and someone skilled should get the job done...

and voila! you obtain the most perfect of blued hands :)

engraving work done by Corinne in the picture below... it takes two weeks to engrave the dials of an Antiqua

for the gold dials, some letters are cut as a start to help in the hand engraving process but for the platinum dials, it is engraved without these... hand engraving allows for the unique character of the fonts...

the process of creating the dials is very similar to the one used for making those in old Marine chronometers... the engraving is filled up with paint...

which is then cleaned off and polished splendidly...

and the finished product... the coming together of a quality in house manufacture movement, hand engraved and finished dials, manually blued hands, crafted and polished case... all becoming one...

to end off, i would like to wish the team there the very best in the years ahead and my hats off to the artists and artisans that imbue these creations with a kind of magic and also to all the folks working at Manufacture Janiver ;)

A timetapestry salute then to Vianney, Evelyne, Corinne, Dilenia, Laurence, Maartje, Meryl, Miho, Rosa, Sadija, Anton, Bertrand, Bruno, Enrico, Gaetan, Jocelyn, Philippe, Sébastien (and any others i may have missed :)