Why Materials Matter And How Do They Shape Time?

It’s not wrong to state that we humans interact with materials the most. More than people, materials are something we intimately engage with in every moment of our lives. Yet, we hardly ever realize the nature of them. There’s nothing passive about materials, for they are very much active participants in our lives and in our world. This often-overlooked relationship prevents a genuine appreciation of the details in all things and also the strange satisfaction of mere observing.

As everything is made out of something, materials are everywhere.

While I won’t task you with staring at a toaster for too long to be dismissed “not-sane,” but merely noticing the actual thing, and realizing the many metamorphosis materials underwent to yield an actual functional entity, is sometimes fascinating to observe. When the innate objective of the thing is beauty though, then it is materials that become "grails."

After all, everything is made of something, and that something matters.

In the fiercely contested world of haute horology crafts, materials have been obsessively reinvented and reimagined, all in a bid to yield a thing of high beauty. The pride in calling a material your very own is a satisfaction of undeniable proportions, and thus yields proprietary alloys and composites which not only work well in a product form, but also perpetuate the progressive evolutions of materials. After all, it is us humans who shape materials as well as their fate.

Materials And Watchmaking

Up until this point, almost everything solid that a movement can be stuck into has been pretty much tried and tested as a watch material. For those in the unknown, it would be healthy to know that we’ve had entire watches made out of sapphire, cement, fiberglass, and yes, even Swiss cheese. There’s literally no end to the quirks when it comes to materials in watchmaking, and the popularity progression from gold to stainless steel has found links in some of the most unusual and idiosyncratic choices.

Giuliano Mazzuoli Cemento with a cement case and H. Moser & Cie. Swiss Mad Watch with a cheese case.

While materials essentially exist inside out in a timepiece, the maxima of leap forwards have been practiced in what makes a case. Regardless, while the silicon-ization of key escapement parts renders an accurate, efficient and enduring timekeeper, it is the ocularly-immediate watch case that dominates in watchmaking’s material forefront.

So, while the lasting favorability of stainless-steel is impossible to be replaced anytime soon at a larger scale, both the technical and aesthetic asides from more modern and unusual materials do merit due observation. Here are the different materials that are unusual in their properties and exotic in their implementation in this revered craft.

Ceramics

It’s a common occurrence that the mention of ceramics quickly brings to thought flower vases and dinner plates. And yes, these are ceramics. But so are the many blue, black and white watch cases you see very often on Instagram. The thing is, when a technique has had some 26,000 years to evolve, it vaguely becomes a classification of entities with enough disparity to yield commodities, of which some cost as little as, well, a dinner plate, and some are valued just shy of half a million dollars. Ceramics are non-metallic materials, literally formed when compounds (metallic or non-metallic) are hardened at high temperatures. This is the reason why materials like tungsten carbide and pot clay are both classified as ceramics.

The primary attribution of ceramics as case materials in watchmaking is owed to a specific material property and a common inherent flaw with most ‘mainstream’ materials - scratches. High strength industrial ceramics or technical ceramics, mostly oxide ceramics like zirconium dioxide used in watchmaking, have incredibly high scratch-resistance. This is one very desirable property that makes scratching your watch case virtually impossible. Moreover, ceramics don’t corrode or degrade chemically, ever.

There’s however a downside to this extreme scratch resistance. Being really very hard, ceramic is prone to what commonly happens to plates and pots - it shatters upon forceful impact as hardness makes it too brittle. Also, finishing something as hard as ceramics is a painstakingly slow and difficult process, thus making it costly.

Rolex Cerachrom on the bezel and Hublot Magic Gold for case.

Here are the proprietary ceramics of watch brands:

• Omega - Ceragold.
• Rolex - Cerachrom.
• Rado - Plasma high-tech ceramic.
• IWC - Ceratanium and Ceralume.
• Panerai - Ti-Ceramitech.
• Hublot - Cermet and Magic Gold.

Carbon

If you’re familiar with the Lamborghini Sesto Elemento, Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL8, BMW M 1000 RR and the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, you are a scholar in carbon composites. If you’re just plain curious, know that carbon is a wonder material known for its strength and lightweight. Although, the stresses and impacts rendered on wristwear aren’t exactly at par with those sustained by the above-mentioned, the use of carbon-fiber and forged carbon has yielded timepieces of a very dominantly-sporty aesthetic, parallel on many levels with performance automobiles.

Carbon fiber, as the name suggests, is a material resulting from strands of carbon weaved in a fabric-like mesh pattern, saturated in epoxy resin and cured with heat. Forged carbon on the other hand is realized when hand-cut strands of carbon, mixed with some sort of polymer resin, are forged under pressure and heat. The key aesthetic distinction between a carbon fiber and a forged carbon watch case is the uniformly-striped weave pattern of the former against a marbled appearance of the latter.

Carbon - the sixth element, with strength ten times and one-fifth the weight of steel, is almost of mainstream prominence in contemporary haute horology in mere respect of its feature across brand portfolios. Exceeding its favorables of lightweight and strength is the material’s exceptional resistance to shocks as well as corrosion.

Girard-Perregaux Carbon Glass and Panerai Carbotech.

Here are the proprietary carbon composites of watch brands:

• Richard Mille - NTPT Carbon.
• Panerai - Carbotech.
• Ulysse Nardin - Carbonium.
• Girard-Perregaux - Carbon Glass.
• Norqain - NORTEQ.

Proprietary Alloys

Among the many non-conventional case material realizations, proprietary metal alloys, with unique compositions and properties, have become a somewhat standard practice across many brands. With a focus on lightweight, highly resistant and enduring material genesis, brands perpetually invest in research and devise novel alloys for exclusive in-house use. This is usually materialized by tinkering with composition ratios, engineering specialized material treatment processes, introducing novel components in material composition and also by altering the conventional steps involved with metal alchemy.

Beyond the generic attributes of high strength and resistance, brands are yielding alloys which are hypoallergenic, poor thermal conductors and better suitable for fine finishing. These measures to devise novel alloys also align with the industry’s broader objectives of sustainability and responsible action. While not a ground-up revolution technically, every such measure where brands have their own trademark to stick on a material becomes an additional asset to market its products.

Beyond the brand proprietary alloy creations lie some non-conventional metals and metal alloys of which a few like titanium and bronze come very close to being conventional. The rare of these are tantalum, Bulk Metallic Glass, palladium, Damascus steel, and yes, aluminium.

Rolex GMT-Master II in Oystersteel and Chopard L.U.C 1860 in Lucent Steel.

Here are the proprietary metal alloys of watch brands:

• Rolex - RLX Titanium and Oystersteel.
• Panerai - BMG-Tech and Bronzo.
• Chopard - Lucent Steel.
• Hublot - Hublonium.
• Maurice Lacroix - PowerLite.
• Harry Winston - Zalium.

Precious Metal Alloys

Other than stainless-steel, gold is one watchmaking material that has an elaborate significance in the craft. Historically, gold has dominated as a case material in watchmaking and with good reason. Its relative ease of working, virtually unmatched corrosion resistance, and a forever lasting luster, means that gold is the go-to precious metal in making a watch. While the element is chemically as uninteresting as it could be (being the least reactive), its exotic, interesting and unusual alloys have been a constant yielding in development and experimentation for brands. Same goes for other precious metals like platinum and silver as well.

Brand proprietary golds are alloys intended to yield signature hues of the metal and also alleviate the material’s soft and scratchy nature. Brand specific formulations of gold alloys are becoming increasingly popular and the trend is translated to platinum as well with tweaking the formulas through adding or subtracting the percentages of novel constituents. It yields a material that’s multiple folds harder than conventional platinum while being highly scratch resistant.

Audemars Piguet sand gold and A. Lange & Söhne Honeygold.

Here are the proprietary precious metal alloys of watch brands:

• IWC - 18 ct Armor Gold.
• Omega - Bronze Gold, Sedna Gold, Moonshine Gold and Canopus Gold.
• Blancpain - Ceragold and Cedna Gold.
• Montblanc - Lime Gold.
• Audemars Piguet - Sand Gold.
• Rolex - Rolesium, Everose Gold and Rolesor.
• Chanel - Beige Gold.
• Breguet - Breguet Gold.
• A. Lange & Söhne - Honeygold.
• Hublot - King Gold.
• Panerai - Goldtech and Platinumtech
• Jaeger-LeCoultre - Le Grand Rose gold.

Sapphire

Sapphires yield virtually scratch-resistant and transparent watch cases. Sitting just one step behind diamond on the hardness scale, sapphire is almost impossible to scratch, unless the everyday items that surround you are diamonds. Now that’s a first world problem I desire. Historically featured only as a watch crystal, synthetic sapphire too falls under the broader classification of ceramics. Like ceramic, sapphire is brittle and has a tendency to shatter rather than bend or deform.

While the use of sapphires is common in diverse forms of components making a watch, an entire sapphire case is still a rarity. This scarcity owes to the complication in machining an entire sapphire case out of a single block of the material. There’s a high failure rate in this process, making it time and resource consuming. As a delectable bonus of machining an entire watch case out of solid sapphire, you do get a fantastic view of the inner intricacies of the watch.

Sapphire cases for Hublot and Greubel Forsey.

Here are the brands with a focus on sapphire in watchmaking:

• Hublot
• Richard Mille
• Jacob & Co
• MB&F
• Aventi
• Bell & Ross
• Girard-Perregaux
• Greubel Forsey

Materials Beyond The Mainstream

While stainless-steel and golds continue to pose as go-to references as watchmaking materials, the more novel, innovative and unusual alternatives have a solid say too. More than just “options,” the exotic materials too command attention, not only for their experimental opus, but for their emotional depth as well. After all, there’s some soul in science, and in watchmaking, the unusual is no longer just an exception - it’s an obsession.