Girard Perregaux

PeterCDE
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Part 5 - "Hand made" at GP

Now we´ll have a glimpse at Manufacture Girard-Perregaux; some impressions of GP´s production, which may give an idea good things come to those who wait. Or, better put, are made by those who are allowed their time:

Assembling a JeanRichard movement; no robots, but hand-made:

A test prototype at Girard-Perregaux; the Haute Horlogerie department does use these finishing models and all subsequent work is done with hand tools. Not as fast as computer-controlled machinery, but then:

"Painting cases"
Magali is a Master Watchmaker at GP´s Haute Horlogerie department and in charge of Three Gold Bridges tourbillons, as well as other highly complicated timepieces. You may recall her from our earlier coverage and remember she is a very talented and skilled watchmaker.
Doing the same procedures all over, on dozens of units, isn´t in line with GP´s philosophy of doing things; thus watchmakers are allowed to set their own pace, according to the specific pieces under work. You just don´t do well on microscopic tourbillons parts of a few 1/100mm in dimension and some 1/100 of a gramm in weight when you´re not perfectly concentrated or don´t feel well that day. Therefore you do see watchmakers doing other work as well, which might be inexpected.
Here Magali is "painting a case"; the Platinum case of a "Tribute To Enzo Ferrari" Tourbillon (one of the last made) is polished by hand, which is a considerable challenge given Platinum is a bear to work on. In addition, inscriptions are engraved by hands.
In order to preserve the fine finish of the precious casework, the case receives a protective coating before the movement is installed.
The blue laquer will be remove after the final examination and timing controls before the watch leaves Girard-Perregaux, thus it is an effort invisible to those who see the watch later. A small step, but a necessary one. And even this is done by hand, where it certainly would be faster to use an airbrush tool:

"Polishing bridges"
The "polissage", how the polishing is referred to, is a special task that requires special skills.
Claudia is a very talented watchmaker at GP´s Haute Horlogerie department and in charge particularly of the polishing of the iconic bridges in GP´s masterpieces.
Polishing a soft material as gold isn´t easy to accomplish and requires a steady hand, a good eye and a lot of skills and experience. Over the thumb, a workpiece is harder to polish with a perfect result the larger the part gets. And everyone who had the pleasure of closely encountering a GP Tourbillon will agree they are not small and not less than perfectly done.
The procedure involves manual labour only; certainly it would be possible to achieve some impressive polishing by means of wire erosion or electro polishing, but not a finish as found on the Three Bridges.
Claudia makes use of a wooden piece, where the abbrasive material (in form of an almost liquid paste) is applied. Then she gently moves the wood over the gold plates; enough to achieve the polishing wanted and less than what would cause swirls and burrs. Exactly such is the major challenge; polishing too much will ruin the finish and all work needs to be started all over again.
The whole procedure is then repeated four more times, each time with a different and finer abbrasive on a wooden polishing piece.
This might give an impression of how much work goes into these, which take considerable time to be done. A luxury not every brand allows!

"Fine tuning Enzo"
Another detail is the fine finish of the "Enzo" tourbillons. The more technical look, compared to GP´s classic tourbillons, might cause to overlook the finish is as fine as every GP tourbillon, which involves more work than one might guess.
As with every GP tourbillon, the individual components of the movement are finely finished and then assembled. The assembly is done in an early stage without installing the tourbillon carriage; in this stage, the finish, fit and execution is checked. The movement then will be partially disassembled again, receives the tourbillon and will be finally assembled completely to undergo the performance controls.
Here the anglage of the bridges is checked and "fine tuned"; this is done by a wooden stick, which is used to polish tiny section.
Not an easy task given the dimensions and one that needs meticulous attention, therefore needing considerable time.

As you see, doing things in a traditional way requires time. And subsequently, it will cause need to wait. Which in itself is a form of luxury, for those few who do appreciate and can afford such true luxury!

Greetings from Germany,

Peter

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