Hidden Gems | Glashutte Original Panoreserve | Crown & Caliber

hi i'm mark with crown and caliber and welcome to hidden gems glassuto original is often compared to its german brethren and that comparison really isn't fair they deserve their own respect for what they do and what they bring to the watch world and we're going to take a moment to look at that specifically through the lens of the glasuta original panoramic so let's get into it so quick history lesson about glasuta original at the end of world war ii the entire german watchmaking industry was forced into one company by the ussr and it became the gub which stands for three long german words that joe is going to put up right here thank you joe and when the iron curtain finally fell and the 90s came around and gub got to do whatever they wanted in watchmaking it kind of split up and went their own way but the lion's share stayed and became glasuta original and with that in mind that history of having to start from scratch being behind the iron curtain and having to do everything themselves without outside help from the swiss or anyone else they're able to solidify a german style i think the best look at what glacier does with the german style is through the piano reserve on the inside of the watch the movement first thing you'll notice is you don't see much of the movement the movement is three-quarter plate that covers almost everything that's a very german style it's engineered to be sturdy to be structurally sound most watch brands when they create the bridges and slowly put them together are put on one at a time and that allows you to build part of the movement make sure that's lined up put the bridge on go to the next piece a three quarter plate means you need to have the entire movement in place perfectly without exception for that plate to fit that makes it much harder to put together it makes the tolerances when you put it together much much smaller just for that little bit extra they create that much more work to make a more robust movement that is german engineering for you the only other part of the movement that you can visually see is the balance bridge and man is that the part you want to see it is hand engraved and has double swan neck the swan neck is this beautiful sweeping piece that is architecturally beautiful for one but is really a small improvement over the bosley regulator which allows you to slowly change the length of the hairspring in order to fine tune and regulate the movement it is a lot to add to a movement for just a small incremental improvement but again german engineering over engineering just to make it that much better and then let's talk about the hand engraving how much handwork is really into this how much is it actually hand engraved so let's look at the balance bridge and you'll see in the balance bridge this beautiful gold relief and how we get there is time consuming first you have the hand engravers that have to under microscope hand engrave every little mark you see this takes time and is individualistic when you go to the factory there are people there that can see what the engraving looks like and tell you who engraved it it's like the handwriting of the artist that's step one next it needs to be gold plated in order to bring out the gold that you see in the relief then once it comes out of the gold plating every single part of the relief that's been engraved now has to be hand coated in lacquer with a brush that's so small you need a microscope just to use it and then it has to go back be rhodium plated come back out and you have to then clean off all of the lacquer by hand in order to get this beautiful gold relief set against the rhodium bridge that is the amount of handwork and hand finishing for a part this big for a part that you won't see most of the time that's done solely for aesthetics there is more hand work in that bridge than most companies put in an entire watch they're not just making that over engineered part they're making the overly done artistic part they're taking everything they do and putting it to a level that you don't see in their price point that's what makes what they're doing so special and that's just for the movement when we go to the front of the watch we see the dial it's an off-center dial with a big date from germany with a three-quarter plate bridge swan necks and hand engraving it immediately invokes the other german brand that a lot of people think of when they see this watch and that's a and sona put it this way this is a porsche 911 the longest bugatti it's okay not to be a bugatti this in its own right is a fantastic watch and i know a lot of people talk about date wheels in the watch world there some people hate them same people love them how dare you put a date at 4 30 that just drives most people nuts well langa has a part of their date wheel that i am not the biggest fan of which is it's a big date but the dates are actually on two separate levels so you can see a shadow between them they kind of look a little off and for a watch that's so perfect it kind of stands out as being the not perfect part placeuta actually has a big date wheel that's side by side on the same plane it is done perfectly i do not think any company does a big date as well as glacia period and in this case it's even color matched which is you know a nice little thing sometimes besides that glacita comes from that we do everything ourselves mentality of the gub which is unlike longa they make their own case they make their own bracelet they make 95 percent of everything that goes into these watches if it's not a spring a jewel or leather they make it that is something almost no watch company outside of seiko and rolex can say that's kind of the tip of the iceberg when you get into what else they want to do by themselves they want their own watchmakers they want watchmakers that know what they're doing in the german tradition so they made their own watch school to train watchmakers to work for them and in that watch school they also train tool makers because glasuta also has an entire division of more than a dozen people do nothing but make their own tools they don't order screwdriver servers in place they make their own screwdrivers they don't order a carrying case that holds all of their movements they make their own they literally have a tool factory that makes everything from scratch for them that's something you hear from richard mill bragging about that we make our own screwdrivers congratulations glaswooft has been doing it for 70 years these guys know what they're doing when it comes to the pride of making everything themselves honestly if you talk about the best watches out there you have to have long in the conversation they'll make four thousand a year glasuta makes ten thousand watches a year that's a fifth of what patek makes that's one percent of what omega or rolex makes glasuta absolutely deserves to be in the same breath as lana and you shouldn't dismiss them because they are not long they're a fantastic brand that does things that most don't and the glasuta panna reserve is a fantastic example of why the entire brand is a hidden gem i hope you enjoyed learning about the craftsmanship that goes into the glasuta original watches if there are any other watches out there you think we should dive into let us know in the comments see you next time on hidden gems [Music]

Channel: Crown & Caliber by Hodinkee

Views: 19,116

Keywords: Hidden Gems | Glashutte Original Panoreserve | Crown & Caliber, Hodinkee, crown and caliber, hidden gems, Glashutte original, panoreserve, PanoMatic, a lange & söhne, a lange, lange 1, German watches, watchmaking, hand engraving, mechanical watches, luxury watch, preowned watches

Id: DBe_3cuo5YQ

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 30 2021