Hello and welcome on WATCHES TV and today
we will discover together how you craft a Milanese bracelet and actually any other type of chains used for bracelets
and you’ll see that there are endless possibilities, really surprising and quite amazing. And to learn about this,
well we visited the workshop of Laurent Jolliet, the very last person who has been trained and is still in business to craft this by hand since everything has been industrialised since. But you know us and we do like to put forward
these artisans contributing to the art of watchmaking, so let’s meet Laurent and I quickly wanted to add
that even though we are talking metal bracelets, well there is in fact something quite organic
when you have it on your wrist, it’s extremely comfortable and how classy is it to have
your own chain bracelet made by hand simply for you. Quite cool no? I started as a jeweller and chain maker apprentice and chain making was what I enjoyed the most. I had the opportunity and luck to get a position with Mr Jacques Hubert Gay at Gay Frères, it was an extraordinary meeting which
gave me the chance to learn this craft. Ok, so now let’s clearly understand what it takes
to craft a chain and a Milanese bracelet, starting from raw material till the assembled and finished object. In this case, Laurent starts with bars of silver which are pressed in this machine until a particular size is attained, but this square wire is still rough and will now go through another elongation process
to refine it till the desired size. This is a draw-plate, it is used to draw wire,
this is a squared draw-plate. you can draw the wire from thickest
to thinnest to stop at the desired size. This is an old draw-plate which is probably
a bit over a 100 years old, made in Geneva. There is a type of cone so the thread can get in
and it will always come out on this side. It’s important to always write the numbers on the plans
to be able to remake the piece with the same square size. The square wire is then filed to sharpen its edges, properly measured and it is now ready
to be used to create the links of your chain. 50 ... 50 The basic principle of chain making is consistency
under a long period of time as we won't work only a single day on a piece. We can be a bit different from one day to the next and that is why we really need to be stable to have
regularity over time in the making of each piece. Ok, now let’s talk milanese bracelet and in this case,
instead of a square-based wire, Laurent will use a round wire. If you tighten the wire of the coil a bit more, if I press a little bit more because
I am a bit more nervous or I am too loose, I will get a difference in the coils of 1/10th. It can seem like nothing but when you have
100 coils to assemble it’s enormous. The most important is to be regular
in the way you tighten your fingers to have the most regular coil possible to not have
any problems during the assembling. The less regular they are the harder it is to assemble. And here you have the coils. Now, we look if the coils are correctly
intertwining without having to force it, otherwise we can distort everything. We cut at the right length. And we go up coil after coil. It is just a question of patience. Then we cut the extra material. The goal is really to get a beautiful crossing where we are going
to solder in the middle of the x formed by the crossing. That is what gives the flexibility, if we solder it wrong nothing moves anymore,
you have to solder the same on both sides. For now there is no solder, so do not turn them,
as they are still moveable and can get out. So from this after pressing we can get to this kind of width. At the beginning, we do not know so it’s by doing and learning, by making a couple of pieces that
I thought, it’s nicer that jewellery, it's harder as well because we work on bigger surfaces. And we make chains that nobody has ever made before. In jewellery you go from pieces and gemstones, here you really highlight the metal work. It creates a piece with a movement, a story, something extra. It is infinite, you can think I have already made this one but you can always do it with another wire,
another shape or length. You rack your brain to find and imagine
the piece in space so it actually works. Because there are a great amount of prototypes
that you haven’t seen that didn’t work. That is what is so interesting, we are always
in doubt and always looking to find something. The hand made chain will normally be a lot more compact. Because we can try to make the meshes fit even when it is a little hard, forcing a little bit,
a machine could never do that. A machine needs to be able to work, it needs
to be able to move easily, it needs to be simple. A complicated chain will never be made by a machine and it’s easy to see when you look at what you have
on the market everyone has the same thing. I think people do not realise,
when they order a chain made by hand they think “in how long will I get it, 1 month, 2 months”. People are becoming impatient, when they order something they expect it to be home the next day. So what’s the life expectancy of a good chain bracelet A good hand made chain bracelet lasts
at least 30 years easily, that is more or less it. You know that when a unique watch is made,
you will not get it straight away, there are months of wait, some changes can be made,
you can always come back on some decisions. When you buy it in the commerce once it is delivered,
you can not have any change made. The main principle is for it to have a soul and I love to see the person discovering the piece for the first time, and see their eyes, that’s when you see
if you have passed the challenge. So as you can see there are multiple ways of making
these links intertwine with each other resulting in very very different types of design and the only limits are the ones of Laurent’s creativity
and the number of hours he’s willing to spend. Let’s discover another example of chain. Here you have a Chinese balls chain,
it is an assembling without solder. All the links can slide, it has an extraordinary mobility. Always check to not take the wrong link.
1/10th and it doesn’t assemble. Right now it is quite easy because it has been studied well. But at the beginning when you start with this it is really difficult. It has to be constant between the middle piece and the last one, so that you don’t see when you have changed link size, it has to be very fluid. I am the last one to produce that many chains, you have a few artisans who make
a few chains which have their prices, but there isn’t a big variety of chains. They have a few models, a few ideas, but maybe they haven’t had the training that I had and all the people I have met during my apprenticeship
do not work in this field anymore. It is disappearing, it is a bit the end. It is very sad, most of all for the field, for what we are losing. The day that we won’t have it anymore
only then people will realise but it will be too late. It is now that we have to do something not in 20 years. But beyond his chain expertise, Laurent also demonstrated how you can repair a serious dent for instance on a watch case and not by only polishing it and therefore removing material, but by adding metal by laser
and then polishing it and you won’t see a thing. For a watch that has been worn a lot and has one or two dents, and we are scared that the polisher would round off the watch or that the facet won’t come out exactly the same. We are going to do a little test. So I have broken the angle in two spots and now I will charge the piece using a laser
and polish it to its original state. I add the same material as the one used
in the original piece to not get a stain. Laurent has all types of metals available to him to perform
these kinds of repairs depending on the case’s material I have all the colours, all the conceivable style of gold. Here we have a grey gold 16%, here a grey gold
15% of palladium, here a platine 950. Now I am going to polish it,
taking off as little material as possible. As you can see, here the original facet flat side,
is found again on the side I have worked on. Without having rounded off the piece. Ok, good as new and today restoration is a big part of Laurent’s activity, fixing for instance old milanese bracelets
where some of the metal turns have been damaged or worn out. But coming back on his training,
Laurent has been trained as a jeweller and as he explained, at the time this chain making
craftsmanship was included in the overall training, but today there is a real challenge
since there’s no more proper training for this craft and Laurent is therefore really worried that we will lose
these skills and he’s trying his best to put it back on the menu. Right now we are asking the State with the association ASMEBI to authorise and help us restarting this apprenticeship. It would be an apprenticeship of maybe 2 years. But is it going to be possible to do it or not, we don't know. We are on the case, but if there isn't an interest, there is no point. Because the people that will learn this craft,
they really need to have work afterwards. They need to be able to make a living from it
and have fun with it. I would love to be able to restart this apprenticeship. But I need the partners that will help me make it possible, alone it is just impossible. It will never be as complete as the training I have received, but at least there would be a great base to start from, and learn all the rest by doing and hands on experiences. That would be beautiful. So, yes quite a challenge ahead, but as Laurent said, having people trained is one thing, but having customer brands using these crafts
in their new creation is another thing and obviously I greatly wish that brands will indeed re-use
this know-how on some high-end pieces and for individuals why not ask to have
one made specifically for you, that’s a real nice piece of bespoke craftsmanship
done just for your loved timepiece and if you’re interested, don’t hesitate to ask us for this. Well I hope you enjoyed this, thanks for watching and sharing, all the very best to you and Viva Watchmaking!
