Mainplate
German silver, 30.00 mm across, 1.20 mm thick, perlaged before a single hole is jewelled. Everything measured on this site is measured from its upper face.
Vauclair Horlogerie · Besançon · bench opened 2011
Levée
levée — the impulse the escapement hands the balance, three times every second, for sixty-two hours without being touched.
One calibre. Three references. Sixty watches a year, each finished, cased, timed and posted from this room — no retailer, no distributor, no second price.
- Jewels
- 27
- Beat
- 21 600 vph
- Reserve
- 62 h
- Plate
- ⌀ 30.00 mm
Réf. 01 Granges · 7 400 €Réf. 02 Vermeil · 8 900 €Réf. 04 Nuit · 11 250 €
Plate 01 · VH-19 elevation, exploded · drawn at the bench, 2026
Delivered rateSerial 019-041, dial up, 24 h · s/day
We publish every figure we work to, including the ones that are not flattering.
A finished VH-19 leaves here inside ±4 seconds a day across six positions, measured at 24 hours and again at 240. If yours falls outside that in the first two years we regulate it at our cost and pay the postage both ways.
Read the rate sheet
Plate 02 — the lift, full width
Nine point eight millimetres, from mainplate to case back
The drawing runs past both edges of your screen because it does on paper too: sheet 1 is 840 mm wide and lives pinned above bench one.
The lift · five layers
Assembly runs upward. So does this page.
Each panel below pins where its layer sits on the drawing. Scroll and the movement builds — mainplate first, case back last, exactly the order it happens on the bench.
Going train
Barrel 80 teeth, centre 64, third 60, fourth 56, escape 15. The barrel is wound by hand; there is no rotor and there will not be one.
Bridges
Four bridges, anglage cut by hand at 45°, inward angles left in because a machine cannot make them. Each takes between forty minutes and two hours depending on how the burr lifts.
Escapement
Free-sprung balance, 10.00 mm, four timing weights, overcoil formed on a brass block. This is the layer that decides whether a watch is finished or merely assembled.
Case back
Sapphire, 2.00 mm, sealed on a 0.90 mm nitrile gasket and tested to 5 bar. The serial is engraved on the inner flange, not on the glass, so a polish cannot remove it.
Three references · one movement
The only thing that changes is the case, the dial and the height.
Drawn, not photographed. We do not own a photograph of a watch that is still being made.
- Shared across all threeCalibre VH-19
- CrystalSapphire, box, 1.8 mm, AR inside
- Water5 bar tested, every watch
- Strap19 mm, five hides held in stock
- Serial019-001 onward, inner flange
Réf. 017 400 €
Granges
Slate grey dial, sandblasted, no running seconds. 38.4 mm across and 9.80 mm high — the thinnest we can make and still fit a 62-hour barrel.
- Height9.80 mm
- Lug to lug45.2 mm
- Delivery14 months
Réf. 028 900 €
Vermeil
Frosted silver dial with applied gold indices and small seconds at six. The extra 0.60 mm of height is the sub-dial bridge, nothing else.
- Height10.40 mm
- Lug to lug45.2 mm
- Delivery14 months
Réf. 0411 250 €
Nuit
Grand feu enamel in deep navy, fired five times, and we lose roughly two dials in five. Twelve a year, which is why there is no Réf. 03.
- Height11.20 mm
- Lug to lug46.8 mm
- Delivery22 months
All three, measured side by side →
On the bench
Why one calibre
A second calibre would double the drawings, the tooling and the spare parts, and halve the time I spend on the only part a customer can feel — the finishing. I would rather make the same movement for thirty years and get it right in year eleven.
The calibre, layer by layer
Bench one, filing a pallet-fork horn · exposure 1/60 at f/2.8, north window, 14 rue des Granges
Fourteen months · €1 500 deposit · sixty a year
Twenty-two places left for 2027.
A deposit holds a slot, not a specification — you choose the reference and the strap eight weeks before we case your movement, and the deposit is refundable in full until the dial is ordered.
- Deposit€1 500, refundable until the dial is ordered
- Delivery14 months · 22 months for Réf. 04
- PartsHeld 30 years from the last watch delivered
