Oscillation celebration – The creation of a new Lang & Heyne watch We rediscovered and enhanced a method used in the 18th century and known as silver grinding. We apply a mixture of salt and silver to the brass parts of the movement using a stiff-bristle brush. The result is a surface that has a grain like fine leather. The surface has brilliance and contrast called a frosted finish. You cannot achieve this with any other technology. The flat parts like lever and springs will be milled from a glued steel plate. After tempering and measuring the parts it’s time for the main task of manufacturing: finishing. We carefully prepare all flat surfaces and all the edges then we bevel and polish them. All this will be done just as it was one hundred years ago. This is the reason the finishing takes up to five times as long as the other parts of the manufacturing process. We also turn parts like shafts and screws, which we do on a lathe under a microscope or manufacture them ourselves from raw components. We want our screws to be of the same high quality as the other parts of the watch. To achieve a flat finish for each individual screw we apply, by hand, a special tin polish. When we talk about finish we are talking about many things that are barely noticeable by most people. But because we believe that the finish is so important to the watch we take much more time to perfect the finish than many other luxury watch manufacturers. Flat polish of a screw head with diamantine powder on a tin bar Polishing the mounted cover plate before final assembly 29
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