Remontoir first, tourbillon second
By Marco Bellini, Zurich ·
There are two good reasons to fit a remontoir d'égalité, and Journe uses both.
The first is constant force. The remontoir is a small spring, rearmed every second from the main train, and it hands the escapement the same small push whether the mainspring is full or nearly empty. The second comes almost free: if the remontoir releases once a second, the seconds hand can jump once a second, and you get dead-beat seconds without a separate mechanism bolted on. Two problems, one solution. That is how I like movements to be designed.
Then the tourbillon. In a wristwatch the tourbillon does less than the remontoir does here, but both serve the same idea, feeding the balance as evenly as possible, and that is more than I can say for most tourbillons on the market.
80 hours. Platinum, 40 mm by 11 mm, 30 m. A silver dial with the off-centre time and its own small seconds. Wearable, which is rare for a tourbillon.
The bad part is 260,000 to 300,000 USD at list, and the real price is whatever somebody else decides it is. If you can buy one at list, I'm jealous. If you have to pay a dealer double, ask yourself honestly if you will ever wind it.