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Aug 25, 2020
Monochrome Watches
Here is the new and breathtaking Bvlgari Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Chronograph Skeleton Automatic, presented to you exclusively by MONOCHROME and Bvlgari's CEO, Jean-Christophe Babin.
Meet Bvlgari's newest record-breaking watch, the new member of the Octo Finissimo family, a unique combination of chronograph and automatic tourbillon movement, executed with an impressive and modern open worked movement.
This year, to confirm its supremacy in the field of ultra-thin watchmaking, Bvlgari went for the world’s thinnest tourbillon chronograph. The Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Chronograph Skeleton Automatic comes in a 42mm x 7.40mm sandblasted grade 5 titanium case, housing a movement that is only 3.50mm in height. And like its predecessors, it remains very comfortable on the wrist and it looks totally spectacular with its sharp and edgy design.
https://monochrome-watches.com/bvlg...ton-automatic-thin-world-record-review-price/
Introducing Bvlgari Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Chronograph Skeleton Automatic, the 6th World Record for Thinness
A new record in the Bvlgari Octo Finissimo saga for the world’s thinnest tourbillon-chronograph
Aug 26,2020
By Xavier Markl
3 min read
Introducing The Bulgari Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Chronograph Skeleton Automatic
Another world record set by the reigning king of ultra-thin watchmaking.
JACK FORSTER
AUGUST 26, 2020
https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/b...on-chronograph-skeleton-automatic-introducing
If you cast your mind back to the ancient storied days of, I don't know, seven or eight years ago, when the world was young, and we greeted each sunrise joyous of heart and light of spirit, you wouldn't have thought that there was much of a percentage in going hard on ultra-thin watches. The whole genre has been, for much of the entire history of watchmaking, something of a niche endeavor. First, making any sort of true ultra-thin watch at all is so technically demanding that it is often considered a complication in its own right, and second, it becomes exponentially more difficult to coax good performance and reliability out of a watch as it gets thinner. For this reason, wristwatches designed primarily to be durable, accurate, and reliable daily companions have generally eschewed the pursuit of thinness as a separate and specific goal, and the category has generally remained a small one, with world records set before the new millennium often standing unchallenged for years, and then decades.
To get a better sense of what that number represents, we can take a look at some other record-setting calibers (rather boringly, mostly from Bulgari as well, although it reflects perhaps more on the rest of the industry than on Bulgari that they seem to have little competition in the field). The Octo Finissimo Tourbillon's hand-wound caliber BVL 268 is 1.95mm thick; however, it is a hand-wound movement. The Octo Finissimo Minute Repeater's caliber BVL 362 comes in at 3.12mm thick. The caliber BVL 138 in the Octo Finissimo Automatic is at 2.30mm, the world's thinnest self-winding movement (although the AP 2120 is still the world's thinnest full-rotor automatic).
Maybe the most flat-out gasp-inducing movement, however, is the BVL 288 in the Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Automatic, which is as thin as the hand-wound Octo Finissimo Tourbillon – 1.95mm thick – but with an automatic winding system somehow maneuvered into it as well. That the BVL 288 could be so thin is partly due to the fact that it is a flying tourbillon (omitting the upper tourbillon bridge is an advantage where fractions of a millimeter count) and partly due to the fact that it uses a peripheral rotor, which (like a microrotor) can lie in the same plane as the movement plate.
Normally you put a tourbillon, and a chronograph, and a self-winding mechanism into a watch by sort of sandwiching them together. The automatic rotor and reverser and driving wheels, the chronograph mechanism, and the tourbillon (which generally lies on the same plane as the base plate; I'm unaware of any modular tourbillon, although anything's possible) all sit on different layers, and if you add everything up from the various movements above, you would expect something maybe four millimeters or so thick – a chronograph plate added onto the BVL 288 would be one way to go. However, Bulgari seems to have found a way to put all of these mechanisms on more or less the same plane, as we'll see.
The caliber BVL 388 in the Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Chronograph Automatic incorporates a number of interesting technical features as well.
Dial (bottom plate) side, caliber BVL 388.
Right off the bat, there is the fact that this is not a flying tourbillon, which in an ultra-flat tourbillon, you would certainly expect (the upper bridge is visible both in the movement image, and of course, through the dial of the watch). The mainspring barrel is prominently visible at 12:00, with the keyless works for winding and setting to the right. The tourbillon cage is driven at its periphery, rather than via a lower pinion (which I think saves space as well), and there is no regulator, which, again, helps keep height down (you can see the timing weights on the rim of the balance; the weights have been set into recesses in the balance's upper surface). Now, one very interesting note: If you look quite closely, you will see what looks like a tiny column wheel, at about the 4:00 position. At first, I thought this might have something to do with the chronograph, but if you recall, this is a monopusher movement – start, stop, and reset are via the pusher at 2:00. As it turns out, this lower column wheel and its associated pusher (at 4) are for setting the function of the crown. In one position, the crown hand-winds; push the 2:00 pusher, and the function is changed to hand-setting.
The movement side allows you to see the chronograph and automatic winding mechanisms. According to Bulgari, while some of the basic features of the caliber BVL 318, in the Octo Finissimo Chronograph GMT, are present in the caliber BVL 388 as well, the BVL 388 is largely a new movement. About the only thing the two movements have in common is that they are both lateral clutch designs (the lateral clutch, all other things being equal, offers a flatter construction than a vertical clutch; the BVL 388 is, strictly speaking, an oscillating pinion clutch system). We can see, on the top level of the movement, the hatchet-shaped chronograph bridge, and below that, the laterally sliding, integrated reset-to-zero hammer – the heart-piece cams for reset-to-zero, which are set on the axes of the center seconds recorder and, to the left, the minutes recorder, are just visible beneath the bridge. At 10:00, you can see the reverser and transmission wheels for the peripheral rotor (white gold in this case, though Bulgari used platinum for the Chronograph GMT), and the mainspring barrel is at 12:00.
full article here
Very impressive indeed!
for posting this up, Mike.