The Art of Finishing

From its inception in 2010, Laurent Ferrier and his son Christian Ferrier have led a tight-knit team to numerous successes, starting with the GPHG-award-winning debut watch, the Galet Classic Tourbillon Double Spiral.

Building on a recognisable and eloquent design language, Laurent Ferrier has carved out a distinct niche for the brand to offer a studied alternative. With a growing portfolio that spans classicism and a timeless sports watch aesthetic, you will find proportionate elegance paired with manufactured calibres that re-interpret classic techniques. An important part of the success story is the time spent hand-finishing the smallest details of the brand’s Manufacture movements.

The importance of finishing and the skills involved

For some collectors, the focus of their love of horology is on the dial side, while others would be equally happy to wear their wristwear upside down, flaunting their love of intricate movement details. This is where the importance of finishing comes into play, a detail many see as the signifying factor of high-end watchmaking or Haute Horlogerie.

At LAURENT FERRIER, the term finishing, from the French finissage, underlines the pride of our watchmaking team working on our in-house movements. The term covers various small-scale traditional techniques for finishing a watch component. Once CNC machines or lathes have produced the part, our watchmakers and decorators apply their finishing skills, utilising specialised tools with centuries of tradition behind them before the first and second assembly of a LAURENT FERRIER timepiece.

This final pre-assembly step removes the traces of mechanical production from a movement part. Each component is turned into spotless brushed, polished, or angled surfaces that set a hand-built and in-house movement apart from mass-produced calibres. Some finishing techniques also have a traditional practical purpose. But most of all, it is a true sign of dedication to detail and a love of craftsmanship.

LAURENT FERRIER has a team of 15 watchmakers and eight decorators dedicated to movement production, assembly and the traditional craft of hand-finishing components. With such a big emphasis on this part of the in-house production, the watchmakers also spend about 30% of their time decorating steel parts for the movements they assemble and test. Basile Monin is LAURENT FERRIER's head of watchmaking and manages the workshops dedicated to production, assembly and decoration. He tells us that more than 139 manual finishing operations that are required for each LF270.01 movement, and this is a big part of what makes a watch from LAURENT FERRIER so attractive to collectors.

Bevelling

Also known by the French term anglage or chamfering, this is a finishing technique close to our horological hearts and is, for many collectors, what sets the standard for haute horlogerie movements. If you look at the flank of a bridge in one of our movements, there is a 45-degree angle that catches the light. This bevelled detail is created through one of our artisans' most complex and time-consuming techniques. From a technical standpoint, anglage on the main plates and bridges is believed to prevent material stress concentrations along its edges, and the first step is removing scratches and burrs from the upper edge of a bridge.

Anglage is made more prominent by smoothing it down with files and sometimes a micro rotor tool with an ebony tip along the edge to form a uniform width and two sharp parallel lines. The surface of the sloping angle is then hand-finished with files and wood pegs with abrasive paste, giving a polish that is incomparable to machine-made attempts. In a Ferrier movement, you will also find interior polished angles with beveling. This time-consuming technique requires years of experience and a patient hand to make two polished chamfers match up precisely.

Remember that we are talking about an inner angle that is only visible with a strong loupe, with its precision measured only by a skilled eye. Our decorators need many years of training to master the skills required, with an equal challenge in outer angles meeting in a sharp point. For many eyes, the pièce de resistance is curved outer beveling, as seen in the rounded balance bridge of our micro-rotor calibres. Without the possibility of going straight from point to point, rounded angles can only be done by hand. Here, the surface of the chamfer is defiantly convex, and only a few extremely trained hands can achieve the result achieved by the Ferrier decorators.

Côtes de Genève

Côtes de Genève, or Geneva Stripes, is a finishing technique instantly recognisable for its wave-like linear pattern, commonly seen on the bridges of our movements.

Also known as Geneva Stripes, this is the wave-like linear pattern you will see on many of our movement bridges and is perhaps the most well-known metal finishing method except for perlage. Its undulating surface was originally intended to keep dust and particles away from the gears and other smaller components of the movement, and it still works to do so. Though with today’s strict quality control within an atelier and improved seals for watch cases and crowns, it has become a more decorative part of a movement. The stripes are machine-applied in a symmetric, straight or circular pattern and needs to be perfectly aligned on adjoining pieces of bridgework.

Perlage

This recognisable decorative pattern is also known as stippling or circular graining. It consists of intricate overlapping circles that can be seen covering the mainplate of movements and hidden inside case backs. You will also see it on some components like the barrel bridge of the Classic Moon. The size of the small circular marks is a tell-tale sign of top-tier watchmaking. Like the deceptively symmetrical Côtes de Geneve, perlage needs the rock-steady hand of a trained decorator who uses a rotating abrasive tip or peg pressed onto the metal in overlapping patterns of circles. The difficulty lies in achieving consistency of the perlage across a larger piece of metal, a task made more difficult by the small-scale pattern used by Ferrier’s team of decorators and watchmakers.

Satin Finish

Usually found on watch cases, we employ a satin brushed finish on a much smaller scale. The aim is a satin-smooth finish that still exhibits a distinct texture. This is carefully executed before a skilled decorator adds beveling that accentuates the shape of the bridge through a light-catching polished chamfer. You will find an example of this in the modern design of the Calibre LF270.01 in the Laurent Ferrier Sport Auto. Here, anthracite satin brushed bridgework accentuates its sportier demeanour in delicate contrast to the black polished sweeping form of the micro-rotor bridge in its slender form.

Satin circular finishing

Also known as Cerclage, circular graining is a soft satin finishing or sunburst circular graining technique that creates fine lines by abrasing or scuffing the metal surface in a circular motion. In the case of circular grinding, these lines are circular and concentric and are often used to decorate round components. This circular graining is itself a form of smoothing technique that produces fine, light-reflecting, circular strokes.

Sandblasting

Sandblasting is performed to achieve a soft, matte surface that accentuates polished details within the movement. The technique itself has a literal explanation: It involves blasting compressed air and very fine-grained sand against the metal. This gives the surface thousands of microscopic craters hidden from the naked eye and a smooth surface.

Black Polish

The enigmatic technique of Black Polish, also known as miroir or poli noir in French is a term that conjures up images of horological alchemy and is the food of legends. The resulting finish is a mirror-like polish that appears pure black at an acute angle, hence the name. After preparing the component's metal and ensuring no surface irregularities are present, the component will be polished face down on a zinc plate onto which an abrasive diamond paste is added. Using a careful circular motion, it is a detailed and minute process that takes a steady hand, gradually using finer pastes in stages to achieve a mirror-flattened surface.