The über-cool URWERK UR-1001 Pocket Watch

Sometimes time can pass you by at an unexpected moment. An hour ago we posted our analyses based on the teaser photos of URWERK’s new UR-1001 and now it has been released. So no more guessing… it’s a pocket watch indeed!

An hour ago we posted the teaser photos of the new URWERK UR-1001 and concluded it would be a pocket watch with perpetual calender. We where only partially correct… it is a pocket watch, it does have a calendar and it does have a oil change indicator. However no perpetual calendar as we asumed based on the teaser photos. Here is the UR-1001 Zeit Device… 

The UR-1001 looks über-cool. This is a kind of pocket watch that we would wear because it looks simply magnificent. At the dial side it tells the time, date, month, day/night and the remaining power reserve. The power reserve indicator is positioned at the upper right corner and let’s you know how much of the 39 hours of power reserve are remaining.

The calendar only needs adjustment at the end of February. The month indicator automatically adjusts the last date on the calendar complication according to whether it has 30 or 31 days. At the end of  months with 30 days (April, June, September and November) the date advances automatically to the 1st of the following month.

Here’s the tech-talk: The date wheel has 93 teeth and goes around in three months carrying the three-armed carousel. Mounted on the date wheel are three Maltese crosses, each corresponding to a satellite of four months at the opposite end of the date wheel. At the end of the short months, a finger on a Maltese cross intervenes to make the date wheel advance two days to the next month.

The minute hand is a retrograde hand and it is not fixed on the 3 revolving hour satellites like on the other UR-200 models. This is also means that once the hand has reached the 60th minute of the hour, it “flies back” to the zero position and meets the next hour at that position.  

Here is the more techincal explanation… The hour hand is fixed to a sprung ring around the circumference of the satellite complication. This ring is pushed along a guide rail by the hour satellite. A swan’s neck spring on each arm of the carrousel engages two coaxial star-cams that slide along the guide rail carrying the minute hand. When the minute hand gets to the end of the rail at 60 minutes, the star-cams trip over to release the minute hand, which springs back to zero at the start of the scale where it rendezvous with the next satellite hour. A small bar of platinum on the sprung ring acts as a counterweight to the minute hand pointer. A safety device ensures that the minute hand cannot rotate past 63 minutes, even in case of a shock.

Above 60 minute point is the day/night indicator, which is in fact a rotating disk marked with Super-Luminova for the night, white brushed-ruthenium for day and a striped mix for dusk/dawn.

 At the back side is the (for URWERK) typical oil change indicator. It is not one oil change indicator, there are actually three. The shortest time interval measured on the back is the 5-year oil change indicator at centre right. This one indicates when a service is due and the makrkers from 3-5 years are in red to indicate a service is due (relatively) soon. After service this is counter is reset to zero.

The next indicator is a 100 year indicator and this one advances in 5-year steps and let’s you keep track of the years the UR-1001 has been running. When the hand reaches the 100-year mark, the small pointer at the bottom of the 1000-year indicator on the left takes a small 100-year step upwards on its imperceptibly slow, but deliberate journey to a new millennium. So you and your offspring can keep track of the first thousand years the UR-1001 has been running. Let’s hope URWERK is still around to reset it after the first 1,000 years 😉

For more information (including the techincal info in detail) you can visit the URWERK website or check out the URWERK Facebook page.