What you see here is Movado Cal. 115. To this day the thinnest bumper movement ever made, according to ranft. Some of the remarkable features beside the height are the two regulating organs (screwed balance and black polished excentric regulator since this is also available in a chronometer version as cal. 116), the unique serpent style rotor and the rather uncommon amount of jewels (17), which include a jeweled rotor pivot. Also pay attention to the extremly small teeth on the ratched wheel of the rotor. I tried to work the tip of a toothpick in for reference, but even that is hard to do. It literally works like a ratchet. The rotor (I assume) bears a leaf spring mounted at an angle that will move (wind) the ratchet wheel clockwise, and slip over it counter clockwise. It is an incredible display of micro-precision manufacturing considering everything was programmed, designed and operation by hand and mind. Which also leads to one of my favorite often misguided topics: Redials! Yes, here we go again. The way dials are and were printed is literally using a metal stamp. Create a metal stamp, dip it in ink, and go to town. The quality of the print therefore relies on two factors: The ink, which has been around for thousands of years, so it's fair to assume they knew how to make that shit in the 50s, even in times when daytime drinking was the norm. And the stamp or stencil. Now, people like to defend redials by saying "duh, it was back in the day and everything was made poorly." Which, as you can tell from those tiny teeth that still look new after more than 60 years, is pure bullshit. We're not talking about kids making stamps out of potatoes here but made with the same high precision machines those gears were ones made on.






Awesome write-up! This is the real stuff that needs to be put out into the world of horology. 🍻 PS: Totally just logged in to the forum for the first time since signing up and I can't believe what I've been missing. Good shit, y'all!
Great write up man 👍👍. Awesome movement behind that stunning salmon dial