Titanium, strength and lightness

The concept of lightness is always, or almost always, associated with positive qualities. In contrast, heaviness is often used in a metaphorical sense to express negative qualities. For example, a heavy person is someone who is difficult to bear, while eating heavy food means something that does not satisfy us but only fills us up: that is, quantity of an inferior food to replace quality.

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Weight (which is a very different concept from sturdiness and solidity) has therefore often been associated with negative connotations, and we should not be surprised if this aspect is also reflected in the world of watchmaking. A heavy watch and a solid watch are two very different categories, and while some may take some pleasure in knowing that the "ingot" they wear at their wrist is heavy and therefore solid, for many others this is not quite true.

Why wear a lightweight watch?

A lightweight watch is often preferred by most people to its heavier counterpart. And there are a few objective reasons that make it preferable.

Comfort. A lighter watch is more likely to be worn because it is less tiring on the wrist. Since our hands are our way of interacting with objects, the presence of a bulky or heavy object on our wrist interferes with small daily tasks. Just moving your arm to perform a task with a watch on your wrist, such as typing on a keyboard, is much easier with a lighter watch than with a heavier one. So much so that, in part to avoid ruining the watch with scratches and small dents, we often prefer to take it off and put it back on when the job is done.

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Aesthetics. A smaller, lightweight watch is often more graceful than a larger, heavier one. In the last years of the twentieth century, the ultra-thin (and very light) dress watch was all the rage, and even today, houses are again competing to create the thinnest and lightest watch, both visually and materially.

Elegance. A lighter watch, as opposed to the traditional "ingot" represented by the steel sports watch, is more elegant, not least in the light of an aesthetic taste that is changing towards less assertive and more balanced styles, where understated unisex lines prevail over the more assertive and muscular ones typical of the recent past.

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The evolution of lightness in watches

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Watches have undergone an evolution that brought them first to our pockets and then to our wrists. And the technical evolution they have undergone has meant that, over the years, watchmakers have strived to make them ever more beautiful, lighter and easier to use.

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Think back to pocket watches, for example, which were initially without crystals because it was almost impossible to create a glass with the characteristics needed to fit a watch. The solution was to create a lid that could protect the dial from shocks - which was lifted to read the time. First, someone came up with the idea of drilling a central window through which the time could be read and, later, inserting a small crystal in this window to protect the dial from dust and moisture.

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Over time, the glass window grew in size until it became the crystal we use today, and the heavy glass was replaced by acrylic, a transparent plastic that is much lighter, cheaper, and easier to work with.

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The same is true for cases. Historically, watches have always been associated with the world of luxury, since their function was to tell the time (initially in a very approximate way), but above all to do so elegantly. Their cases served this purpose: they were often made of precious metals, usually easier to work with the technologies of the time, and richly decorated and adorned with precious stones.

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In some cases, these watches were veritable pieces of jewelry, with the precious mechanisms that measured time housed in extraordinarily elaborate and skeletonized cases, creating pieces that reached heights of absolute excellence, as happened in 1760, when André-Charles Caron, master watchmaker to the King of France, decided to offer his customers the chance to admire the mechanism of his watches, which had a great success at the court of Louis XV.

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It was only with the Industrial Revolution and the development of mass production that the watch lost some of its original preciousness and took on a more utilitarian character, with the birth of the first field watches, timepieces that had purely technical functions. In these models, the case had to become more robust, in the most resistant material known at the time, steel, the alloy that dominated the market until the arrival of other materials, mainly derived from aeronautical applications, such as titanium.

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Titanium, the metal from the Gods

Titanium has been known for a long time - its discovery dates back to 1791, when it was discovered by the Englishman William Gregor - but it was not until 1795 that the German Martin Heinrich Klaproth confirmed its existence and baptized it with this name reminiscent of the mythical giants of Greek mythology.

Its use became particularly widespread during the Second World War in the construction of aircraft and rocket elements: its strength combined with its lightness made it the ideal material for these applications, which eventually culminated in the production of aircrafts that made history, such as the famous American spy plane Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, capable of reaching a speed of Mach 3.

But thanks to its corrosion resistance and biocompatibility, titanium also became the main material for the medical industry, with the manufacture of prosthetics, surgical instruments and dental implants. And finally, it made its way into watchmaking.

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The first watch with a titanium case dates back to the 1970s and was produced by the Japanese company Citizen - the X-8 Chronometer, to be precise - and since then many other houses have begun to use this material for cases. Titanium is two times lighter than steel, but also three times stronger. For this very reason, it is difficult to work, especially "cold", and requires special, harder cutters and drills, as well as more time, which makes its use more expensive than traditional steel.

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A titanium movement: the Aventi GT-01S

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A material like titanium has been used to make many cases for sports watches, but rarely for other types of performance. And Aventi is one of the few houses that has had the audacity to use this "super metal" in the creation of its movement, the GT-01S.

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Designed by a master watchmaker in La Chaux de Fonds, the GT-01S combines features of absolute innovation with an essential structure designed to last. Unlike other movements of the industry, with the main plates made of brass, its titanium plates make it extremely strong, light and anti-magnetic, making it unique in contemporary watchmaking.

Its design is extremely durable: suffice it to say that, unlike traditional movements, the GT-01S houses a tourbillon composed of only 18 parts, and offers exceptional chronometer-level performance with +4/-4 seconds per day and excellent resistance to shock, withstanding 5000 G and 2000 Gauss without a beat. And its skeletonized, minimalist design allows you to admire the mechanisms in motion and enjoy the quality of this marvelous mechanical precision instrument at work.?

A masterful work combining tradition and innovation in a perfect result.