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De Haas had a passion for chiming timepieces that began in his APRP years, where he described his training with Peter Speake Marin on minute repeaters as "great entertainment". Papi asked de Haas to work on a grand sonnerie. He says that a chiming clock is more complicated than a simple watch. "There are many complications, and the majority are logical for a watchmaker who has been trained," he says. "A minute repeater can be tricky, as it's usually an hour rack on a quarter rack stacked on top of the minute rack. There are also tiny springs connecting the rack to the hammers. This requires precision tuning. The sound is not louder if there are heavy gongs or big hammers. The springs and levers are what make the strike, not the hammer striking the gong. They require fine adjustments. It is important that the watch strikes precisely at 11:59, and not 12 o'clock. There are many parts that interact with eachother, and there are many tolerances to be met. "That's already quite complicated."
In a grand sonnerie, the magic is created by the movement. It does not require the wearer to activate it. It's relatively simple in a watch such as the Striking Time, where a wheel rotates every 24 hours, and a pin is raised to drop a lever on the hour, striking one ding. But, if you want an automatic 12 dings, and one ding, and ding, at 12:15 that requires a higher level of adjustments. If you have a timekeeping movement and every 15 minutes, something needs to be activated that involves the interaction of hooks and levers, which liberates the racks, then the spring acts as a brake. The biggest challenge is to drop the racks every 15 minutes without losing too much volume.
De Haas: "Fortunately, at APRP (gradeonewatches.com), everyone was young and crazy." "It's not for everyone, but I jumped when asked to do a grand sonnerie. With a minute repeter, it's easier to test because you are putting in the effort. But a grand sonnerie must strike on its own. Testing cannot be accelerated. We isolated the sounds from the movements using microphones and tape recorders at night. We listened to each chime the next day and noted any extra or missing strikes. Then we analysed these reference points and worked out what to do. It was rare to find a solution or problem that made sense.
De Haas, with his unmatched experience in chiming timepieces, understood that Breitling Avenger Replica needed to create a sonnerie to compete with the likes Patek Philippe or Audemars Piguet. No one in the company had ever worked with striking watches before. The old pocket watch factory made repeaters but the movements were purchased from Swiss companies, and finished by Lange.
De Haas accepted the challenge of his new musical role, as his primary responsibility as Development Director was to prepare the company for its future. This meant, not only creating watches, but also a knowledge pool. "It is a noble aim," he said "but the question is how to begin?" It would have been easy to ask my friend Giulio to create a mechanism. "But that's not the watchmaking of today, and I strongly believe that a brand such as Breitling Navitimer Replica Watches should have the capability to develop and build these complications in-house."
