Ironhorse Timepieces — From the Workshop

The Watch on MY Wrist: Ironhorse's First Swiss Conversion

A Hebdomas 8-day pocket watch — and the prototype that started it all

Ironhorse was built around American movements. The high-grade calibres of Waltham, Hamilton, Illinois, and Hampden — highly jewelled, adjusted, and finished to a standard of precision that defined an era — are the heart of what we do. Some of those movements met the formal railroad grade standard of 1894. Many did not, and were never intended to. They were built instead as civilian precision instruments for gentlemen who demanded accuracy without the bulk of a conductor's 16-size movement. All of them share the same golden age of American watchmaking, and all of them deserve to be worn.

But the watch on my wrist as I write this is Swiss. And its story begins not in a factory, but in one of the smallest hamlets in the Swiss Jura.

An invention from the edge of the world

In 1888, a watchmaker named Irénée Aubry was working in Les Emibois, a hamlet so small that he was often listed in records as being from the nearby villages of Muriaux or Saignelégier. That year, working in the hills near the French border in the northern Jura, he filed Swiss patent number 88, one of the earliest patents ever granted in Switzerland, for a new kind of watch movement. A watch that would run for eight days on a single winding.

The movement Aubry designed was unlike anything before it. The mainspring barrel, rather than sitting in one corner of the movement as in a conventional watch, spans the entire diameter of the plate, rotating around the centre like an oversized rotor. This massive barrel stores enough energy to drive the gear train for eight full days. But the feature that makes a Hebdomas immediately recognizable is not the barrel. It is what happens on the other side of the dial. At the base of the face, a shaped aperture opens the watch to the world, revealing the balance wheel oscillating on its gilded, engraved bridge. The Hebdomas does not merely tell you the time. It shows you the mechanism keeping it. And significantly, it was the first watch ever to expose the precision beauty of this exposed balance wheel.

By 1906, the design had been commercialized under the name Hebdomas, from the Greek and Latin for the holy week, the seventh day, and was winning gold medals at international watch exhibitions in Geneva, Paris, Chicago, and Milan. The caseback of later Hebdomas carried the record of those victories: a circle of embossed medallions, each representing a different show, a different city, a different jury that had examined this movement and declared it remarkable.

The watch

My converted Hebdomas dates to around 1968, which is a significant year in the movement's history. Production had wound down in the 1950s when the design was considered too large for the wrist-watch era. Then, in 1968, Schild & Co. of La Chaux-de-Fonds revived it. The Hebdomas was brought back, deliberately, as a statement that some designs transcend their era. It then remained in production until Schild entered insolvency in 1979.

My example carries a white enamel dial in exceptional condition, decorated with delicate hand-painted floral sprays at the 8 and 2 positions; characteristic of the careful decorative tradition Schild maintained even in the revival era. The off-centre time display sits in the upper portion of the dial, with the power reserve subdial graduated for adjustment from R to A: "Remontez" to "Avancez", French for "wind" to "advance", a reminder that this movement was born in a part of Switzerland where French was the first language of the workshop, and that language never left the dial. Below the hands, the balance wheel turns in its gilded aperture, visible through the crystal, marking every beat.

Turn it over. The caseback carries that circle of exhibition medallions: Paris, Geneva, Chicago, Milan. An international record of a movement that travelled the world and came home with prizes. Around the inner ring, the inscription: 8 Jours / Spiral Breguet / Levées Visibles / Interchangeable. A Breguet overcoil hairspring. Visible impulse faces. Eight days. Interchangeable parts. Every word a credential from a workshop in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

Why this watch

I lived for twelve years near the Swiss Jura in villages on the shores of Lake Geneva, with the Jura mountains as our family's weekend playground. Saignelégier, where Irénée Aubry invented this movement, sits in those same hills. It is impossible to spend a decade in that part of the world without developing a feeling for what Swiss watchmaking actually is. Not a marketing category, but a geography; a tradition carried by families and workshops in small towns that have been doing one thing with extraordinary care for three hundred years.

When I returned to Canada and eventually founded Ironhorse, my focus was on American high-grade movements. It remains so. But when I built my first prototype, it felt right that it should honour the place that taught me what mechanical excellence looks like. The craftsmen in La Chaux-de-Fonds who service and restore our American movements work in the direct lineage of the makers who built this Hebdomas. When I wear it, both halves of the Ironhorse story are on my wrist.

The conversion

The movement was fully disassembled and serviced before conversion — cleaned, inspected, and confirmed to be keeping accurate time. The stainless steel case was machined to accommodate the movement's dimensions while preserving the original dial and its balance wheel aperture completely intact. The burgundy alligator strap with contrasting red stitching echoes the warmth of the gold movement visible through the dial window. The crown sits at 12 o'clock, as the original movement demands.

I wind it once a week. It runs eight days. Every time I glance at the dial, I can see the beauty of it faithfully executing its precision mission.

What comes next

Hebdomas is a rare movement, in particular one small enough to sit on a wrist without appearing out of scale. I was very happy, after months of searching, to acquire a second Hebdomas — this one from approximately 1910 to 1915, placing it in the founding generation of mass production, when the Graizely factory on the Rue du Parc in La Chaux-de-Fonds was producing thousands of these movements and the Schild era was just beginning. Where my watch is from the 1968 revival, this one is from the original run — an earlier chapter of the same story.

This movement will be available for commission to a buyer's exact specifications: case material, finish, engraving, strap. Or, it will be converted to a standard Ironhorse configuration if the right commission does not come first. If you are interested in discussing it, the enquiry form is found HERE.

Ironhorse is an American watchmaking story at its core. But the best stories have more than one country in them.

Ironhorse Timepieces converts antique American high-grade pocket watch movements — and select Swiss movements by special arrangement — into custom wristwatches. Every conversion is carried out by master watchmakers in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Visit ironhorsewatches.com to see the current collection.

Be sure to check out the photos and Technical Specifications below

Filed under Movement Craft  ·  Ironhorse  ·  Watches

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