Arnold & Son TBR

Today I’d like to share with you a collection from Arnold & Son that I’ve tended to overlook in the past, the TBR. While perhaps one of the most unassuming pieces on the surface, the TBR has a certain magic that can only be fully appreciated after handling the piece in the metal.

The TBR is part of Arnold & Son’s Instrument Collection, inspired by the more functional pocket watches and marine chronometers made by John Arnold and his son during the later part of his watchmaking legacy. Like all the watches from the Instrument Collection, the TBR features an off-centered hours and minutes dial to allow the complications to take center stage. And given the complications in the TBR, you’ll be thankful for the layout.

TBR stands for the watches two complications, a true beat or “dead” seconds, and a retrograde date. The true beat seconds is one of the rarest and most visually captivating complications, with its precise “tic-tock” movement first seen on 18^th century pendulum clocks and later becoming iconic of quartz watches. But there’s also a historical significance to having such a feature. Back in the day when sailors used a sexagesimal numeral system to determine geographical positions, the seconds hands of chronometers were used to calculate a ship’s longitude position relative to the Greenwich Meridian (at 0°); making the precision of a true beat seconds hand vital.

But this isn’t your average true beat seconds mechanism. Not only is the seconds hand centrally placed, which is far less common than off-centered dead seconds, the movement is automatically wound which makes things a lot more complicated (no pun intended). In fact, Arnold & Son had to develop a patented system consisting of an intricate double-wheel, an oscillating pinion and a pallet mechanism with microscopic precision with tolerances of a single micron to make this combination possible. And did I mention the seconds hand hacks?

But the retrograde date shouldn’t be overlooked, as it also features a patented system of “dents san jeu” or gapless wheel teeth to produce one of the smoothest date advances I’ve seen on a retrograde. What I also found spectacular was the speed at which the date hand jumps back from the 31^st to the 1^st, you’d almost think it cheated and jumped clockwise. It’s also worth mentioning that unlike many other retrograde date watches, the TBR can be set directly from the crown, leaving the case free of any pushers or correctors.

The TBR comes in rose gold and steel versions with different dials and movement decorations. The 44mm polished case is substantial but well proportioned thanks to the slightly thicker case necessary to house the automatic movement. Keep in mind that the stepped case tapers from top to bottom, meaning that on the wrist the TBR doesn’t wear like a 44mm.

The stainless steel version comes with light grey frosted dial with recessed silver sub dials, while the rose gold model has a more subdued silvery white and silver opaline dial. The hour and minutes sub dial are fitted with the Instrument Collection’s hallmark skeleton lance hands, a serpentine hand for the retrograde date and an arrow-shaped hand for the central true beat seconds. The polished hands are flame-blued in the steel model or rose gold in other. I know some of you might not be fans of the squiggly serpentine hand, but I always find it fitting in English-inspired watches.

The watch is equipped with the A&S6008 movement, Arnold & Son’s first fully in-house designed and manufactured automatic caliber. The rotor winds bi-directionally, providing 50 hours of power when fully found. The movement comes in two distinct finishes for each case metal, yet both retain the same haute horlogerie hand-finishing like chamfered bridges with polished edges, fine perlage circular graining and radial sunburst “Côtes de Genève” stripes. The steel version has a grey NAC treated movement with polished screws, while the rose gold has a more traditional silver rhodium treatment with blued screws. I love the fact that the majority of Arnold & Son offerings come in steel variants with the same finish level as their more expensive precious metal equivalents.