Tissot Chemin Des Tourelles Squelette T099.405.16.418.00

It's a Skeleton; It's a Mechanical; It's a Tissot

Beautiful isn't it? Complexity and Simplicity collided into a single body......  That is my impression on Tissot Chemin Des Tourelles Squelette; that is quite a mouthful..... I would just call it Tissot Skeleton. 

Saw this watch at the second hand section of a friend's shop. Apparently, it belonged to a guy who just broke off with his girl friend. He sold off all his belongings and moved on to other part of the universe.... Pretty devastating, pretty tragic..... My guess is the girl friend dumped him... I was dumped numerous times; yea pretty drastic, bloody irrational at the time.... Time never healed the wounds or the sorrows, it just make you forget with traumatic dementia! 

Maybe looking at the watch would remind him of the time they shared together.... every single moment that matters.... It no longer matters to her.... and to him, just maybe not able to love her every single second for the rest of her life........ It becomes just too painful, that he needed to get rid of this precious mechanical marvel. 

This watch is barely a year old, so everything is as new. The outer box is in flawless state....

Here the inner box and the waranty and manual booklet. 

The red and black colour combo makes it a very intriguing watch box.

Open the box, you see a nice mechanical art slumber on the white pillow. 

Be honest about it.... Under normal circumstances, skeleton watches are not really my cup of tea. You need to focus your eye lens real hard to read the time. All the gears, the screws, the jewels, the bridges, the moving wheels, the springs.... the non-existing dial is basically a kaleidoscope!

With the current trend of people fancying BIG watch, this 42.9mm diameter watch is considering moderate sized. The case is constructed using 316L Stainless Steel. 

Its case thickness is measuring at 11.1mm. The watch comes with dome shaped anti-reflective coated sapphire crystal.

This watch is pretty light; it is about 72gm. From the literature, it has a water resistant of up to 50m/165ft/5bar. Who in the right mind would shower with a casual dress watch? 

Tissot did a great job of Perlage (circular graining) finishing parts of the movement to make the watch more high class. The use of blue hands and blue roman indexes making telling time a bit easier. 

There is a Seconds sub-dial at the 9 o'clock position. I am not particularly fond of the crown of this watch. For me, it is slightly too slim despite being big enough. For a mechanical watch, the crown is very very important as you need to wind the watch. 

Also I think Tissot is too conservative in designing this crown. Since you want it to be an art piece and portraits your watch-making skills, what prevents you to be adventurous in designing the crown? But then again, Tissot is all about practicality and functionality.......  

The front and the rear of the case has the mirror finishing. The sides are brushed finish. 

One of the reason I coughed up money for this watch is because of the movement. This watch used the hand wound ETA 6497-1. Yes the very same movement that used by Panerai......

This 17 jewels movement has about 46 hours of power reserve and is vibrating at the rate of 18,800 per hour. 

The back case is a see through view all type. Tissot decorated the movement with blue screws to enhance its appearance.

This watch is supplied with a black calf leather strap. The strap is opened and closed using a push buttons deployment buckle. The buckle is signed with a big T representing Tissot. 

The art of watchmaking is truly portrayed through skeleton watches. Every components and every mechanical works are visible through naked eyes.   

The beauty of this watch lies in the revelation of its works, with further rich details demonstrating Tissot's 160 years of watchmaking legacy.

When I was young, I thought winding of watch is a tedious thing.... I preferred the watch that need little attentions and would work anytime.....

Now each morning as I wake up.... I start gently winding the watch and observing that it is working, that is a pleasure and a passion......

When simplicity collided with elegance: Tissot Le Locle Automatic

I always have a soft spot for Tissot ever since my first Tissot watch.....  For me, the name Tissot is synonym with Affordable, Reliable, Practical and Quality.... 

I basically hijacked this watch from a friend's wrist. The very same friend, I kidnapped the Sea-Gull 55th Anniversary watch from. Well, please do not pity him! He is well off enough to buy himself some more new watches. That is good for me, as I probably can snatch more watches from him. 

Here is a huge watch box with all the documents regarding this watch.......... Nothing too fancy, nothing ordinary also...... At the bottom of the box is a drawer that housed all the papers. 

For a special reason, I always love watches with Arabic numeric dial. That partially maybe due to my first watch was with Arabic numeric dial. It was before I went to school..... Sadly, I had lost track of that watch long ago.....

From any angle, this is a very classical and elegant watch. At least, that is what Tissot's designers had in mind when they launched this Le Locle line. 

"The name Le Locle seems to be a reliable ingredient of success. As well as being the name of Tissot's home and heritage, nestled in the Swiss Jura Mountains, it is the name of a hugely popular automatic watch family. The models display exquisite elegance with details such as Roman numerals and a traditional Le Locle signature which complete the picture of classical chic...." stated on Tissot's webpage.

This is a 39mm in diameter dress watch. The case is polished 316L stainless steel with PVD yellow gold coating. It has a scratch resistant sapphire glass. The dial is ivory colour with gold Arabic numeric hour markers. The feuille hour and minutes hand added nostalgia to the general appearance of the watch. This watch has a small date window at its 3 o'clock position. 

The oversized crown is signed with a big T character. The side of the case is brush polished. 

This case is nicely contoured and is very comfy to wear on the wrist. Signed with the big T, the gold plated, adjustable deployment clasp holds the brown coloured leather strap tightly onto your wrist.

The Le Locle has a well decorated stainless steel caseback. The caseback is engraved with patterns, Tissot 1853, and vital informations like water resistant to 30M, Automatic, Sapphire Crystal and so on. The caseback has exhibit windows that display portion of the movement. 

The Le Locle uses ETA 2824-2 movement, which features hacking and hand winding, along with a quick-set date. ETA 2824-2 is a 25 jewels automatic movement that oscillates at 28,800 bph. This movement is non-decorated apart from its gold plated rotor. The rotor is signed with "Tissot 1853" and "Swiss Made 25 Jewels". Worth mentioning, is that the newer 2014 Le Locle Automatic Chronometer is using the same ETA 2824-2 movement with also no decoration or polishing. Maybe that is the key that Tissot managed to make its watches affordable to all.

Pen off this post with a beautiful scenic photo of Le Locle and a paragraph I taken from Tissot's 2014 catalogue....

No matter what the watch, it will always bear the Tissot signature of "Innovators by Tradition" and they have all been created with you in mind! wrote Francois Thiebaud, President of Tissot.

Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle City