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Patek Philippe – Ref. 5531 World Time Minute Repeater

The Ref. 5531R in rose gold, that was unveiled at Baselworld 2018, is the world’s first World Time minute repeater that always strikes local time. All other minute repeaters with 24 time zones systematically strike home time even if they and their owners are far away from home.

The new self-winding caliber R 27 HU movement was developed expressly for this peerless timepiece. Patent applications have been filed for its innovative design and novel components. 

The pillar wheel is hidden under a highly polished cap as seen on the image directly above. It is an eccentric cap which allows for the fine-tuning of the aforementioned clutch — since you can see, there’s a somewhat beautifully curved arm which connects the two meshing wheels together with the pillar wheel itself. When the chronograph’s beginning pusher is engaged, the pillar wheel below the cap rotates, thus dropping this arm in between the pillar wheel’s beams, therefore transferring the second of those two driving wheels marginally so that it starts to mesh together with the wheel in the middle. The distance traveled by this arm needs painstaking fine-tuning, something this limit would be to aid with — though I would still like to see a well-working chronograph having an exposed column wheel. I think that’s enough column wheel discussion for the day.The attractiveness of a hand-wound chronograph is that you get to have of the eye-candy. There isn’t a fiddly rotor constantly in the way. Sixty-five hours is sufficient to produce the 5170P final from Friday evening until Monday morning — a feat each high-end watch wider than 36mm should provide.All the performance aside, the 29-535 is so beautiful, I would go so far as to say it is a must have in every collector’s livelihood. Not necessarily a lifetime keeper, but a benchmark for each modern high-end chronograph. None ought to be a copy of the, don’t get me wrong, but any modifications done to this design and these proportions must be encouraged by strong reasons — improved performance, higher performance, etc.. Few motions fuss with proportions, let alone proportions contrary to case size, but here things are just perfect. The massive balance wheel seen in Patek chronographs of older certainly add a more customary flair, but if you would like contemporary frequency and balance wheel layout, you need to accept a smaller equilibrium as a reasonable compromise.

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