Velociphile - No longer in the building
1397
Opinion as fact?
Mar 07, 2019,03:53 AM
First off let me stop you at, "we know that certain FPJ movements are much less reliable than others." These types of statements and issues have been discussed many times across multiple brands before and I will not repeat why, without data, they are unhelpfully obfuscational. I am no FPJ fanboy by the way, and yes, there was a reason there was.... and then there was not an FPJ forum here for many years.
Regarding the specific issues related to the Optimum, and I am speculating, there are particular issues in manufacturing variations of Breguet's Natural escapement. The angular realtionship between the position of the escape teeth relative across each wheel as well as precise control of the tolerances of the backlash between the syncronising gears of the escape teeth are critical. This is also a key issue in the coaxial, and Smith elaborated on this recently.
I am not sure of the manufacturing technique Journe uses for these, but if he eschews 'modern methods', which is part of his philosophy of keeping true to traditions of watchmaking and trying to ensure maintainabilty in the future, it is unlikely they are made via nanoesque techniques such as etched nickel phosphorous (compare the FdT developed LF escapement) and hence will be a lot harder to control in production. This may be the one simple reason.
Furthermore, is the nature of these escapements that it is very likely that if it works out of the box, it will work. If it is problematical to keep it running in the AD, it won't 'improve' in use.
Velociphile