Ébauche
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ébauche is a French term meaning "outline" or "blank", also referred to in English as: movement-blank. In horology the term refers to an incomplete watch movement. The oil painter's ébauche, a kind of underpainting, is not treated in this entry.
Until about 1850, the watch-maker's ébauche consisted only of the bottom plate, bars, fusee, and barrel.
In the early nineteenth Century, the ébauche was made up of two plates with pillars and bars, the barrel, fusee, index, click and ratchet-wheel, and a few assembling screws. These parts were all roughly filed and milled. The steel and brass were manufactured in special workshop. The ébauche was finished by watchmakers in the finishing-shops. Then came the application of the industrial revolution at the Waltham Watch Company, founded by Aaron Lufkin Dennison, and the development of the American System of Watch Manufacturing, establishing the base of modern watch manufacture.
The assortment are the parts of a watch other than the ébauche.
The modern ébauche is a jewelled watch movement, without its regulating organs, mainspring, dial, or hands.
Historic producers of ébauche movements have included companies such as, A. Schild, Peseux, Fabrique d'Horlogerie de Fontainemelon (FHF), Landeron, Valjoux, Venus, France Ébauches and Lemania. Many of these producers have gone out of businesses over the past few decades, succumbing to the Quartz Revolution. Most were unable to compete with the inexpensive electronic movements produced by Asian manufacturers, which flooded the market during the 1960s and 1970s.
Those ébauche producers that remain today are almost all owned by ETA, which is a subsidiary of the Swatch Group.
