The Project 1 from Barrelhand: Haute Horology from San Francisco

Some of the most innovative watchmaking today comes from the ranks of independent artisanal brands like Urwerk, MB&F, Christophe Claret, and HYT— the “new guard” that demonstrate the most cutting edge of horology (many of these independents formed the “Carré des Horlogers” represented at this year’s Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie, or SIHH).

Undeniably, many of the watches are a bit over the top aesthetically, employing hydro-mechanical liquids, rotating prisms, and unique complications to tell the time. Some look as though they’ve been pulled off the dashboard of an exotic super car, while others look like they’re straight out of a comic book. I wouldn’t blame you if you mistook HYT’s Skull Watch for Tony Stark’s Iron Man arsenal. But design and personal preferences aside, you cannot deny the technical prowess of these brands and their creations. These watches will take your breath away and often require a mortgage to acquire. Starting at $80,000, they’re not for the faint of heart—or wallet.

I recently had a chance to meet an individual who may be the next generation of these artisans. Allow me to introduce Karel Bachand, the “newest” new guard. Bachand is a young man (some might even say he’s still a kid) working out of his home. He has no industry experience, just a background in engineering and 3D printing. And while many of the new guard hail from Switzerland with rich horological pedigrees, Bachand is from the high-tech San Francisco Bay Area. I recently spent some time with Bachand to discuss his brand, Barrelhand, and his latest project, the Project 1.

Bachand may be a familiar name to some of you. Two years ago, he reverse-engineered a working homage to the Urwerk UR-202. The UR-202 is an engineering masterpiece utilizing rotating blocks using shock-absorbing turbines to tell the time. Bachand’s homage was an incredible feat of perseverance and ingenuity, especially for someone without a horological background. Impressed with Bachand’s work, Urwerk founders Felix Baumgartner and Martin Frei invited the young maker to join them at SIHH. With some validation from his heroes and now his peers, Bachand continued on his horological journey.

At 44mm wide, the watch is big without being overtly in your face. The compactness is due to the short 44mm lug-to-lug length of the case. At 14mm thick, the watch houses an Eterna Caliber 39 which has been heavily modified to suit its unique time display capabilities—a jump hour with a linear minute display. Inspired by the tracking of a vinyl record, Bachand designed a cam path cutout with the help of two rails. The two rails glide up and down, indicating 0-30 minutes on its way down and 30-60 minutes on its way back up.

The unique implementation of the jump hour complication, which can be set backwards here, presented its own engineering challenge. Typical jump hours are composed of multiple components and many cannot be set backwards. To get around this, Bachand employed a revised Geneva gear. Typically used for date complications, most Geneva gears have four or five points. But here, he needed 12 for each hour. As components got smaller and thinner, Bachand also had to refine the design to make things work.

From what I’ve seen, Barrelhand and the mind behind the brand are marching toward a bright future. For the time being, Bachand will take a reserved approach, iterating until all the details are right. The final product will be limited to 100 units.

The challenges in designing a completely new watch can be quite lengthy to discuss here. Rather than deluge you with all the details, interested readers can follow Bachand’s progress as he documents his process on his website and Instagram.