Lubrication

Lubrication is the critical point of every service: the wrong oil, the wrong spot, or the wrong quantity compromises precision more than any mechanical wear. I learned this at Piaget in 1974, working on ultra-thin calibers where there was zero margin for error.

Natural oils — neatsfoot, whale spermaceti — dominated until the 1950s, when Moebius introduced synthetics like Synt-a-Lube 9010. The shift was radical: natural oils thickened within months; synthetic oils last years. This single fact changed service intervals entirely. But durability is not infinite: every caliber has its own lubrication chart, a document signed by the manufacturer specifying which oil, at which point, in which quantity. It is not a detail: it is the reference document I still open at the bench today, after fifty years.

Friction at the escapement is the most costly problem in energy terms. The traditional Swiss lever — born from Mudge in 1755 — transmits less than 33% of the barrel's energy, precisely because of friction between the pallets and the escape wheel teeth. It requires constant lubrication, and when the oil degrades, stability collapses. Breguet already sensed the opposite direction in 1789 with the natural escapement, theoretically free from lubrication. George Daniels revisited that intuition with the patented Co-Axial and then sold it to Omega in 1999: tangential impulse instead of radial, reduced friction, extended maintenance intervals.

The next step was to eliminate oil altogether. Silicon is self-lubricating by nature: its surface reduces friction without chemical additives, it does not corrode, it is lightweight and non-magnetic. When Ulysse Nardin mounted the first silicon components in the Freak in the early 2000s, the point was not aesthetics: it was to remove oil from the equation. Patek Philippe with the Silinvar, IWC with the Diamond Shell on the Portugieser tourbillon — diamond coating on silicon components — and Sinn with DIAPAL technology in 2001 follow the same logic: no oil to change, no programmed degradation.

There is then a use of lubrication that does not concern the movement: Ressence fills the upper chamber of the Type 3 with 35.7 ml of oil not to lubricate in the strict sense, but to eliminate optical refraction between the dial and the sapphire crystal. The oil also lubricates the ROCS system, but the primary reason is optical. It is a case where the fluid changes function without changing nature.

The mi-glace finish on rubies — rounded surface rather than flat, among the criteria of the Poinçon de Genève — also improves oil retention at the contact point. A finishing detail with direct functional consequences.