New Keyless Mechanism for the 248

We’ve designed a new patent-pending keyless variation for our 2nd and 3rd Editions of Project 248 that transforms a traditional English pin-set mechanism into a contemporary crown operated system.

Movement designs from the late-19th century, from which we draw our structural inspiration, required a pin in the case band close to the winding crown which needs to be pressed in at the same time as the crown is turned to set the time. This was replaced by improved systems, pioneered in Switzerland, that allowed the crown to be pulled out for hand setting and is the system most of us think of in modern watchmaking today.

Aside from making hand setting a little bit more fiddly, a downside of the pin set mechanism was that it created a point of entry which allowed for water or dirt ingress. Part of our design ethos for Project 248 has been bringing traditional 19th-century watchmaking into the 21st century, so improving this mechanism to match modern Swiss equivalents was an essential part of that process. The result is a keyless mechanism that manages to look as though it could have been make 150 years ago whilst matching the functionality of any modern system.