How To Craft a Milanese Bracelet Or Any Types of Chains

Hello and welcome on TheWATCHES.tv and today we will discover together how you craft a Milanese bracelet and actually any type of chains used for a bracelet and you'll see that there are endless possibilities, really surprising and quite amazing. And to learn about this, well we visited the workshop of Laurent Joliet, the very last person who has been trained and is still in business to craft this by hand since everything has been industrialized since. But you know us and we do like to put forward these artisans contributing to the art of watchmaking, so let's meet Laurent and I quickly wanted to add that even though we're talking metal bracelets, well there is in fact something quite organic when you have this on your wrist, it's extremely comfortable and how classy is it to have your own chain bracelet made by hand simply for you. Quite cool, no? Ok, so now let's clearly understand what it takes to craft a chain and a Milanese bracelet, starting from raw material to the assembled and finished object. In this case, Laurent starts with bars of silver which are pressed in this machine until a particular size is attained, but this square wire is still rough and he will now go through another elongation process to refine it till the desired size. The square wire is then filed to sharpen its edges, properly measured and it is now ready to be used to create the links of your chain. Ok, let's now talk Milanese bracelet and in this case, instead of a square base wire, Laurent will use a round wire. The idea is to tighten the wire a little more, if I press a little more because I have more nerves or I let go a little more, I will have spires that will vary by one tenth. One tenth is nothing, but on the 100 spires that we are going to mount, it's huge. The key is to have regularity in the tightening of the fingers so that we are as regular as possible so that we don't get bored while assembling because the less regular it is, the less it goes up. Here are the spires. So now we look to see if the spires go correctly into each other without having to force it because otherwise we will deform everything. We cut at the right length. We go up, spire after spire, and so on. It's just a matter of patience. Then we cut the surplus. The goal is to have a beautiful cross to be able to weld in the middle of the cross. This is what will give the flexibility. If we are wrong when we weld, nothing moves. We have to weld the same on one side and the other. There is still no welding, there is nothing. We just can't turn them because we can't get them out yet. After that, I get to a width like that. At first we didn't know. It was by learning, by doing one or two pieces, that I said to myself, it's true that it's nicer with the joinery, it's more difficult because we are on larger surfaces. We make a chain that someone else has never made before. With the joinery, you start with pieces, stones. Here we really highlight metallurgy. It gives a piece with a movement, with a story, something infinite. We say, we've already done this one, but we can always do it with another thread, another form of thread, another size. We put our heads together to imagine the piece in space so that it can work. There are a lot of prototypes that you haven't seen that have never worked. That's what's interesting. We are always in doubt and we are always looking to find something. The chain made by hand will normally be much more compact because we can try to find the stitches, even if it's a bit difficult, by forcing it a little bit so that a machine can't. It's a machine, it has to be able to work, it has to be able to move, it has to be simple. A complicated chain will never be seen by the machine. Besides, we see what's in the trade. Everyone has the same thing. I think people don't realize that if I order a chain made by hand, I'll get it in a month, two months. Now people are impatient. They order it the next day, it has to be at home. So what's the life expectancy of a good chain bracelet? A good chain bracelet, 30 years every day. That's about it. You know very well that when you make a unique watch, you won't get it right away either. There are months of waiting, changes. You can always come back to your decision by saying, I would like more this or that. When you buy something in the trade, it's delivered, it's delivered. The principle is that it has a soul and I like to see the person who sees the piece for the first time. That's it, that's his look. And that's where we see if we have succeeded in our challenge or not. So as you can see, there are multiple ways of making these links intertwine with each other, resulting in very different types of design. And the only limits are the ones of Laurent's creativity and the number of hours he's willing to spend. So let's discover another example of chain. We are on a Chinese chain. So it's a seamless assembly. So all the stitches can slide. It has extraordinary mobility. Always check that you don't make a mistake with the stitches. Nothing at all. One tenth, almost. One tenth, it doesn't go up. So here it's very easy because it's been studied well. But at the beginning, when you start in there, it's a hassle. We have a day that is regular between the first and the last. That it's not shocking, that you don't see the different falls visually by saying it's here, here, here, that the stitches change. Very fluid. I'm the last to make so many chains. Then there are a few artisans who make some chains that they have learned. But there is not a large panel of chains. They have a few pieces, a few ideas. But they may not have had the training I had. And all those I've known in this training are no longer in the field. So it disappears. It's a bit of the end. It's very sad, especially for the field, for what we lose. The day when there will be no more, there will be no more. People will say, ah, there is no more. But now is the time to ask the question. It's not in 20 years. But beyond his chain expertise, Laurent also demonstrated how you can repair a serious dent, for instance on a watch case, and not by only polishing it and therefore removing material, but by adding metal by laser and then polishing it. And you won't see a thing. For a watch that was a little worn and that has two or three bumps, and we are afraid that the polisher will round everything or that the facets will not come out identical, we are going to do a little test. Ouch! So we broke the angle. And now I'm going to charge the piece with a laser and do a repair so that it is as it was originally. I usually add the material of the original piece so that there is no stain. Laurent has all types of metals available to him to perform these kind of repairs, depending on the case's material. I have all the colors, all the possible and imaginable styles of gold. So here we have a 16% grey gold, here we have a 15% palladium grey gold, here we have a 950 platinum. Now we are going to do a repair by removing a minimum of material. You can clearly see the original plates that are found on this side, without having to round the piece. Ok, good as new! Today restoration is a big part of Laurent's activity, fixing for instance old Milanese bracelets where some of these metal turns have been damaged or worn out. But coming back on his training, Laurent has been trained as a jeweler and as he explained, at the time this chain making craftsmanship was included in the overall training, but today there is a real challenge since there is no proper training for this craft and Laurent is therefore really worried that we will lose these skills and he is trying his best to put it back on the menu. Now we are asking again to the state with the Assemébie association to redo this training, a training of maybe 12 years, but will it be possible to do it? Will it not be possible? In any case, we are on the course and if there is no enthusiasm, it will be of no use. Someone who is going to learn this craft really needs to have work behind it and to be able to live from it and to be able to let go a little bit. So I would like to restart this training, but then I have to have the partners who will lead me to be able to do it. All alone, it's just impossible. It will never be the complete training I had, but at least there would be a hell of a base to be able to learn the rest over time. It would be nice. So yes, quite a challenge ahead, but as Laurent said, having people trained is one thing, but having customer brands using these crafts in their new creation, well that's another thing and obviously I greatly wish that brands will indeed reuse this know-how on some high-end pieces and for individuals, why not ask to have one made specifically made for you? There's a really nice piece of bespoke craftsmanship done just for your loved timepiece and if you're interested, don't hesitate to ask for this. I hope you enjoyed this. Thanks for watching and sharing. All the very best to you and Viva Watchmaking!