Smoked Crystal

A smoked sapphire dial lying over a working mechanical movement. The glass is tinted, so the wheels and the bridges show through it veiled and colored, and the tint deepens toward the rim where there is more glass to look through. The date and the weather are cut clean through that glass, so they are the two things on the dial that read at full contrast.

• The glass: a smoked sapphire slab over the whole movement, with its own cut edge showing as a fine bright ring. Everything under it is seen through the tint, at about a third of its own contrast and pulled toward the color.
• The movement underneath: a going train laid out as a real caliber. A barrel of 72 teeth driving a 10-leaf center pinion, a center wheel of 64, an escape wheel of 20 teeth, 28,800 beats an hour, and one turn of the barrel in 7.2 hours.
• What turns: the third wheel once in 450 seconds, the fourth once a minute, the escape wheel once in five, and the lever and the balance beating across the bottom of the plate. The motion work and the barrel turn too slowly to see.
• Date on a real ring: a disc printed 1 to 31, driven off the hour wheel and stepping once a day. The whole ring shows through the smoke, and the one date at the aperture is read through a hole cut in the glass, white on black with a polished chamfer round the cut.
• Weather in a second aperture: ten sky states printed round a second solid wheel, among them sun, moon, cloud, sun behind cloud, rain, thunder, sleet and snow. The wheel turns to bring the current one under its opening, and the moon states show after dark.
• Applied markers: polished faceted batons standing on top of the glass, casting real shadows onto it. They are the brightest thing on the dial.
• The reflection: a broad band of light across the crystal, added over the whole dial and over the hands with it.
• Hours and minutes: two central hands in polished steel, each cut with its own flat filed faces.
• Three glasses: Blue, Graphite and Bronze. Changing the glass changes the wheels, the printing and the two apertures together.
• Always-on display: the dial stays on the screen, dimmed, with the movement, both hands, the date and the weather still readable.
• Made for each screen: the dial is cut and rendered at its own size for every watch it supports, round or rectangular, down to the smallest.
• The glass color and how long the movement runs after a wrist raise (10 seconds, 5 seconds or off) are both adjustable. Everything is drawn on the watch - no account, no phone app.