Mille RM 038 Tourbillon

As part of its marketing efforts, Richard Mille bestows its watches to ambassadors. In January 2011, Richard Mille unveiled its new RM 038 Golf WatchIn 2011 and decided to let Bubby Watson wear it. Back than, the question was Bubba who? A few days ago Bubba Watson won the 2012 Masters Golf Tournament. No one is going to be asking who Bubba Watson is anymore.  For watch aficionados, as interesting as the award of the green jacket to Bubba Watson was trying to figure out what was that white watch that he wore on his wrist.

Mille RM 038 Tourbillon. The first thing one notices about the Mille RM 038 is the white case. The case is made of a a light alloy called Magnesium-Aluminium AZ91. This alloy is composed of magnesium 90% and aluminium 8.9%. The result is the creation of a very light metal material. The alloy is given an electro-plasma oxidation treatment named Titalyt II resulting in the white color of the case. This process also improves both hardness, as well scratch and corrosion resistance of the alloy. The case case which measures 48mm x 39.70mm x 12.80mm is also water resistant to 50 meters.

The watch has no dial, revealing the in house movement inside the tourbillon movement inside. The manually wound movement beats at 21,600 vibrations per hours and has a 48 hour power reserve. Given that the watch has no second hand the slower 21,600 vph pace of the movement is fine. 

  

Tourbillon. Developed in1795 by the French-Swiss watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet the tourbillon was designed for clocks. A clock is placed or mounted in a fixed position, with thus the wear and tear ib the escapement and balance wheel would suffer greater wear and tear on the "bottom" of the assembly. Over time, this would result in loss of timekeeping accuracy. The tourbillon aims to counter the effects of gravity by mounting the escapement and balance wheel in a rotating cage, to negate the effect of gravity when the timepiece, and thus the escapement, is stuck in a certain position.

While originally an attempt to improve accuracy, tourbillons are still included in some expensive modern watches as a novelty and demonstration of watchmaking prowess. The Mille RM 038 displays the intricate movement nicely behind its dial free face.