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A gold-plated bracelet being linked.
 Other
colors, including gold, are obtained by employing PVD or galvanic plating processes.
The
company is amazingly versatile.
“As
a manufacturer we can do just about anything. We can create designs on demand and finish them any way the customer would like,” Vollmer explains. The factory
works with specialists in the field of PVD in both Germany and France, thus retaining flexibility. One thing Vollmer is not enamored of is having precious gemstones
set into his bracelets. “They can fall out much too easily,” he explains. A specialty he loves to offer, however, is bracelets integrated directly into
a case.
Even
though, strictly speaking, Vollmer (like other bracelet manufacturers) doesn’t actually do a lot of designing, he is always conceiving ways of making his products
more attractive and user-friendly.
This
year his company premiered the new SES system, which stands for “short, easy, short.” The immediate links surrounding the actual clasp can be easily added
or removed by the wearer for an instantaneous adjustment of the bracelet length. The SES system is available in all of the metals and their variations available
from Vollmer.
Hansjörg
Vollmer explains the flexibility of both his factory and his system: “Here we offer work done by hand. We can make many styles, but lower quantities of them.
In the Far East, where machines are more prevalent, they are able to make high numbers of bracelets, but lower amounts of styles.”
At
the Vollmer factory, link bracelets are still put together by hand. Each of the links is pressed from a metal strip by means of a mechanical toggle lever press.
Three, five, or seven links are then put together by hand and pressed by one of the vintage mechanical machines to close the feet that have been inserted into the
precisely drilled holes of the neighbor link. Mesh, or milanaise as it is known in the industry, is also used at Vollmer, though the woven metal is supplied from
another source in Pforzheim in strips, which are carefully cut by a goldsmith and worked to their final shape at Ernst Vollmer GmbH.
Solid Links
“Every
tenth watch bracelet to leave our factory is made of solid individual units. Of course this is the most time-consuming and
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costly method of production. The market today overwhelmingly demands reasonably priced bracelets, and for this type we utilize units of folded sheet metal, which
is punched, pressed and rolled,” explains Vollmer.
When
observing the relative simplicity of a metal bracelet on a watch, it is not apparent how much work has gone into the smoothness, comfort, and design of its manufacture.
But rest assured that the professionals know. Vollmer emphasizes the importance of one often-overlooked aspect in judging watch bracelet quality: “The deployant
clasp must be functional, solid, and stable. After all, this is the part of the watch band that gets used the most.”
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Hansjörg Vollmer
demonstrates how
bracelets are linked
together.
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A goldsmith
at work.
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