d.m.h jumping hour

Independent watch maker d.m.h has a new model with jumping hour and minutes. The new jumping hour is based on a vintage Tenor Dorly movement that was used in many futuristic watches from the 60′s and 70′s.

Last year I was one of the lucky few to be able to get a d.m.h watch. Fred Dingemans, the man behind Dingemans Mechanische Horloges (d.m.h in short) only makes 12 pieces a year. At the beginning of this year Fratellowatches already wrote about d.m.h’s newest watch with jumping hours and minutes. Now d.m.h offers this watch with a titanium dial… and it looks sweet!

All d.m.h watches have a so-called new old stock (N.O.S.) movement; a movement that spent it’s live in a drawer without ever been used in a watch. This means the movement is brand new after nothing more that a full service and adjustment. This specific watch has a Tenor Dorly movement, which was used in funky and futuristic looking watches in the 60′s and 70′s. On the internet you won’t find much information about Tenor Dorly watches or movements. So let me give you an idea about this brand and it’s “fashionable futuristic watches”.

click on the image to enlarge

The above watches are courtesy of 70′s Watch Gallery. Just look at some of the designs!

Not all of these watches are made by Tenor Dorly, however (most likely) all of these watches have a Tenor Dorly movement inside. And that’s one of the remarkable things about this brand. According to the Tenor Dorly website, this brand was founded in 1924. Two other sources (of the few you can find) say the brand was founded in the 1950′s as Tenor S.A. and mainly focussed on the production of watches and movements. In 1970 Tenor Dorly introduced their own caliber family that was widely used by other watch brands.

Tenor Dorly jump-hour movements are fully jewelled that made them far superior in quality to the great majority of Swiss jump-hour movements. In 1974 the Tenor Dorly automatic caliber became the base for the smallest automatic chronograph of that time. It was designed by Dubois-Depraz and produced by Kelek. If you are into watches for some time you might have seen this Kelek Automatic Chronograph.

Due to the use of the Tenor Dorly base movement, the hours and minute are displayed ‘digitally’. To display the time measured by the chronograph, normal hands where used. The above Kelek is a classic amongst chronograph collectors. Different watch brands produced similar models, using TD(B)K (Tenor-Dorly-Kelek) movements.

In 1975, this small company went bankrupt due to contemporary development of the quartz watch.

Now back to the new d.m.h jump-hour watch. For the new version d.m.h made the dial of titanium. All parts of d.m.h watches, except the movement, hands, crystal and o-rings, are made by Fred Dingemans himself. So the titanium dial is also made on his own milling machine.

The case and complete crown mechanism are also made in his workshop. I think the titanium dial looks very good on this watch. Here some specifications of the watch:

• case: stainless steel
• case back: screwed with crystal
• diameter: 40 mm
• water resistant: 50 meter
• caliber: Tenor Dorly automatic
• functions: hours, minutes, sweeping seconds, date

In the dial engraved is the brand name “d.m.h” at the 12 position and between the 4 and 5 position “waterdicht”, which means waterproof in Dutch. The date can be seen just below the hour disk.

Now let’s end with the usual wrist shot and let me know what you think of the new d.m.h jumping hours.

For more information look at the d.m.h website.

Related posts:

1. New Raymond Weil with Jumping Hour complication
2. Hands-on with the Habring Jumping Second with Power Reserve
3. Habring Jumping Seconds
4. Weekly Watch Photo – d.m.h

Tags: Independent Watchmaking

This entry was posted on 21/04/2010 at 18:14 and is filed under d.m.h. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.