Photos: hytwatches.com
If you didn’t know them, you should definitely check them out. HYT’s Hydromechanical Horologists mix mechanics and liquid within a wristwatch. Two flexible reservoirs with a capillary attached at each end. In one, a coloured liquid; in the other, a transparent one. Keeping them apart is the repulsion force of the molecules in each fluid.
The hours are indicated by the coloured liquid released from a flexible reservoir compressed by a piston. These reservoirs, or bellows, are located at six o’clock and are made from a supple alloy. The first coloured liquid travels through the capillary pushing the transparent one back into its own reservoir and then returning to its original position at six o’clock in what is referred to as a retrograde manner.
The secret that gets the reservoirs going? Two bellows made of a highly resistant, flexible alloy, each driven by a piston. And this is where watchmaking comes in to activate the system.
One would naturally assume that the starting point for the Skull Bad Boy was the skull itself, unveiled by HYT in 2015.
This is not just a simple aesthetic variation, this opaque black, so simple to look at, took more than 12 months to develop. Like the four other colours developed by HYT, the black version has its own chemical properties. These affect attributes such as viscosity, expansion coefficient and UV resistance.
Chemistry was one concern, but aesthetics was another. Creating a black fluid is not without its problems: whilst the other colours created by HYT are able to reflect all or some of the light they receive, black absorbs everything. The inevitable result is that it is impossible to read the time on the Skull Bad Boy in the dark.
HYT wanted to create a skull with the distinctive appearance of Damascus steel, used for knives and Samurai swords and of course with this new black liquid.
Discover them HERE.
