When you hear the words “luxury hunting firearms”, you probably first think about British gunmakers. Needless to say that Holland & Holland is one of the most known of these companies. Apparently, F.P. Journe is like the Holland & Holland of watchmaking world in that both companies share a similar passion and pursuit of excellence in their crafts. That’s how Daryl Greatrex, the managing director of Holland & Holland, and Francois Paul Journe, the founder of F.P. Journe describe the similarity of their companies in the video embedded below.

Now just imagine what will be the result of a collaboration of Rolls Royces of gun making and watchmaking worlds. In 2017, the two companies teamed up to produce watches which dials are made of Damascus steel sourced from Holland & Holland shotgun barrels.

In order to make this project possible, Holland & Holand sacrificed some of their museum gems dating second half of the 19th century. They cut the Damascus steel barrels of these shotguns. The barrel sections then were separated from each other, split and flattened resulting in flat pieces of Damascus steel. The material was sent to Geneve, where F.P. Journe masters cut the watch dials from. The cut dials once more traveled back to London to be re-browned in the Holland & Holland premises. The final finish highlighted again the wonderful Damascus steel pattern.

Cut and separated pieces of Damascus steel barrels

After the described processes, the Damascus steel dials were handed to F.P. Journe to ultimately become incredible timepieces. The video embedded below tells about how these watches were made.

In the next episode, you can see the final product and learn about some of the technical solutions that the company incorporated into the design of these watches.

As seen in the video, there were only 66 dials and watches made. Reportedly, such a watch will cost its buyer 45,000 CHF which is about $47,500 by today’s exchange rates.

Images and videos from www.hollandandholland.com