Hello and today you know what, it’s my birthday
again and how fantastic is this as I am to discover with you guys another great timepiece,
this time coming from Akrivia and I wouldn’t be surprised if not that many of you ever
heard of this brand and that’s totally fine. It’s niche, it’s small, 50 watches per
year, it’s interesting, it’s creative, it’s technical, proposes super high end
finishing and the guy behind it, Rexhep Rexhepi, well he is young, he’s a very talented watchmaker,
a cool smart guy and on top of it him and his team are our neighbours.

Yes just next door to TheWATCHES.club here
in the Old Town of Geneva, you will find Akrivia’s atelier and I promise that we will do some
additional videos regarding them, because it’s a fresh brand that enjoys a very reputable
followership by respected collectors around the world, well it’s kind of hype, but for
some good reasons. Anyhow let’s get back to the subject of
the day; my birthday and the unboxing of this AK-06 timepiece that comes with it. Obviously a nice wooden box, chic and sturdy,
simple presentation; microfiber cloth on the left side, nice wooden loupe on the right
and in the middle this very nice looking AK-06. Though the Akrivia brand is pretty young,
was started in 2012, well this watch is in fact the first non tourbillon timepiece developed
by them in 2017. I will now put my gloves and thanks the comment
of one of you guys, I will wear non black gloves to help out a bit with the contrast. So one could say that it’s a simple 3-hander
with power reserve indication, but there is naturally a bit more to this with some very
very cool technical features; not only a stop second, but also a 0-seconds reset function
and I will get back to this.

Ok, first in terms of design it uses a case
shape quite recognizable for Akrivia watches. It’s made out of titanium, so a pretty light
watch of course, you have these rather large lugs with polished edges mixed with brushed
parts and this case must be pretty hard to manufacture with these shapes in shape features. In terms of size we are talking 41mm. in width
and a thickness of 9.9mm., a good sized crown, makes it comfortable to handle and wind and
set your watch, so nice proportions, sits just nicely on my wrist. But in terms of decoration, well you immediately
see that we are in high end watchmaking territory. It’s not open worked, but still, you can
see quite a lot of mechanical things happening on the dial side and if I flip around, well
again you can clearly see the exquisite level of finishing I was referring to before. Every component is finished by hand and simply
by looking at it, you can feel it and of course if I use the loupe that comes with, well this
is really a very pleasant spectacle, the angling of the components is just so refined, the
cote de Genève on that German silver base plate is just so ever so slightly uneven and
you feel the human hand behind it, that large spectacular polished central bridge, the small
perlage, that delicately hammered dial, these special hands, well yes, this is a fine timepiece.

But I do get that for some, maybe the golden
aspect of the dial and base plate might not suit everyone, but at the same time this is
what creates contrast and let’s you precisely enjoy better the quality of these components. But let’s now talk technique! At 12 o’clock, you have a small power reserve
sub counter and this watch holds 100 hours of power reserve thanks to a single barrel
set precisely under this indicator, so yes 100 hours, that’s a comfortable amount of
reserve for this manual winding watch and like I mentioned before, the crown has a good
size, it makes it pleasant and easy to wind, but now comes the real specificity of this
watch and this I find so cool and practical at the same time.

When you want to set the time, this actually
not only stops the second hand that you see in the counter at 6 o’clock, and actually
this is a feature that you see quite often in high end watches since it helps you be
precise when you’re setting the time, but here we go one step further; when you pull
the crown, the second hand actually is reset to the zero position, look at this and I will
do it a couple of times for you to clearly see it. So the main difference with “normal” stop
seconds mechanism is that you, as the wearer, you have to choose when you want to stop it
and generally you will also choose the zero position, but you can always be just this
tad off, 59 seconds or 01 seconds, but in this case, you don’t have to worry about,
it’s the watch’s mechanism that sets it automatically to this 0 position and when
you push back the crown, off it goes. Ok you may still have the risk of pushing
it back at 59 or 01, but at least it really halves the chances of messing it up.

How cool is that and I really do like that
all the mechanical action required to achieve this, whether simply winding it or setting
it, is actually visible on the dial side with the interaction of all these components seen
there. So a cool watch, nice features, it’s limited
to 25 pieces in this execution with its titanium case and like I said a very interesting brand
and I hope we’ll see more of our neighbours soon on this channel! Hope you enjoyed this, all the very best and
Viva Watchmaking..