Another Untalked About Independent - Steffen Pahlow

by **bryanhiler** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 3:56 pm

What would make me spend over $300 for a book that is only printed in German, when I don't even know German well and will have to brush up on the language a lot to even read the book?

Steffen Pahlow!

He is a German watchmaker who specializes in tourbillons and has written what to my knowledge is the most complete resource on the subject available. If you go to his website you can see some pictures of pages of the book and the details.

I'm not sure if he even makes complete, unique watches for sale like most of the Independent watchmaking brands (let's face it, that's what they are). I think he mainly makes unique pieces or uses existing watches as platforms for his tourbillon escapements?

Take some time and go to his website. He has an extensive website with high-quality pictures of all of his collection of rare (mostly German) watchmaking lathes and tools. He even puts the tool's estimated value next to it (I don't think he is selling them, but it's a good resource to know what to expect if you find a similar tool). He also has a section of the various horological books in his library which is very nice because I found a few titles and authors that I hadn't known about before. Of course he also has some video clips of tourbillons and pictures of his watches he made/modified as well as those in his collection. He has a very detailed account of the restoration he did to an antique A. Lange & Söhne watch (Google translated "Lange & Söhne" very literally to "be enough & sons") which is very interesting.

If you want to buy the book, email him and he will sell you the book directly. Unless you are German and know about all the German horological booksellers, you probably won't get it any other way. If there's enough interest, it might be worth it to him to have an English version printed? $300 is a lot, but it is worth it to any watchmaker who wishes to at the very least understand completely, if not actually to make , this high-grade train construction method.

Here is the German-language website:

http://www.s1p.de/04_u/04_ix.html

Here is the Google-translated English-language version of the website:

http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... soft:en-us

I originally posted this over at the TZ forum, but thought people here would also be interested in checking out Steffen Pahlow's work and website.

~Bryan

by **Curtis** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 9:15 pm

Hi Bryan,

I purchased this book a couple of years ago and have emailed with Steffen a couple of times - he was very pleasant and some one I would like to meet some day. His book and website are very informative.

Thanks for the post!

Cheers,

Curtis

by **Lourival** » Fri Mar 05, 2010 9:21 am

bryanhiler wrote:I originally posted this over at the TZ forum, but thought people here would also be interested in checking out Steffen Pahlow's work and website.

~Bryan

He has many videos on Youtube about his work. Very nice!

by **Paul Loatman** » Sat Apr 24, 2010 10:01 pm

Lourival wrote:
bryanhiler wrote:I originally posted this over at the TZ forum, but thought people here would also be interested in checking out Steffen Pahlow's work and website.

~Bryan

He has many videos on Youtube about his work. Very nice!

There's a new video about his first watch. (New to me at least)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ace8JClm0g0

There's some processes about his tourbillon making that i never thought of before in this particular video, it's interesting to see his actual work because in his book it's mostly diagrams, very carefully and painstakingly made diagrams, but there's nothing like the actual thing.