An engine-turned bezel is a watch bezel with a pattern made by a rotating machine. The method is the same as guilloché, though collectors usually say engine-turned. Rolex fitted these bezels to the Turn-O-Graph and the Datejust. It no longer makes them, but discontinued models with one can still be bought second-hand.
What does an engine-turned bezel look like?
On the Rolex Datejust, the bezel shows a repeating pattern of polished ridges with fine lines between them. Some Rolex engine-turned bezels carry a mark for every minute rather than one for every hour. At least six references used this minute style. The Turn-O-Graph had an engine-turned bezel in yellow or white gold with applied numerals. It kept that bezel until the model was dropped in 2011. The last Rolex sold with an engine-turned bezel was reference 115210, which was discontinued in 2016.
Not to be confused with
Rolex’s fluted bezels are, strictly speaking, engine-turned as well. Enthusiasts still treat fluted bezels as a separate category. Rolex makes its fluted bezels only in gold. So a steel engine-turned bezel has a different shine from a white gold fluted one. That difference is one way to tell them apart. Guilloché, by contrast, is not a separate thing. It names the same rotating-machine method, and engine-turned is simply the term collectors tend to use for bezels.
Where it comes from
Engine turning is done on machines such as the rose engine lathe and the straight-line engine. These machines were first used in the 1500s and 1600s on soft materials such as ivory and wood. Only later were they adopted for metals. The first engine-turned watch is said to date from around 1680, decorated with a wave rose pattern. Abraham-Louis Breguet brought guilloché decoration to his watch dials more than two hundred years ago. The word guilloché is often traced to a French engineer named Guillot, but many dictionaries doubt that he existed.
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