Oris Takes to the Skies With New Caliber 473

In the tenth year of the Oris in-house movement initiative, the Swiss brand just announced a new hand-wound movement: Calibre 473, built on the same base as the Oris Calibre 403 with automatic winding. The movement includes hour, minute, small seconds and pointer date hands, and a 120-hour power reserve, now with an indicator on the reverse. Like every movement in the 400 series, Oris Calibre 473 is highly resistant against magnetic fields, it comes with up to 10 years of warranty, and it has a 10-year recommended service interval. On top of that, the watch brand guarantees an accuracy of +5/-3 seconds per day. According to Oris, the movement took four years to develop and happens to also be its tenth in-house calibre since 2014.

The new movement powers the 38-mm Big Crown Calibre 473 with blue dial (ref. 473 7786 4065-07 5 19 22FC). The case is water resistant to 50 meters and equipped with sapphire crystals on both sides. The distance from lug-to-lug is 45.5mm and the height close to 13mm (which means it is slightly thicker than the automatic version, due to the additional power reserve indication on the movement). As the name suggests, the watch also comes with the traditional, conveniently large crown at 3 o'clock.

Ulrich W. Herzog, Chairman of Oris, says: "Caliber 473 is based on our Caliber 400 and offers the same base performance. But it’s manually wound and has a power reserve indication on its reverse, an indispensable feature for a hand-wound caliber with such a long power reserve. We also designed this indication to be simple to produce and assemble, and to be highly durable, and we’ve filed a patent for it."

Oris has also developed a new stainless steel butterfly folding clasp with a fine adjustment system. For the strap, Oris went with a new partner, Cervo Volante. Every year, 15,000 wild red deer are culled to prevent damage to Switzerland’s countryside. Cervo Volante collects their valuable hides, so they don’t go to waste. Cervo Volante began its journey during the 2017 and 2018 hunting seasons. In each of those years, the start-up collected approximately 1,400 hides, which were then transformed into high-quality leather products. Today, Cervo Volante offers shoes, accessories, and winter coats. And now also watch straps and rolls. The leather is prepared in the canton of Bern using a traditional, purely vegetable-based barrel tanning method that is free of chromium and synthetic pre-tanning agents.