The Quintessential American-Made Watch Movement in a Smaller Case: Introducing the RGM Caliber 801/40

RGM Watch Company, named for the initials of its founder, independent watchmaker Roland G. Murphy, is the first American watch company to serially produce a mechanical watch movement since 1969 — the year that Lancaster, PA-based Hamilton pulled up stakes for its current HQ in Switzerland. Murphy, formerly Hamilton’s Technical Manager, founded his own eponymous company in Lancaster County, a historical hotbed of watchmaking, in 1992. His fledgling firm made the watch industry, and the worldwide watch-enthusiast community, take notice when it created, essentially from scratch, the groundbreaking Caliber 801 in 2007 —  a horological milestone that no other watchmaker in the United States had achieved in nearly 40 years. 

Since then, Caliber 801 has come to define RGM’s distinctive and still very exclusive product family — the brand still makes only around 300 pieces annually — along with its dedication to classically vintage aesthetics, which evoke the bygone days when America reigned supreme as a watchmaking nation. Up until now, however, the smallest RGM watch you could get that housed the Caliber 801 movement, 90 percent of which is made in the U.S.A. and finished and assembled in Lancaster County, was 42mm — not huge, but still a bit intimidating for some would-be owners as case sizes continue to trend smaller. This week, RGM answers that constituency's prayers with the release of the Caliber 801/40 model, whose 40mm stainless steel case represents, according to the company, the smallest possible size capable of accommodating the in-house Caliber 801.

Like its larger predecessors in the 801 family — the original 43.3mm Pennsylvania series and the 42mm models that followed — the Caliber 801/40 offers a wealth of impressive, historically inspired details and artisanal finishing, most evident in the “double sunk” grand feu enamel dial, evocative of those of vintage pocket watches. The painstaking, tradition-steeped process to create the dial begins with individually enameling each of the three individual pieces — outer ring, inset central dial, and doubly inset small-seconds subdial, hence “double sunk” — and soldering them together. The high-risk grand feu enameling technique, which takes its name from the French for “big fire,” requires the expertise of a skilled master craftsman — for this watch, one based in Switzerland; the dial is the only major component of the watch not made in the U.S.A. 

The process involves repeated baking of successive layers of enamel at extremely high temperatures, with each layer slowly building up to ensure incredible depth for the finished dial as well as a crisp white, translucent surface. These results are not achieved without difficulty: the repeated use of extreme heat means that every time the dial is re-fired, a new opportunity arises for dust, bubbles, or cracking to warp the dial’s surface. Each dial is, in a sense, a work of Old World horological art, and its pure enamel surface hosts an array of elements drawn from classical American-made watches from the 19th and early 20th Century. These include Roman numerals for the hours; Arabic numerals for the minutes and seconds; a minute track with tiny pyramid-shaped markers at the five-minute intervals; and a railroad-style track around the small seconds subdial at 6 o’clock. Driving home the vintage character is the use of blued steel Breguet-style hands for the hour and minute. 

Measuring precisely 40.3mm in diameter and a slender 9.3mm thick, the stainless steel case has a box-shaped sapphire crystal over the dial and a fluted crown with RGM’s Pennsylvania-inspired, engraved keystone insignia. Another sapphire window in the caseback shows off the watch’s namesake movement, the manually wound Caliber 801, with its plethora of tributes to historical American watchmaking. Among them are classical bridge shapes reminiscent of the legendary Edward Howard watch from the fondly remembered, Waltham, Massachusetts-based Keystone-Howard Watch Company; a five-tooth winding click derived from the American-invented motor barrel within the famed Illinois Bunn Special, a legendary railroad pocket watch; and a host of hand-executed finishes including perlage, anglage, and circular damascening. The movement’s provenance, “Lancaster, Penna,” is proudly touted on one of the bridges.

Following in the tradition of other RGM watches, the RGM 801/40 offers a variety of customization options. Customers can special-order several additional dial variations, including the World War I-style “Corps of Engineers” dial, with its large Arabic hour numerals and central sweep seconds, or the handmade, engine-turned dial of the 801/40-E models. On the technical side, RGM can add features like hacking seconds, wolf’s-teeth winding wheels, custom engravings on the bridges, and a swan’s neck regulator in place of an index. In its core iteration, the watch comes on an alligator leather strap (20mm lug width) and retails for $14,900.