HYT crosses over to the Dark Side with the Skull Bad Boy

NEUCHATEL, SWITZERLAND, February 22, 2016

Skull. Bad. Boy.

Need we say more? The name really says it all. Its appearance speaks volumes, yet masks a stunning complexity. There's more to the skull than meets the eye!

Back to black

One would naturally assume that the starting point for the Skull Bad Boy was the skull itself, unveiled by HYT in 2015. Not so. The creative impetus actually came from the new liquid which surrounds it. www.hytwatches.com

This is not a simple aesthetic variation. This opaque black, so simple to look at, took more than 12 months to develop. Like the four other colours developed by HYT, the black version has its own chemical properties. These affect attributes such as viscosity, expansion coefficient and UV resistance.

Its creation meant going back to scratch. The goal? To create a fluid able to adapt to the constraints of an HYT movement, which does not adhere to the wall of the capillary, can hold a meniscus and does not interact on a molecular level with the elements it comes into contact with. The result was achieved in autumn 2015 before undergoing several weeks of testing to confirm its chemical stability.

Black...out

Chemistry was one concern, but aesthetics was another. Creating a black fluid is not without its problems: whilst the other colours created by HYT are able to reflect all or some of the light they receive, black absorbs everything. The inevitable result is that it is impossible to read the time on the Skull Bad Boy in the dark.

To go with this new black liquid, HYT wanted to create a skull with the distinctive appearance of Damascus steel, used for knives and Samurai swords. The dial comprises two half-moons decorated with the "Clous de Paris" stud pattern. Its indexes are created in a Gothic font, complementing the Skull Bad Boy's hard rock look.

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ABOUT HYT

HYT’s Hydromechanical Horologists mix mechanics and liquid within a wristwatch.

Two flexible reservoirs with a capillary attached at each end. In one, a coloured liquid; in the other, a transparent one. Keeping them apart is the repulsion force of the molecules in each fluid.

The hours are indicated by the coloured liquid released from a flexible reservoir compressed by a piston. These reservoirs, or bellows, are located at six o’clock and are made from a supple alloy. The first coloured liquid travels through the capillary pushing the transparent one back into its own reservoir and then returning to its original position at six o’clock in what is referred to as a retrograde manner.

The secret that gets the reservoirs going? Two bellows made of a highly resistant, flexible alloy, each driven by a piston. And this is where watchmaking comes in to activate the system.