In my reviews, I always talk with some weird words about how this or that part is finished, those words sound like an intellectual diarrhoea most of the time. For the most part they are in French, so one could argue ... but they do relate to some very interesting technique and produce the nice results on our watch, that we have come to love and sought after. The purpose of this post is to take an easier approach of them, without going into deep history, but only a show and tell about them.

The content of this dictionary will be following the English language since we are in an English speaker forum and that most of the online resources are using the original language for reference, reversing it is in the best interest of this community, in my opinion, but do note that a lot of those terms are mainly used in their original language around the world, so it's best to know both.
Some time there will be no translation of the finish because the same word is used. The dictionary will be composed as follows : The name of the finish or decoration in English - Name of the finish or decoration used by the watch industry [Language of origin] {pronunciation for English speakers in phonetic} - Link to hear it via Google translate in the native language (direct link to the audio file, should play inside the browser, if an error 404 is shown, just hit enter or the equivalent to reload the address of the link, refresh won't work)
It will be followed by a picture or two of the finish (as usual a click on them will open a higher resolution picture). Then you'll find a quick explanation of the technique used to realise it and hidden in a box you'll find a video of how it's done, you'll only have to click the box to reveal the content. Last words of this introduction, most of those finishes were invented at a time when power tools were rare if not non-existent in the watch industry, if a lot of them can me made with power tools and CNC machine, it's not always the case and I'll mention it in the description each time it's worth it. Some techniques can be found in other domains than the watch making, with a different way of doing it, this dictionary only focuses on watchmaking.

This topic is locked, with the help of our beloved staff, to keep it clean, but will be updated in the future, upon requests in the specific topic open for discussions.
Each post can be linked in a review or a topic to explain something, that's why each definition is in an independent post, so that every member has the possibility to link directly to a definition.
Big thanks to Col & the staff for allowing me to do that this way. Discussion thread :