ROLEX BEZEL TYPE - The Chronoclub

ROLEX BEZEL TYPE

But first lets identify for those who started loving the watches just now what is the bezel?

A watch bezel describes the outer ring that holds the crystal/ plexi/ plastic glass that protects the dial of the watch. You can find it in yellow, white gold, platinum, steel and ceramic.

The Types of ROLEX BEZEL

The 5th digit in the Rolex reference number tells us what type of bezel the watch has.

ROLEX BEZEL TYPE: SMOOTH

Smooth Rolex Bezel, where the bezel material is smooth without any signs or any decoration is considered as the simplest version of bezel. Its clean cut can be found in steel, gold and platinum.Engine Turned Bezel

ROLEX BEZEL TYPE: DOOMED

Can be found as smooth and Doomed Bezel and frankly it can be considered quite the same for many BUT the difference is that doomed is a little bit more curved and when we are discussing high end watches this little details can make all the difference.

ROLEX BEZEL TYPE: FLUTED

The idea behind the creation of the Rolex fluted bezel was to create a bezel that would screw it down onto the glass and that would protect the mechanism and ensure that the watch would be waterproof.

It was introduced to the market almost a century ago, in 1926 when Rolex presented Rolex Oyster a watch that sealed and protected its mechanism like an oyster, and secure the watch mechanism from dust and water.

ROLEX BEZEL TYPE: ENGINE TURNED

The Rolex Bezel Engine Turned is created with engine turning that said it means rotating and it has an engraved or cutting pattern that distinguish them from the other bezels. Rolex Engine Turned Bezel is currently discontinued.

ROLEX BEZEL TYPE: BARK

The Rolex Bark Bezel has this distinguish and characteristic finish on its bezel easy to spot and identify.

ROLEX BEZEL TYPE: PYRAMIDE

Rolex Pyramide Bezel has this distinguish triangular signs at the bezel that looks like Pyramides.

ROLEX BEZEL TYPE: ROTATING

Spotted in GMT Master, the bezel that rotates and in GMT can give you the indication for the divers of the underwater meters.

Want to learn more about Rolex History? Check out our article that describes how everything started.

Feel free to contact and share your thoughts with us your feedback is important as we are trying to create a unique interactive community for all the watch fanatics.

Author

Julien Favre

Vallée de Joux, Switzerland — Contributing Editor, high complications & independent watchmaking
Julien Favre learned the difference between good silence and bad silence before he was ten. Good silence was his grandfather at the bench in Le Sentier, loupe screwed into one eye, breathing shallow over a disassembled minute repeater. Bad silence was the moment a hairspring pinged off the peg-wood and disappeared into the floorboards. The family atelier — three generations of movement servicing for the maisons that carpet the Vallée de Joux — was never framed as a legacy Julien was expected to join. It simply was the house, the way weather is the house in a mountain valley.
He resisted it, predictably. He studied economics in Lausanne and spent two years in Geneva watch retail, selling the objects rather than opening them. What pulled him back was not sentiment but frustration: he found he could describe why a movement was beautiful far better than anyone selling it could, because he had seen its underside. He started writing — first a blog dissecting finishing under macro photography, then commissioned work for the trade press, then features that treated escapements the way music critics treat a fugue.
Julien now covers high complications, restoration, and the fragile economics of independent watchmaking for European and English-language titles. His reporting is unusually technical without being cold; he is as interested in the person hunched over the bench as in the tolerances they hold. He is skeptical of hype, allergic to press-release adjectives, and reliably the first to notice when a "revolutionary" caliber is a reworked ébauche.
He still returns to the family workshop each winter to service a single pocket watch on his grandfather's bench — a discipline, he says, that keeps his writing honest. A critic who cannot do the thing risks worshipping it.
Byline version: Julien Favre is a contributing editor covering high complications and independent watchmaking. He grew up in a movement-servicing atelier in the Vallée de Joux and still works the family bench each winter

Author