Black Badger Talks: D'Arc Matter Part Two

A quick recap from last week…

A few years after acquiring a small bag of slate from the set of Star Wars from my good friend Paul, I was outside my apartment in Gothenburg, Swden, playing with my kids.

I look over and see how my son has managed to remove a small flat chunk of black stone from the large fountain in front of our building.

As I’m crumbling this crappy black shale stone in my hand, a lightbulb goes on in my head: this is the same kind of crappy shale I got from Paul a few years before. Too brittle to do anything with. At least that’s what I’d thought…

But what about busting it down to nothing and casting it back as a type of reinforced stone composite? In theory that should work right?

But the hell do I firstly get enough stone off this fountain without picking up a civic vandalism charge, and then how do you grind it up enough to be castable?

Well, the answer to the first part is none of your damn business.

But the moment that pulled all of this together was while having a pint with the most hipster of friends who had the most hipster of hobbies. He bought and renovated vintage industrial espresso grinders.

See where I’m going here?

I managed to obtain an old workhorse bean grinder and, as you do, set about feeding spoonfuls of shale gravel into it. Safety third, kids!

I was more than happily surprised that the machine was not only able to grind the stone but also did an excellent job of it. The resulting fine stone powder was then recast with resin into small tiles which we CNC milled our D’Arc Matter series from.

And as everyone loves Easter eggs…a few of the very first D’Arc Matter dials actually had tint brown flecks in them…remnants of years-old espresso beans.

And as the ultimate Easter egg, all of the D’Arc Matter dials contain some of the material I received from Paul a few years before — material from an actual Star Wars film set. We could have told you that from the beginning, but that wouldn’t be very piratey of us, now, would it?

It’s around 13:00. James shuts down the lightsaber, lays it on the work counter, and wanders into the dark room section of the Badger Den. That’s the area in which he performs several specific light- and heat-based functions. Today, he’s baking something and then bombarding it with UV light in an effort to bring out its true color. We can’t say what it is right now, but it’s something we’re working on the take the “Matter” series to a whole new level.

I never saw this coming, James chuckles to himself as he pores over his latest creation. It’s going better than expected. Then again, I have a low bar. If it doesn’t explode, I’m usually stoked…

I look on in awe. To say I am excited about sharing the evolution of D’Arc matter with our followers is an understatement. But the thing I’m starting to get used to is that every day is like this with Arcanaut. A lot of what we do might be bonkers, but it’s brilliant because of it. It’s unlike anything else in the watch industry.

And so I couldn’t be happier than where I am, surrounded by lightsaber-wielding pirates, intent on shaking things up through action rather than flashy marketing campaigns. Where that will take us, we don’t know. But I’m happy to discover that along the way.

To learn more about D’Arc Matter, visit the soon-to-be-renovated Arcanaut website at www.arcanaut.watch and follow us on Instagram @arcanaut_watches.

Arcanaut Watches are available to buy direct, or from our retailers in either California (Collective Horology) or Stockholm (INDP Watches).