Learning about the madness of Magic Gold at the Hublot manufacture

Jamie Weiss

Metallurgy is an often overlooked aspect of making watches. For instance, watch consumers might broadly understand that most gold watches’ cases are made from 18-karat gold, which means they’re not pure gold and are alloyed with other metals, but we’re often not that curious about what those other metals are. They might also be passingly familiar with different brands’ signature alloys – Omega’s Moonshine Gold, Rolex’s Everose, Audemars Piguet’s Sand Gold just to name a few – but probably don’t know what goes into them, or what makes them so special beyond marketing spin.

Hublot is a brand that particularly likes talking up its different materials. You’ve got Black Magic Ceramic, King Gold, Texalium, SAXEM, Hublonium… You’ve also got Magic Gold, which might actually be the most interesting material Hublot works with, but one that has fallen out of the spotlight recently. And in a world where both Hublot and other brands are emphasising the uniqueness of their materials, it gets lost in the noise.

Indeed, I didn’t really understand what was so special about Magic Gold until I visited Hublot’s manufacture in Nyon, Switzerland earlier this year during Watches and Wonders. We had the rare treat of being able to visit Hublot’s R&D department and discover exactly how they make Magic Gold – as well as put its properties to the test.

But before I get into my experience, you might be asking: what is Magic Gold? First introduced in 2011, Hublot claims that Magic Gold is the world’s first scratch-proof 18k gold alloy. Gold, of course, is extremely malleable and prone to scratches – it’s the main downside of the material other than its weight and price – but Hublot’s Magic Gold has a hardness rating of about 1,000 Vickers. For comparison, normal 18k gold is around 150 Vickers, 316L stainless steel is around 200 Vickers and grade 5 titanium is around 300 Vickers.

The story of Magic Gold’s unveiling has reached apocryphal status. Then-Hublot boss Jean-Claude Biver demonstrated its scratch-resistant properties at the launch dinner for Magic Gold by pulling out a watch made with the material and viciously attacking it with a steak knife, inviting others at the event to do the same while putting more than a few people’s teeth on edge. As Biver put it at the time: “You can have a [Magic Gold] watch and wear it for any sport, any use, it will just not scratch. It never, ever will scratch. It will constantly look totally polished, as new… Only diamond can scratch it.”

Recalling that famous story, Hublot’s engineers invited us to do the same thing at the manufacture, handing us hardened steel drill bits, and asking us to first scratch away at a normal 18k gold bezel, and then have a go at scratching a Magic Gold bezel. I’m not going to lie – I went to town on the Magic Gold. The cynic in me thought “this is still just marketing spin, it’ll scratch…”  But honest to God, it didn’t, even when I applied double the pressure I did on the normal 18k gold. All it did was leave a slight residue on the bezel, which could be wiped away with one’s finger – and the reality is that you’d be loathe to intentionally attack your own Magic Gold Hublot in the same way.

So how do they make Magic Gold? The process of making it is almost as interesting as the product itself. Basically, Hublot takes cylinders of boron carbide (a type of ultra-hard ceramic that’s similar but not the same as the oxides Hublot uses to make its ceramic cases), and compresses them down into shapes resembling a Hublot case. They then impregnate the boron carbide with 24k gold with an inert gas under very high pressures and at an extremely high temperature. The boron carbide is porous, and under these conditions, the gold fills the voids, creating a sort of alloy. The resulting material is so hard that it can only be machined by diamond-tipped tools, lasers, or ultrasonic cutters.

Hublot is currently the only brand that’s capable of making a material like Magic Gold, with the brand developing its own foundry in 2014 specifically to make the material. Hublot has also said they have no plans to share the technology with other brands, even within the LVMH Group – a notable contrast to the way they approach making sapphire watch cases, with the brand more than happy to produce sapphire crystal cases and bracelets for other brands.

Hublot also says that the Magic Gold process can also be used to impregnate boron carbide with other precious metals, although they apparently have no plans to do so for the foreseeable future… But there might be a world in which Hublot unveils “Magic Platinum” watches, for instance. Watch this space.