Watchmakers’ Love-Hate Relationship with Tantalum

Ian Margerison, executive marketing manager and technical officer of the Tantalum-Niobium International Study Center:

To actually make a watch in tantalum is very difficult. It’s like trying to machine a metallic Plasticine.

Martin Frei of Urwerk:

Tantalum has a strange quality that destroys the tools—it’s almost sticky. They somehow get clumped and break because they get too hot. But the metal itself is beautiful.