DB28

The floating lugs must actually articulate

De Bethune's lugs pivot on the case so the watch follows the wrist. This is a mechanism and not a styling cue: move them. Lugs that are shaped to suggest articulation but are fixed indicate a copy — reproducing the appearance is cheap and reproducing a working pivot with correct tolerances is not. This is the fastest physical check on the brand.

Blued titanium is a heat treatment, not a coating

De Bethune blues titanium thermally, so the colour is an oxide layer grown on the metal rather than a paint or a PVD coating. Under magnification and raking light it has depth and slight variation, and it follows the surface topography; a painted or coated blue sits on top of the surface and is uniform. At an edge, a coating can chip to reveal metal beneath — a thermal blue cannot, because there is nothing beneath it but the same metal.

The spherical moonphase is three-dimensional and rotates

Not a disc seen through an aperture but an actual sphere, half polished palladium and half blued steel, turning to show the phase. Its three-dimensionality is visible from any angle other than dead-on, and its two halves have distinctly different surfaces — mirror-polished metal against heat-blued metal. A flat printed or disc moonphase in this position is a different watch.

Very small production makes manufacturer confirmation the primary tool

De Bethune's annual output is measured in dozens rather than thousands. At that scale the manufacturer knows every watch it has made, and confirmation of a serial and its service history is both obtainable and decisive. As across the whole of this catalog's independent tier, seek that before relying on physical examination.