I spent the better part of 20 years working as a photographer, news, advertising, documentary and fine art. Then covid showed up, the work disappeared and I ended up with more spare time than seemed healthy. My friends started baking sourdough. And I bought an old Omega wristwatch on ebay which was listed as not working and after five minutes inside the case, realized that I had no idea how to repair a watch. At the suggestion of several watchmakers I set the Omega aside (poor thing) and bought a bunch of lesser movements for $10 a pop and over the next year became somewhat adept at overhauling and breathing new life into them.
Ultimately I was looking for a nice watch I could wear every day and even though I found a few vintage types which were nice, nothing was quite perfect. So I decided I may as well make my own. How hard could it be?
I set out to make a watch, case, dial and hands on equipment in a local maker space machine shop and design the watch around those limitations. But after six months of struggled it became clear that to make excellent small parts one needs to use excellent machinery. So I decided I might as well make my own machines. How hard could it be?
A year and half later I’d managed to design, build and program two CNC vertical milling machines, one to manufacture the cases, crowns and pushers. The second one to machine dials, hands and other tiny bits. Both were built using industrial surplus parts, steel found at scrap yards and excessive amounts of cussin’ and sweat. And, somewhat surprisingly, both turned out to be highly capable tools with the capability to make precise parts.
Around this point it dawned on me that my alternative to sour dough bread making hobby, making a watch for myself, had cost me enough to have bought several top shelf Swiss watches, a vintage Porsche and a fully kitted out jet ski.
Which led to the decision to make more than one watch. And see if anyone out there wanted to buy a watch from a guy with too much time on his hands and a penchant for financial self immolation. I started a blog to document the process.
I released the first edition of nine watches in 2022, the Prototype One.
And people bought them.
Now I’m making more watches. Maybe you’ll buy one.
If not I’ve always wanted to learn how to bake bread.
Design
In my design I draw inspiration from many places, vintage watch designs, childhood memories, the human form, a train trip across France. Through a sometimes months long period of doodling, cad mockups and aluminum prototypes a new watch design emerges.
Function and purpose is paramount in each of my watches. And to highlight these
In my photography work I always found that my best images were the ones made by most effectively using shadow. The absence of light drew the eye to what really mattered. The same philosophy is used with my watch designs.
The dials are stripped of everything not needed for telling time, the cases skip any extra mentions of depth ratings and materials used. If you buy a watch you know those details already.
Cases
My cases are designed and built around the components used and desired durability goals, the gaskets needed for a specified depth rating and a desired dial diameter. Once the dimensional and survivability needs are met, function steps aside as form smooths out the edges and nudges contours to wrap around a wrist and provide a comfortable wearing experience.
I use the best materials available from trusted suppliers. This includes 6al4v titanium, 316 and 8-18 Stainless Steels, NBR, Viton and Silicone gaskets and incredibly durable Sapphire crystals with anti reflective coatings.
Dials
Seemingly a simple part of a watch, a flat surface with some markings painted on.
And then you try to make one of these damn things.
The human eye has a remarkable ability to pick out minor imperfections and the smaller and more detailed what you’re looking at becomes, the more this is true. I spent months trying to get a dial I liked. And then months more making a second, and then a couple of years learning consistency with that.
My dials are different than many. Rather than a simple flat piece of stamped brass, they are machined three dimensional parts which wrap up and around the movement and act as a direct link to the watch case. This design replaces the traditional movement holder which most watches use thus reducing parts, weight and complexity.
Instead of attached lume indices I’ve opted to machine the dial markings directly into the dial. This gives me a deep well to fill with lume for a brighter, longer lasting glow. And also allows me to move the hands closer to the dial, thereby reducing the overall thickness of the watch.
These dials are then ceramic coated before being pad printed and lume applied.
It’s not the easiest way to do it but I’d like to think the results are worth the headache.
Hands
My hands are machined from billet and are one piece designs.* Most of my watch designs use titanium hands for the light weight and ability to spring back after hard knocks. Finishing options include ceramic coating, lacquer, anodizing or polishing.
*I was referring here to the watch hands. My actual hands are meaty, sausage-fingered lumps which really have no business anywhere near a wristwatches interior.
crowns
For the first watch I designed and built I was going to use non-oem Rolex 7mm crowns because I like that they used threaded case tubes and were easily available. After much experimentation I found that Rolex designed their own proprietary thread for the case tubes and you have to buy the taps from them.
This annoyed me.
So for the second watch I designed I also designed my own crown and case tube. I also learned a lot about machining including thread milling which would technically allow me to copy the Rolex threads in my watch case and use those Rolex crowns.
But since I already did the design work, I’ll stick with my own.
On my currently available watches the crowns are titanium triple seal screw downs in either 6.5 or 7mm. All have threaded case tubes which use standard Torx bits for removal. No fancy proprietary tools needed here :)
DIY CNC… And more!
There are good machines and there are cheap machines. I decided to combine those attributes and make relatively cheap yet capable machines with which I could manufacture watch parts. The result was two 3 axis CNC machines running LinuxCNC which I use daily to machine blocks of Titanium, 316 Stainless, and Brass into beautiful and functional timepieces.
