Every new watch is like a new piece of art
It has a different story to tell
It's a very interesting thing about watches
on the one hand you have a high precision device
and the other thing is
they have to be hand finished
which is very related to arts and crafts
You have these two worlds in one watch
both the aesthetical aspect of it
and the mechanical aspect of it
Here we are at Arnold and Son
in our premises at La Chaux-de-Fonds
where we manufacture all of our watches
Arnold and Son refers to John Arnold
who was one of the biggest and most important
watchmaker who ever lived
he invented a lot of technical solutions
still in use today
The aim of the modern company
to innovate and to continue his legacy
but in a contemporary, new manner
The idea is really to continue the story more than to repeating it
First with the design team
we design how the watch should look like
The size it should have, the thickness
you have to have a kind of mechanical harmony
is it good looking or not
and when we are happy with the new complications
and we think the watch has something new
then we create basically the inner works which will make the aesthetic happen
The first thing you have to do is to order the right material
because we use a lot of different materials into mechanical movement
going from brass over steel up to titanium or gold
and you need a specific material for every different part of it
once you have the raw material
you start really making the components
We have different kinds of raw materials going to different workshops
for depending on the part you want to make
If you want to do watchmaking on super high level
you need extremely skilled and specifically trained people
we have more than thirty different job descriptions
purely different educations
and you find these educations, these training
only in this region
because nowhere else in the world you need such kind of know how
Working with tiny parts is a challenge because tiny parts makes very small tolerances
We are working in micron tolerances
so you cannot do anything without good tooling
We have in house a tool making department
which makes from the little screwdriver the watchmaker needs
up to a stamping tool which takes months of development
The reason why we do all our tooling in house
because if you're not mastering your tools, you're not mastering the part you want to produce
Once all the parts are cut with machinery, they go to be cleaned
They're submitted o quality control, who decides if the part is good enough
to continue to the decoration workshop
Different kind of traditional movement decorations are applied
from geneva stripes, satin finish. Depending on the component
Is a mechanical watch you buy today is not a leading technology anymore
It's really crafts and arts
You are not racing for technological breakthrough
you are more racing for making more spectacular watches
You build a very different relation to a mechanical watch than you do to an electronic device
because the day you buy it you know that the next one will come
and that you will swap it for getting the better one
With a mechanical watch it's really the object as a physical object
of all the hand work which make it special and unique
That's makes I think a big difference to something more on the electronic side
Once these parts have been decorated they are quality checked again
to see if the decoration hasn't affected the functional aspect of it
That's always a bit if a trick you have to decorate but not deteriorate the part
They go to be preassembled in a specific workshop before going to the watchmakers
set stones for instance into main plates. Put axis onto wheels
and once all these parts have been preassembled, they arrive to the watchmaker who does the final assembly
The watchmaker gets all the little parts in little boxes
starts taking the main plate which is the base on everything gets built on
adding the wheels which is all on axis
put different bridges holding all different wheels in place
You have to add all the winding mechanism because you want to be able to wind your watch
put a dial on it then you put hands
and one last thing which we add always at the end is the escapement
which is basically the heart of any mechanical watch, it's also
what you hear when your listening to a mechanical watch when you hear the tick tock
It's the very first time you will see and hear your watch moving
Starting from the simple beating, it's a long process going to a highly accurate mechanical watch
You cannot just put the parts together and expect the watch to tell perfect time
We are checking the watches for 600 hours on different vibration and other machines
to get really sure that everything is ok
can be just s little tiny dust, you don't see it when you put it together
but when you move the watch it can a fild of the movement
So this process is pretty pretty long but this is what the complexity of such a mechanical device requests
Once that you've seen that the accuracy of the movement is good, you put it into a watch case
which will protect the movement
you add the bracelet, and the buckle and you have a watch
Watches are most of the time perceived as a time capsule
It's really something which are still built today as it used to be for the last centuries
It's nice also for people to be able to buy something
which has always existed and probably will always exist as a form of art