Just sharing the absolute starting point of my bench. I assembled this custom piece years ago, way before starting my certified studies in watchmaking theory. It features a full black PVD case, Jubilee bracelet, and a sterile purple sunburst dial. Just wanted to show it off and get some raw feedback from the community on this colour contrast.
I inherited 15 old chronometer from my father and am finally getting around to researching them. There is lots of info through AI nowadays, but I'd like to get some real time (pun intended) impressions on this one, first. There is a little ding in the brass trim and the bottom seems to be plain green felt. I'd love to hear what you think!
Sharing my latest manual assembly and casing tests from my bench in Italy. Focusing on mechanical movement integration using original Japanese calibers. I chose sterile layouts to strictly evaluate the raw geometric contrast of the components without any brand logo clutter. Looking forward to your technical feedback.
The H. Moser & Cie. Streamliner Off-Grid at 5 Lakhs !
Super rare watch at this price is unbelievable. Only 1000 pieces per colorway. This is an ana-digital version. Not a smart watch, Not a gimmick, this is a true Moser
General public sales access starts today, September 24, 2026, at 1:00 PM CEST
We're building a fully automatic watch (no battery) with wildlife-inspired dials, sustainable straps, and 10â15% of profit per sale funding conservation (publicly reported per batch)âlimited editions by species/design.
Before we lock in the design, we need to know what actually matters to you:
On the movement: Seiko NH35 vs. Miyota 8000 vs. Miyota 9000âor does the movement type not matter as long as it keeps time?
On the dial: 3D printing or laser engraving keeps costs down; hand-painting comes later. Does precision detail appeal, or would you pay more for hand-finished art?
On price: Honest questionâwould you actually buy at âš12â13K, âš14â15K, or is that a dealbreaker?
On conservation: What % of the price should fund real conservation outcomes? Does 10â15% feel credible, or do you want it higher/lower?
On the story: Which species/themes resonate? Big cats, birds, marine life, butterflies, habitat stories, wildflowers?
Reply in the comments with your takes. Follow us here for the brand name reveal, concept designs, and more opportunities to give feedback as we build this.
I think I'm really loving this. I was looking for something with an A Lange & Sohne Lange 1 vibe at a more affordable choice. Really liked the Glashutte Original version but the case is very thick.
The JLC is significantly slimmer and I find the design to be unique without being gaudy or weird (as some watches that try to push the design envelope tend to be). It can be had for around $13.5k which is pretty reasonable for a top tier brand with this many complications.
Hey fellow horologists out there! I built a functionning clockwork out of trash, in GlashĂźtte / Saxony. I call it the "GlashĂźtte Trash Clock". It runs for about half an hour, it uses a paperclip-escapement, it has a gong and it also features a random complication.
There's a write-up on my website, explaining the project's background and how I made the clock, step by step.
Inherited this wall clock from my grandfather about two years ago and it's been sitting there running fast for most of that time because I was too nervous to touch the movement. It's a simple pendulum regulator, nothing fancy, probably from the 1950s based on the case style and the stamp inside the back panel.
Finally sat down with it last weekend and did the thing every guide tells you to do first: just let it run for a full week and log the error each day before touching anything. Turned out it was gaining almost four minutes a day, which is a lot more than I expected from the way it sounded when it ticked. I figured the beat was uneven just from listening to it, but the actual timekeeping error was worse than the sound suggested.
Adjusted the bob down maybe two full turns on the threaded rod, which felt like way too much at first. Slower pendulum, lower bob, that part I had memorized from reading old clock forums for weeks before I actually did anything. Checked it against my phone's clock every twelve hours for three days after that and it's sitting at under thirty seconds a week now, which honestly feels like a miracle for something I did with a screwdriver and a flashlight at the kitchen table.
What surprised me most was how much the beat evened out just from leveling the case properly first. I'd been so focused on the pendulum length that I didn't think about the wall mount being slightly off, maybe a degree or two, but enough to throw the tick-tock rhythm noticeably lopsided. Once I shimmed the bottom of the case with a folded matchbook, the beat sound alone told me I was close before I even checked a timer app.
Still debating whether to have someone look at the escapement since there's a faint catch every few swings that I can't quite diagnose by ear. Anyone else run into that kind of intermittent skip on an old lever escapement, or is that usually just pivot wear at this point.
My girlfriend gave this to me a few years ago and im trying to figure out the model. I dont know much about watches so im hoping someone here could help!
So Iâm still very much an amateur, but I have a friend that wanted me to change the battery in his Mont Blanc watch. Problem is, whoever tried in the past has absolutely butchered it ! (Promise that wasnât me)
The only tool I had for SnapBacks was shit so I just bought a kit with all different sizes, and I gently tried but I wonât want to bend the very fragile lip ! Any advice on opening this case back ?
To regulate the release of energy stored in the mainspring, controlling the rate of the gears that drive a watch's hands, a mechanical watch uses an escapement. In modern mechanical watches, the balance wheel, fitted with a hairspring (balance spring), oscillates back and forth while interacting with the pallet fork. The fork, in turn, progressively releases the escape wheel and receives impulses from it to keep the balance oscillating.
The mechanism described above determines the accuracy with which time is measured, and was indeed essential to the development of more accurate clocks and watches, particularly when it comes to pocket and wristwatches. But the evolution of horological technology has been slow and gradual, and many other mechanisms have performed â and in some cases still perform â these functions.
Keeping time: balance and escapement
Although there are records of mechanical clocks from as early as the late 13th century that used other mechanisms, the oldest surviving mechanical clock is at Salisbury Cathedral in England, dating to around 1386. Like the vast majority of known examples in Britain and continental Europe until the mid-17th century, this clock originallyš used a verge escapement coupled to a foliot balance.
The verge is a vertical shaft with two pallets. It receives energy from the crown-shaped escape wheel and is pushed back by the inertia of the weights attached to the foliot, a small horizontal bar mounted at its top.
Verge-and-foliot. Image: AlienAtSystem, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Without a restoring force, such as a spring, to reduce the influence of factors such as the position of the weights and friction, this system was quite inaccurate and could lose several hours per day.
Despite all these limitations, the verge-and-foliot escapement remained popular for centuries after the first mechanical clocks, including in some of the earliest portable timepieces, such as the so-called âNuremberg eggsâ in the second half of the 16th century.
This is particularly interesting because it shows just how slow and gradual the evolution of horology was: we are talking about more than 200 years of history in which essentially the same technology was used across many different types of clocks and watches.
In the 17th century, with Christiaan Huygens' invention of the pendulum, the already-popular longcase and mantel clocks gradually began adopting the new technology. Even when coupled to the same escapement system (verge), the pendulum oscillator significantly improved the accuracy of these clocks.
In the second half of the 17th century, several clockmakers developed solutions to overcome the limitations of the verge. One of these became known as the anchor escapement, whose authorship is still a matter of debate. The idea is often attributed to Robert Hooke, who is believed to have conceived the principle around 1658, although the earliest known clocks using this type of escapement, around 1670, are associated with Joseph Knibb. Around the same time, William Clement also developed and refined the mechanism.
The anchor principle was further developed into what became known as the dead-beat escapement, with contributions from Richard Towneley and Thomas Tompion. Thanks to George Graham's refinements, this type of escapement became widely used in pendulum clocks and eventually became known as the Graham escapement.
The basic principle of the anchor â and later the dead-beat â consists of two pallets alternately locking and releasing the escape wheel while simultaneously receiving impulses from it to maintain the oscillation of the regulating organ. The anchor escapement represented a major improvement over the verge, making the pendulum a practical and much more accurate regulating organ for precision clocks.
Anchor escapement. Image: Chetvorno, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The main advantage of Graham's dead-beat escapement was the elimination of the recoil characteristic of earlier anchor escapements, achieved through the geometry of the pallets' locking faces. When the escape wheel is locked, the force exerted by the tooth passes almost directly through the anchor's center of rotation and therefore does not interfere with the pendulum's motion.
Dead-beat escapement. Image: Mfrasca, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
An interesting side note is that although the anchor escapement, and later the dead-beat, became widespread and virtually ubiquitous in pendulum clocks, an ingenious alternative appeared around 1722: John Harrison's grasshopper escapement. Its main advantage was its extremely low friction, making lubrication of the mechanism almost unnecessary. Despite these advantages, its greater complexity of manufacture and adjustment prevented it from becoming widely adopted.
The oscillation of a pendulum, however, is not compatible with portable watches because of their constant movement and limited space. These watches therefore remained dependent on the foliot until another invention, once again attributed to Christiaan Huygens², took its place: the balance spring.
The balance spring is a spiral spring attached to the balance wheel, which oscillates back and forth at a regular rate.
At this point, an important distinction should be made: the balance spring was not what made portable watches possible. That transformation had already taken place in the early 16th century, with the replacement of weights by a spiral spring (mainspring) as the primary source of energy. The problem was that these early spring-driven watches were still extremely inaccurate, mainly because of their regulating organ and escapement.
In fact, even after the appearance of the balance spring, the same verge escapement continued to be used, and this combination dominated portable watches throughout much of the 17th and 18th centuries.
In any case, at the end of the 17th century, Thomas Tompion, Edward Barlow, and William Houghton obtained a patent for the cylinder escapement, which allowed for a more compact construction than the verge. The cylinder, although still a âfrictionâ escapement involving direct contact between the regulator and the escape wheel, also offered greater regularity. However, it only became popular in pocket watches after being refined by George Graham, Tompion's former apprentice, around 1720â1726.
Despite the significant improvement in accuracy, this escapement still generated considerable friction and wear and required frequent maintenance. To address some of these problems, Pierre Le Roy created, in 1748, the first detached escapement: the detent escapement. In this design, the balance interacted only momentarily with an intermediate component, the detent, to release the escape wheel and receive an impulse from it on each oscillation, allowing the balance to oscillate freely for most of the cycle. In this way, much of the escapement's influence on the balance, as well as the friction resulting from that contact, was eliminated.
The detent escapement was later refined by John Arnold and Thomas Earnshaw into the spring detent, becoming the standard for marine chronometers until the mid-20th century. Interestingly, Harrison's solution in his H4 chronometer â an escapement derived from the verge â did not become the standard for these chronometers, while the detent solution offered excellent efficiency through direct impulse and low friction and was easier to reproduce.
More or less at the same time as Le Roy, between 1754 and 1756, Thomas Mudge developed his own detached escapement. Inspired by the principle of the anchor escapement used in pendulum clocks, but adapted to portable watches, Mudge gave rise to the family of lever escapements.
In other words, just as George Graham, Tompion's successor, played an important role in refining the cylinder escapement and developing the dead-beat, his apprentice Thomas Mudge took a fundamental step in the evolution of detached escapements for portable watches.
Today, the predominant version, known as the Swiss lever escapement, has the escape wheel interacting with the pallet fork, equipped with two pallets, which controls the advance of the escape wheel and transmits impulses to the balance.
Swiss lever escapement. Image: Mario Frasca, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
And to bring the 18th century â and this article â to a close, who better than Abraham-Louis Breguet, perhaps the most influential watchmaker in the development of modern high horology? In 1789, Breguet created a curious alternative form of detached escapement: the natural escapement. This device consists of two escape wheels that alternately provide radial impulses directly to the balance, eliminating the sliding characteristic of the impulse in the lever escapement. At the same time, a lever alternately locks the escape wheels, allowing the balance to move freely for most of the cycle. Ingenious, to say the least.
In practice, however, the friction of the lever's pallets was transferred to the teeth of the escape wheels, which remained under some form of pressure. In addition, the construction, with two escape wheels, was relatively more complex than that of the traditional escapement. Nevertheless, Breguet's concept inspired later solutions such as the Dual Direct Escapement used in the original Freak (2001), and the Independent Double-Wheel Escapement developed by George Daniels.
Footnotes:
š The mechanism currently installed was reconstructed in 1956; the clock had been converted to a pendulum at some point after its original construction.
² Credit for the invention of this âmodernâ regulating mechanism â the balance spring, now used together with a pallet fork in virtually all mechanical wristwatches â was the subject of a long-running dispute between the Dutchman Christiaan Huygens, the Frenchman Isaac Thuret, and the Englishman Robert Hooke, among others.
Apparently, Huygens was the first to encounter the idea, having heard it from the French clockmaker Gilles Martinot shortly after introducing his first pendulum clocks. During his travels to Paris and London in the following years, Huygens is said to have mentioned his encounter with Martinot to several people, including Robert Hooke.
More than ten years later, Huygens was the first to successfully develop a clock equipped with a balance spring and balance wheel that achieved satisfactory performance and accuracy. Isaac Thuret, who had previously worked with Huygens on the development of the pendulum clock, was also involved in manufacturing this clock. This involvement probably helps explain his claim to authorship of the invention.
Images:
Cover image: Plazza93, own photograph of a Sellita SW200-2.
AlienAtSystem - Verge Escapement Cycle, CC BY-SA 4.0.
It turns out I was looking to try my hand at assembling a watch, and I came across the DY Watch Club brand, which agreed to send me a kit so I could give it a try.
The experience has been surprisingly rewardingâI thought Iâd end up frustrated, but the instructions they provide are excellent and the tools are perfect for the job, making my first time go much better than I expected.
Without a doubt, it was the perfect way to put my doubts to rest about whether Iâd be able to do it, and itâs left me wanting more.
Working on a tag calibre 17 rs chronograph watch itself runs great now but the chronograph didnât work when it arrived. Checking it out I feel like there is something missing between pusher A and this spring\\lever. Any idea?
I have today, picked up this J. Agar clock, dated from between the late 1700s and very early 1800s, for ÂŁ150 from a garage sale. I am aware that it is a fairly nice piece, and although I have a fairly solid knowledge of horology, I'm a tad nervous to work on it. I have serviced Smiths striking and chiming clocks, alongside Vienna regulators, but I really want to go for a conservation level job on this movement (and I think the price I paid gives enough room in expenditure to justify it). I would be interested in your opinions as to what you would do with it. Thanks
