John Davis - Watchmaker

Watches are machines. While some of them may also be works of art, they cannot escape their machineness. There is undoubtedly something fascinating about those examples of the watchmaker's craft, but there is also something to be learned from the droves of micro-machines that are designed and constructed with only performance and economy in mind. There is craft involved in the ability to engineer a movement for production runs in the tens of thousands that is wholly other than the craft involved in manufacturing a movement by hand. It is a skill that I respect and admire, while having even less understanding of its intricacies than I do of traditional watchmaking skills. Being a fan of Seiko's watches though, I won't let my ignorance get in the way of taking apart the 7S26 in an attempt to discover its hows and guess at its whys.