Dear reader
I have recently moved to Switzerland to attend a wonderful school to become a watchmaker. To be clear I want to strive to become something more than a technician, I want to be able to make a complicated watch almost entirely by hand. It has been nearly a month now since my move and I have settled into a marvelous apartment with two of my fellow students. We live in the small town of Le Locle just a twenty minute walk from the industrial estate were our school is located. Our school has the proud honour of occupying the space of one of the foremost producers of CNC machines in the world. Strange how the rent the school pays is helping to further the advancement of the very machine that threatens the livelyhood of the watchmaker who chooses to work more with his hands. But it seems the machine is as common place in the watchmaking industry these days as those tiny little screw drivers. Sadly though no one could afford a good watch without them. My school is the ideal place to learn to combat these machines with the only quality a watchmaker can offer a watch, a personal touch. The more you learn about this industry the more you learn how few hands have actually touched the watches you seemed to revere when you first decided to make watchmaking your hobby. After a while the romance seems to die out a bit, while you still appreciate the product you tend to appreciate the macro level of engineering that has gone into it and less about whatever bit of watchmaking has been done. This is only so with the biggest of the brands though as there is still a great need for the classical watchmaker. Someone who can produce high levels of finishing for small brands and who can execute the design and construction of diffult parts. Its is in the rekindled interest in all things hand made that has brought this demand back. I think the consumer wants to feel like they own something that almost drove someone crazy trying to make and that the person who made it can be produ in what they have done. Proud again to see the fruits of their labour in a world were so many only see the paycheck at the end of the week and never the end result of what they have done. I think Karl Marx said something to that same effect.......awkward....
