Step 01
Drawings
Every model begins and ends on paper. The patterns are inked by hand, corrected in pencil, and never redrawn clean; the corrections are the record.
How we build
Seven stages, no shortcuts that survive a loupe, and one stage that takes longer than all the others together.
Step 02
Turning
Rings are turned on the house lathes to a depth of 0.4 mm engraved division lines, then rested a week before engraving so the metal settles.
Step 03
Filing
The longest stage. Joints are sweat-soldered with spelter, filed until the seam reads as one metal, and checked under a loupe by a second maker.
Step 04
Escapement
Cut from blued steel in-house. Pallets are hand-stoned, and the beat is adjusted by ear before any gauge is consulted.
Step 05
Toning
Brass is washed with liver of sulphur and stopped in cold water inside a four-second window, twice checked against the reference block.
Step 06
The stand
Eighteen weeks on the test beam. Rates logged every morning. The instrument leaves when the drift goes flat, not before.
Step 07
Signing
The maker signs inside the base ring, dates it, oils it once more, and packs the crate with the log card from the final week.
Process notes describe the fictional house standard of this fictional workshop.
Why the stand is the longest stage
Machining takes weeks. Running-in takes a season. An escapement needs to wear against its own pallets before its rate means anything, a fusee chain needs to find its groove, and lacquer needs to cure to its final colour. None of that can be hurried by a maker standing over it, so we do not stand over it. We log, we listen, and we let the instrument take the time the drawings allow.
The log card in your crate is the last week of that record. Collectors keep them; we keep the carbon.
Seven steps, one season