The Mechanical Pulse of Mankind
Mechanical time keepers have accompanied mankind on all the great adventure and tragedies of the 20th century from polar expeditions and World Wars to the moon landing to name a few. Invented in the 17th century, mechanical watches are the ultimate evolution of the spring powered clocks found on the walls of the 15th century.
While mechanical or automatic watches do not pretend for the same accuracy of their quartz counterparts, and almost disappeared during the quartz crisis of the 70’s, they regained a wide attention from watch amateurs and aficionados alike over the recent years. Once a crucial gear, mechanical watches are nowadays chosen for their refined design, fine craftsmanship and a certain philosophy of time.
Mechanical Watches Principles
The principle of the mechanical watch resides in a clockwork mechanism including a hand-wounded mainspring that powers via a series of gears the balance wheel. The balance wheel is a weighted wheel that oscillates back and forth at a constant rate. The escapement turns this oscillation into an actual forward movement of the hands. The characteristic ticking sound of a mechanical timepiece comes from the escapement.
Automatic Watches
On an automatic watch, the movement of the wearer’s wrist performs the winding of the mainspring via a weighted rotor that swivels on its axis, subsequently they do not need to be hand-wounded.
Mechanical and Automatic Watches Expertise
With specific facilities and a dedicated team to assemble, regulate, test and control the quality of mechanical watches, to say these sophisticated pieces of craftsmanship are a specialty of WMKR is a euphemism.
The mechanical and automatic watches that goes in the skillful hands of our watchmakers are regulated to 6 positions and go through a calibration process of up to 3 months.
We offer, while not limited to, the following options and possibilities:
Mechanical Movements
We master (and have access to) Japanese, Swiss and Chinese movements. We will help you find the best one for your project from a number of manufactures: Miyota, Citizen, Seiko, ETA, Sellita, Seagul, to name a few.
Complications
We can also realize any project from a basic three hand, hands-date, chronograph, moon phase, GMT / second time zone or worldtimer, as well as tourbillon movements.
Movement Customization
Our engineers and watchmakers can perform movement modifications like date or moon phase disks printings and replacements.
Dials
We can make dials of any type of:
Finish – Sunray, brushed, matte, Guilloche
Shape – Flat, domed, double layer
Material – Brass, marble, MOP, carbon fiber, ...
Indexes – Painted or applied indexes
Case & Crystal
Material – stainless steel, titanium, ceramic, TR90, resin,...
Finish – polished, brushed, or sandblasted
Shape – round, cushion, tonneau, square
Caseback – snap-on, screwed-on, bolted-on,...
Water-Resistance – from 5 ATM to 20 ATM
Crystal – sapphire, plexiglas, hexalite, K1, mineral glass
Hands & Disks
We have access to a comprehensive bank of shapes and styles of off-the-shelf hands and design and manuafcture custom-made ones when necessary.
Luminescence
- Standard luminous painting
- Super-luminova
- Japanese luminova
- Tritium tubes
Assembly
- China, Japan, or Swiss Made
- On-demand or batch assembly: more about our production methods.