Act II: Where it all comes together

If you’ve ever looked at one of our watches and wondered how on earth all those tiny, precise parts end up behaving themselves…this is that part of the story.

Assembly happens in our London workshop, carried out by our team of very patient, very skilled technicians. It’s where a watch stops being a collection of components and starts becoming… a watch.

We make watches with three different movements: quartz, jump hour, and Swiss automatic mechanical. They each have their quirks, which means they’re assembled in slightly different ways.

Quartz watches (like Berry Late Again! or Beam Me Up!) are built in this order: movement, dial, hour disc, minute disc, then the case.

Jump hour watches (such as The Promise of Happiness and Number Cruncher) require a subtle reshuffle: movement, hour disc, dial, minute disc, then the case.

This is because all of the hours except the current one need to stay hidden, creating that satisfying “jump” from one number to the next.

Our Swiss automatic mechanical pieces are assembled much like the quartz watches, but with one extra pleasure: a glass case back, so you can see the movement ticking away, quietly getting on with things.

Unlike most traditional watches, many of ours don’t use hands. They use discs. Which means precision is everything.

The discs must never touch, or sit too loosely on their tiny rivet, or gather even the faintest speck of dust… all of which can affect how the watch keeps time (and how the illusion works).

Dust, in particular, is the nemesis.
You may have noticed the finger cots in our behind-the-scenes videos, they keep everything pristine, preventing dust and oils getting on any surfaces.

Occasionally, a rogue speck only reveals itself once a watch is fully assembled and during quality control, which means carefully taking it apart and beginning again. This requires a level of patience we greatly admire from our team.

Once assembled, the factory stem is trimmed to size, the standard crown replaced with an MJW one, and the watch is set to the correct time.

Then it waits, ticking quietly for 12–24 hours, just to be certain everything is behaving as it should. Only then does it leave us.

No two days are quite the same for the assembly team. Different designs, different movements, different tiny challenges. But the same steady focus runs through all of it.

We’re very lucky to have them. And so are your watches.