tristan.led
15
words to live by
Sep 30, 2020,04:20 AM
I do know a bit of Roger's story, workshop, methods etc as I've spent a tiny bit of time in his workshop (before he moved it and bought the cnc lathe). My guess is that it's easier to manufacture escape wheels (co-axial even) and cases on a cnc lathe rather than a cnc mill.
Back in 2017, the wheels were still made on Schaublin 70 lathe, so I'm not sure if his plan is to make the wheels on the cnc lathe now that he has one.
One other aspect of the CNC and more industrial methods of manufacturing is repeatability. I've made a couple of movements, entirely by hand. I've used various machines to do it (Hauser M1, 2A2, 2BA) in order to find what works best for me, and 2 Schaublin 102, 1 70 and a Precis lathe.
Once I've found the correct process, I've made batches of 2 or 3 movements, everything was adjusted for their movements, and I couldn't fit the anchor bridge of one movement to another one for example.
That type of work is good if you make 5 watches per year, but in the case of both Roger and Rexhep, their volume is far greater than that (and that's a good thing for collectors otherwise the waiting list would be way longer), and thus more modern and industrial machines and skills are needed.
Nowadays not a lot of watchmakers still make watches by hand. Even I who set up my workshop to do exactly this have to outsource parts (hands for example) and use processes like EDM or Laser cutting. As long as this is transparent, that's all good and saddly that's not something that happens a lot in watchmaking. Although, Roger never hid his CNC, nor in videos or on Instagram, and if I were to chose I'd take a RWS. Having tried it a few years ago, it was really amazing to have it on my wrist