The world is running out of watch gears!

Or more precisely - our need for small diameter precision gears is diminishing fast. Some of you surely remember tape recorders, turntables, cassette players and video recorders - all the electronic equipment which contained more mechanical moving parts - and especially gears of all kind- than electronic components. Not to mention billions of domestic alarm clocks, small desk clocks, travel clocks, parking meters, water and gas meters, kilowatt hours meters - all gone, replaced with their electronic or digital version which no longer contain any gears whatsoever. Yes, ironically the only consumer product which still requires high precision small diameter wheels and pinions is a high grade mechanical watch. And consequently, what once was commonly made in high volume and high precision, built to last for hundreds of years - the watch wheel - has become rare and incredibly hard and expensive to manufacture. Trying to not just restart but to start from scratch a whole industrial precision process of making watch gears in Australia is an enormous challenge. There is not a single Australian business even attempting to setup itself for such a niche task, and to state that our journey is unique would be an understatement. In today's episode Josh, Andrew and myself are sharing with you the first steps of our quest for 'in-house watch gear making'. We talk about challenges, timelines, production costs and gear making equipment setup in our Brookvale workshop. The reason we talk about this is threefold: we want to keep you informed and excited; it is a diary of a rather special project where the focus on learning grossly overweighs the profit, and finally, we share our know-how with anyone who may one day face the same problems as we face today, so they can learn from our experience. The video itself is not overly technical and if you love watches, you'll love the story of what makes your watch tick. I am sure you will find it interesting. As you will find once again, our project is running on 'passion for precision and excitement for horology'. In order to continue further, to continue making and most importantly training young Australian kids, we need your support. Your support is absolutely essential and it could be as simple as clicking the like button on YouTube. Each like counts. And if you do like our video, make sure you subscribe as well. Subscription is just one more click, which will cost you nothing, yet it will mean a lot to keeping our channel active. Liking and subscribing is FREE and takes less than a second. Rolex and Omega don't make videos like we do, nor do they expect your support - nor do they care about Australian manufacturing like you and we do. To watch the video, go to: https://youtu.be/pJkFtRbTqPw Of course, buying a $9 mug or $35 shirt would be even better. Again, the benefit is purely yours - we sell mugs at cost and we only make a few dollars on shirts. We are not begging you to buy our watch - new or second hand - you'll buy it when you are ready, in your own time. That's fine.