Update from the workshop: Screw them

In June this year Dad and I went to the EPHJ fair in Switzerland. The fair is home to all the suppliers to the watch industry. Contract manufacturers, service providers, machinery sellers, tool salespeople... the list goes on. This was the first time Dad and I had gone to EPHJ since before COVID, and in that time our in-house capabilities have grown a lot, we can now make around 85% of the movement of the watch, as well as the dial, hands, case and buckles! Nonetheless, fairs like these are crucial for finding partners who can help manufacture/provide parts that are either too tricky for us to handle, or provide services that we don't have in-house - PVD coating for example. On our 2nd day at the fair I split off from Dad, we decided to tackle the 700 strong exhibitors separately, hoping that we could divide and conquer. Walking past the rows and rows of suppliers, one specific stall caught my eye - they specialised in manufacturing screws. Screws in watchmaking are surprisingly very challenging to make. They require many different operations - starting from sourcing the correct material, turning/machining the screw, heat treating the screw to get the material hard, tempering to reduce it's brittleness, polishing the screw to remove the heat treatment discoloration as well as for decorative reasons, storing the screw in proper anti-rusting agents, and finally handling it without damaging. Since introducing the NH1 in 2019 we have been making nearly all the screws in our NH series watches. Very few, if any people manufacture screws in-house. And for good reason! The steps mentioned above are extremely time consuming, and frankly do not present a large aesthetic improvement to the watch, unless you know the backstory of their manufacture...

Walking past this particular watch-screw-manufacturing specialist, I stopped and started chatting. I showed them the watch that we make, and although they seemed interested, they were keen to talk business. I told them that we manufacture some of our screws, but there is one specific screw that is a big challenge for us to make. It's time consuming and we have a high failure rate, it's not impossible, but it would help alot if we could get the absolute top-of-the-field experts to give us a hand. They seemed ready for the challenge, and asked to see a technical drawing. I showed them the screw in my hand, and the drawing next to it. The screw has a M0.6 thread, and is about 1mm in total length, thread and head together. The pitch of the thread is so fine that it almost gets lost in the space between the lines of your fingerprints. In return, they showed me some screws of a similar size, and said that they could comfortably manufacture. Great, progress! The next, and most important question. Price, and lead time. "About 10-12 CHF per screw, and it will take us about 6 months to complete the order.... of 5000 pieces..." The 12CHF per screw wasn't a terrible price. It was actually easy to swallow. But as they kept talking my heart kept dropping. For a small team like ours, 6 months is a nonstarter, our projects can't function on lead times that long... but the final nail in the coffin was the minimum order. 5000 pieces. This M0.6 screw is used once per watch. It holds down the click spring in the bridge of our NH2, NH3, and now soon to come NH55. 5000 screws would be enough, not only for my generation, but probably for 3 generations of Hacko watchmakers. Mission failed. With my head hung low and feet dragging I kept moving through the rest of the exhibitors at the fair. June 2023. Thankfully, the pain didn't last long. Today I'm holding 20 or so finished M0.6 screws that are used in our soon to come NH55's. All made in-house. September 2023.

Sometimes you need a kick in the bum. It might challenging, and you might cry along the way - but the journey for us to make these screws in-house is a line in the sand. It's a stake in the ground. It's a crucial, and non-negotiable chapter in our book titled independent watchmaking in Australia. Josh