Greubel Forsey: Hand Made 1

With 95% of this timepiece (including the hairspring) made using only hand-operated tools, one single timepiece requiring an extraordinary 6,000 hours work (equal to three years man-hours), Hand Made 1 by Greubel Forsey takes traditional watchmaking to a new unprecedented summit. Never before has a hand-made timepiece exhibited such a high level of workmanship and precision.

Before the Industrial Revolution and the advent of mass production, watch components had to be made one by one requiring very specific skills, tools and completely hand-operated machines. Today, with industrialisation, excellence in hand craftsmanship has virtually disappeared and these skills are not even taught in schools.

For Greubel Forsey, it’s not only about reviving ancient techniques, forgotten gestures and skills. The aim is to take these skills and know-how to a previously unattained level of excellence and precision, furthering them in the same spirit of constant improvement that has always guided the Inventor watchmakers. The goal is to resurrect the ancestral art of hand craftsmanship and reinforce it with standards of workmanship and precision rivalling even modern production equipment.

Greubel Forsey unveils the result of this unprecedented watchmaking approach: Hand Made 1 – an hours/minutes/seconds timepiece with a tourbillon entirely created from scratch. The movement construction, traditional machining and hand-finishing specialists reflected at length on each of the 272 movement components and 36 case parts, understanding and concentrating on what the hand-made approach allows and how to get the very best out of it.

The Hand Made 1 therefore demanded a total overhaul of the creative process, involving the people who would make and decorate each component from the very beginning. Some parts of the movement were redesigned in order to simplify them. Meanwhile for other mechanisms such as the tourbillon, the number of components had to be increased to allow each part to be made by hand. The timepiece’s relatively modest dimensions (43.5 mm in diameter and 13.5 mm thick) further heightened the difficulty of this task.

Finally, an entirely handmade timepiece, from the movement to the case, to the leather strap, the dial and the hands –the only exceptions being the sapphire crystals, the case gaskets, the spring- bars, the jewels, and the mainspring. To achieve the 95% handmade level with such a high standard of excellence required an astronomical 6,000 hours of work for one single timepiece – the equivalent of three years man-hours, where this total time only takes into account the pure watchmaking – and not the creation and development time. To obtain the 308 components of the Hand Made 1 respecting Greubel Forsey criteria, over 800 individual parts had to be made. It took almost 35 times longer to make the complete tourbillon cage than for a standard high-end tourbillon. When just a dozen operations on an automatic lathe effortlessly yield some 500 screws, a single screw, as small as it may be, requires up to 12 individual operations taking up to 8 hours to make just one. Finally to hand make one wheel of the Hand Made 1 takes 600 times longer than that of a high-end industrial wheel.

Greubel Forsey’s attention to detail naturally includes the performance of the timepiece. Here, Hand Made 1 displays unprecedented prowess for a hand-made watch, its performance certified by Greubel Forsey.

In the Greubel Forsey Hand Made 1 each component tells a tale. It has its own development process and journey that makes it unique.

The journey begins with the regulating organ, entirely produced by hand in Greubel Forsey’s workshops, including the balance spring, fashioned from an alloy in the Atelier. The balance spring is then rolled in a hand operated rolling mill (without computer assistance), a process that is certainly an endangered know how – only a few balance springs can be made at a time – whereas in contemporary industrial production, hundreds or thousands are automatically produced at once. The balance wheel is also entirely hand-made with an extraordinary standard of precision and finish. The escape wheel, with its 20 individually-cut teeth, each with four surfaces that are later ground, is a true tour de force. Meanwhile the machining and finishes of the escape lever alone require a month and a half of work.

The hand making of the tourbillon carriage – with its 69 components weighing a total of 0.521 g – represented another challenge, as it is not possible to replicate the same geometry of a CNC machine on a traditional jig borer. An increased number of parts are consequently required to form this exquisite, almost airborne mechanism.

All the movement’s components are of course then hand finished true to the finest watchmaking tradition, including the bridges with their polished inner and outer vertical flanks, the unique “Gratté” mainplate, and the wheels with hand polished bevels top and bottom (40 sharp internal angles for a five-spoke wheel).

The open dial stands out with its hand-enamelled chapter rings, paired with flame-blued steel hands.

Naturally, the 18k white gold case is also, handmade, thanks to a pantograph mechanical lathe fitted with turning tools, before being patiently satin-finished on the sides and polished on the upper surfaces.

The production of the Greubel Forsey Hand Made 1 is limited to only two or three timepieces per year.

This new step towards the summit in the finest of craftsmanship is substantiated on the dial at 6 o’clock, where the inscription HAND MADE replaces the usual SWISS MADE.