Quick review of the DIY kit

I just finished assembling my first DIY watch. Thought I should share my experience with you guys. And some tips that may help you with your own assembly.

First impression, the kit is surprisingly good. For the price of $200, I wasn’t expecting much. That is an amount of money I can considered thrown away without much regret. But still, the kit surprised me.

It came in a nice compact package, and I stress the word “in”. Every tools and parts, including the watch case and the movement, are packed into this flat package, which is actually a zippable bag that you can carry around. It is clearly designed with portability in mind. Everything has its own pocket or strap to secure its place within the package. I can imagine myself carrying this bag to, say, a cafe and do some watchmaking outside (not that I will do it), and I don’t need to worry about its content falling out or getting mixed up inside. I give them props for that.

One side note though, when I try to put back the air pump into its designated strap, I had to compress it, with considerable force, to fit it inside the strap. That one strap is probably way to tight. Hope they will improve that in their next version.

Onto the watch. I’ll skip ahead and tell you how it feels after I finish assembling it. Everything looked considerably more expensive that its price tag suggests. To be honest, I was ready to get scammed. But it just doesn’t feel cheap in my hand, especially the strap, which feels as premium as some of my leather strap. It feels pliable but tough. Good leather. And the custom dial is exactly as I ordered. No misplacement or unclear print. I’m genuinely glad to add this watch in my collection.

A few words about the tutorial. Videos are a welcomed feature, as I could see exactly how to assemble it in action. They are structured clearly. One video is one step only, which allowed me to follow it one step at a time and take it slowly. There are small pointers to warn me about some checkpoints too. My tips: really finish one video before going to the next step, and read everything. I was almost doing something that will cause irreversible damage to my watch, but then I felt something is wrong so I stopped and went back to finish the video. That saved my watch. So glad I did that.

I spend around three hours on the entire assembly. But it felt like it could go much quicker than that, like around an hour. That’s possibly the only “complaint” I have with the tutorial. There is a lot of “don’t do this” or “be careful about this” or “troubleshooting abc”, that kind of extends the run time of the video considerably. I understand their concern though: mechanical watch is so fragile that it’s easy to break something, especially for first timer. And in their defense, three hours didn’t feel long at all. It was a nice journey to go through at a relaxed pace. And most importantly, I did get a working watch after that three hours. I’m so not complaining about that.

So to sum up, I would say this is, at the moment, my best purchase of 2020 (I know it just started though). Good value, surprisingly good quality, informative tutorial. I would be waiting anxiously for their next product.

3 Likes

Thank you @FireWatch. This is a very informative review. Now I know what to expect when I buy the kit

@FireWatch This is just what I’m looking for! Thank you for the write up!

One question, was the whole process difficult? I’m a bit afraid I won’t be able to handle those tiny things. My hands are a bit… dumb… you know.

Hey appreciate it!

@Rosaro I suppose to me it wasn’t overly difficult. Having a pair of tweezers (which is included of course) helps a lot. And then my vision isn’t perfect and the parts are small, but they also include a loupe, which I can use to look at the parts magnified. That helps a lot too.

Is there a learning curve? Sure there is. But most tasks felt intuitive enough for me. Usually after a few tries I got the hang of it and it became a relatively easy task.

Neck pain though, that’s one thing I couldn’t deal with. My neck was stiff after the whole process. Bad posture I suppose.

Gosh I thought I have to handle all those tiny screws and things with my fingers! Well, I can certainly imagine a pair of tweezers would certainly help!

I feel assured by your comment. I guess, if at first I don’t succeed, I’ll just try again, until it works, right? Perhaps I’ll set aside more time in advance to do it.

@wissenschaft Appreciate the informative review. Makes me feel good about my purchase. Still waiting though

Good write up. I just have one thing to add: I’d appreciate more text instruction in addition, or even in place of, the video clips. Since the whole thing was quite straightforward for me, it felt to me like the videos are dragging my progress. I could go through the tips 10 times faster if it’s in text instead of video.

But I guess people like video nowadays.

Nice review! My experience was more or less identical to yours. I am really glad about making this purchase, this could turn out to be the most special watch of my collection.

A slight annoyance: the video never gave me enough time to read the summary part. Every time it ends I have to pause the video before it actually ends to read the summary. Nothing wrong with that, just kind of defeats the purpose of having something to read if there’s not enough time to read it.