Hand-wound first

Sit in the hand-wound stage—deep fundamentals, everything manual—before chasing the automatic or quartz stage of scale.

Right now I'm learning to make a manual, hand-wound, mechanical watch. Every gear set by hand. Nothing automated.

On my feed everyone's touting their automatics and their quartz—faster, easier, built to scale. Maybe that's in my future too. But if I skip ahead now, I never learn the mechanisms. So I sit where I am, because this is the stage that teaches me all the craftsmanship.

Get the fundamentals into your hands first. The hand-wound becomes automatic later; the automatic becomes quartz after that. Build the solid foundation, then let it scale.

2 strokes · first noted june 2026 · lives in on self
see — the journey keeps the prize

a thought from the margin · 2 returns · back to the room