Can one watchmaker make every part of a watch, including the movement?

Yes. One person can make every part of a watch, movement included. It is done in this trade, and there is no secret to it. The rest of the answer is that it is slow, it needs machines and skills from several different trades, and most small makers — us included, for the watches we sell today — do not do it for every part of every watch. So the useful answer is not yes or no. It is: which parts, on which watch, and can you check the claim.

Here is a definition worth keeping. When a watchmaker says a part is made in-house, it should mean four things happened under one roof. Somebody designed it. Somebody cut it out of metal. Somebody finished its surfaces. Somebody fitted it to the parts around it until the whole thing worked. Take away any one of those and the sentence means less than it sounds. Designed in-house is not the same as made in-house.

What does making one part actually involve?

Design is the stage people picture, and it is the smallest one. After the drawing comes machining, then finishing, then fitting, and the last two are where the hours go.

Take the hands on our Octagon. They start as 0.2 mm carbon steel. They are cut, filed to shape, and then heated until the steel itself turns blue. Overshoot the blue you wanted and the hand is scrap; you make another.

Even then the hand is not finished, because it still has to fit. A hand that looks right but sits a fraction too loose is not a finished part. Fitting means adjusting, testing, taking it apart again, and sometimes making a new one because the last one moved when you were nearly done. That is where the time in a handmade watch actually goes: not the making, the remaking.

Why is the movement the hardest part to make?

A wristwatch movement is not one skill. It is metallurgy, gear cutting, spring making, tool making and adjusting, and several of those are full trades on their own. Much of it needs machines, and the machines need tooling you often have to make first. Every step has to be learned to a standard where the result keeps time for decades, not for a season. That is why most small makers buy a base calibre, and why we do.

Buying a well-understood calibre and then doing real work on it is a decision about where a small maker's hours do the most good. It also means the movement inside the watch is a known quantity to watchmakers other than me, which matters for something meant to be serviced long after it leaves here.

What does Reigi make itself?

For the Cornerstone series watches, in-house means design and engineering; the octagonal 316L stainless steel case and crown, machined here and finished by hand, brushed and polished; the dial, which is 22 individual parts on a glass-bead-blasted anodized aluminium ground, with silver indices and a mesh woven by hand from 0.4 mm sterling silver wire; the hands, from cutting and filing to the bluing; the movement work, Rippling finish included; and then assembly, regulation and final control.

What does Reigi not make?

The base calibre is a Swiss ETA 6498. We bought it. We modify and refinish it, and we name it. The sapphire crystals and the gaskets are bought in: growing sapphire and moulding gaskets are industries of their own. The leather straps are made for us by a Finnish leather artisan. The boxes come from a specialist who makes a better box than I would.

I publish that list because it is the half of the story a buyer can check for themselves. Anyone can write handmade. What you did not make is a falsifiable list: the calibre is named, any watchmaker can open the case and confirm it, and you can ask me about any other line on it.

Have I built a movement from scratch?

Once, from the ground up, and it was a wall clock, not a wristwatch. During my studies at the Finnish School of Watchmaking in Espoo I took part in an Erasmus+ project with a horology school in Morteau, France, where I was at the centre of building a complete wall-clock movement. That is on record in a headmaster's written statement from February 2025.

A wall clock is not a wristwatch made large. The scale changes the tooling, the tolerances and the ways things fail. So I will not tell you I have cut a wristwatch movement from bar stock, because I have not. I graduated as a micromechanic in 2024 and have been full-time on Reigi since that summer. The master watchmaker's examination is something I intend to sit. I have not sat it.

Would you make a whole movement for a commission?

Yes, with one thing said plainly first. For a Pièce Unique — a one-of-one watch designed from zero with its owner, built once, and then retired — we are willing to make every part from raw material, including the movement. That is a stated willingness, not a track record. It would be the hardest thing this atelier has done, it would be agreed with the client before anything is cut, and it is one reason we take these rarely and one at a time. The price is set with the final design. There is no list.

Why do it the hard way?

The point of making watches the hard way is the meaning the finished object can hold. That only works if the account of what went into the watch is true, which is why the bought list matters as much as the made list.

The atelier is in Jyväskylä and visitors are welcome by appointment. If you want to know which line of that list applies to a watch you are considering, write to reach@reigi.fi.