I found this article somewhere stashed on the internet, might be very interesting for all us dreaming to own a Grand Seiko. You might not be able or afford to own it now, but do not forget that dreaming of having a GS is not a bad thing. This is about a factory, the place where Grand Seiko is made. Nothing technical here, all are facts related to "the finest of a very fine Japanese watch". Start reading.
Tucked away in a seemingly remote wooded part of Japan, near the town of Morioka, sits a world-class watchmaking facility that has been quietly producing some of the world’s finest mechanical watches for over 70 years.
Called the Shizukuishi Watch Studio (check out a movie about this studio here), the workshop is distinctly different from any other watchmaking atelier in Europe. Each watchmakers’ desk is custom made out of a local wood called Iwayado Tansu and lacquered to a bright polish. The benches are all made to different heights – custom made specifically to the height of the individual watchmaker. Outside the studio hangs a large sign in Japanese stating “Building in Quality with Painstaking Care”.
Within these workshops, the caliber 9S watch movement series is produced and remains the iconic mechanical caliber of the Grand Seiko collection. In the final steps of the assembly of the 9S, each balance wheel is subjected to final adjustment in a surprising way to ‘lock-in’ the accuracy of the movement.
Rather than having a balance wheel with adjustable screws or a gyromax system, Seiko uses a labor intensive process that leaves very little room for trial and error. The watchmakers painstakingly remove tiny amounts of material from a solid balance wheel in order to perfectly adjust the watch the first time. The result is a balance wheel that is perfectly adjusted and cannot be modified from the beginning. The final adjustment can only be made with the hairspring, a process that is also done manually.
Once the watches are completed, they are subjected to a 17 day quality control test adjusting to temperature and 6 positions. In the end, Grand Seiko mechanical watches are accurate to -3 to +5 seconds per day compared to COSC at -4 to +6 seconds perday. Consequently, a mechanical Grand Seiko can hold its own with any Swiss chronometer.
To exemplify the degree of hand finishing that goes into a Grand Seiko, we were given the chance to participate in the “Varnishing Experience”. We were each given a Grand Seiko rotor with our initials hand engraved by Seiko’s master engraver and we were taught how to varnish the engraved Grand Seiko logo with shellac before final polishing. It was a nice way to see how the engraved portions of a rotor or bridge are elegantly colored – and it also made for some interesting photo ops.
The second watchmaking studio we visited was in the depths of Japan’s central mountains near Nagano. Known as the Shinshu Studios, this massive workshop is where a number of high-grade Seikos calibers areassembled including the Spring Drive 9R series and high grade quartz 9F series, used exclusively for Grand Seiko.
The Shinshu studios are composed of three workshops: the Mastery“Takumi” Studio, the jewelry setting studio (mostly for Credor), and the Micro-Artist studio. Here we learned how about the various finishes that are used on Seiko bridges, plates, rotors, etc. such as perlage, sunray finish, circular finish, and even Geneva Stripes. We also saw where Seiko dials are made from scratch for Grand Seiko and we visited Seiko’s most exclusive high-end watchmaking atelier.
Hidden under a flight of stairs, a la Harry Potter, a workshop of small size and massive importance produces some of the greatest works of Japanese horological art. It is simply known as the Micro-Artist Studio. It is within this studio, the master craftsmen produce the Credor Sonnerie, a repeating wristwatch that you have to listen to in order to understand.
On the wall is a small sign written in Japanese that shares the philosophy of this studio “Our watches bring long-term satisfaction, the feeling of Japanese and are reliable to wear until Grandchildren.” Truly the words of the watchmakers, not the marketers.
