Many watches out there claim to be handmade but only a few can make that cut. The Greubel Forsey Hand Made 1 is one of them. With 95% of this timepiece —including the hairspring— made using only hand-operated tools and 6,000 hours of work —three years of man-hours—, the Greubel Forsey Hand Made 1 is in reality as handmade as a watch can get. A handmade watch requires to be made mostly by hand or utilizing processes that are hand operated, I’d say to at least 70%.

Centuries ago, before timepieces were mass-produced, watch components had to be made one by one with the help of specific skills, tools, and completely hand-operated machines. Today, many of these processes have virtually disappeared, and creating a watch like the Hand Made 1 has required working on things in a very different way involving the people who would make and decorate each component from the very beginning.

Does that mean that other watches like a Rolex or an Omega should not be considered handmade? Correct. While Rolex or Omega watches are meant to last a lifetime and their craftsmanship is really at the top, they are mass produced with a total annual production exceeding a million watches. Even though some of their processes are still done by hand, they’re really minimal.

Are brands like Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin, or Patek Philippe still making timepieces that fall under handmade watches? Absolutely. These brands still conduct the majority of their processes including casing, finishing, polishing, decorating, and assembly via hand operations. Their production is still very limited below 60,000 watches a year. This allows for the manufactures to carry out more operations by hand than when it comes to mass-produced watches.

While their watches can still be considered handmade, the reality is that watches like the Greubel Forsey Hand Made 1, or watches from independent watchmakers like Philippe Dufour or F.P. Journe are more handmade —to a higher degree— than those from bigger brands.

The project Naissance d’une Montre 1 led by the Time Aeon Foundation and Philippe Dufour is the best example of a handmade watch using ancient horological tools and hand-operated processes. Officially started in 2011 and presented at the SIHH 2014 in Geneva as a concept, the Le Garde Temps Naissance d'une Montre is a timepiece fully made by hand following traditional and historical watchmaking techniques. The first prototype of this exceptional timepiece sold for $1.461 Million USD at the Christie’s Important Watches auction in Hong Kong.

Following the roadmap of the Le Garde Temps Naissance d'une Montre, the Greubel Forsey Hand Made 1 has been entirely created from scratch including the movement construction, traditional machining, and hand-finishing for each of the 272 movement components and 36 case parts —308 components. 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 and 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, required 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, took 600 times longer than that of a high-end industrial wheel.

Then, in my book, I consider a handmade watch one where all the movement’s components are of course hand finished true to the finest watchmaking tradition, including the bridges with their polished inner and outer vertical flanks, the mainplate, and the wheels with hand-polished bevels top and bottom. Therefore, most independent watch brands meet these criteria, but of course some more than others. Because of this, I like to consider handmade watches coming from brands like Greubel Forsey, MB&F, Laurent Ferrier, Ferdinand Berthoud, Louis Moinet Armin Strom, De Bethune, and Voutilainen amongst others.

Next time you want to call your Omega or Rolex watch handmade, think twice. The Greubel Forsey Hand Made 1 is the new standard as far as handmade watches using hand-operated machines, but the majority of the independents as well as some of the oldest watch brands in the world follow closely.