Article: aBlogtoWatch: Inside Hampden’s First Hand Workshop
aBlogtoWatch: Inside Hampden’s First Hand Workshop
aBlogtoWatch has published a feature on First Hand, our watchmaking workshop at Hampden’s Chicago headquarters. The piece follows a full day at the bench: taking apart a Unitas 6498 movement under a microscope, putting it back together, then casing, timing and water-testing the finished watch.
“Taking a movement apart and successfully putting it back together, however, is another proposition entirely.”
That gap between looking at a movement and understanding it is why we built First Hand. Most guests have never held a movement before they arrive. Six of them work under magnification with our instructors beside them, choose one of eight dials after lunch, and leave with their initials engraved on the ratchet wheel of the movement they assembled.
The watch at the end of the day is the First Edition, and it isn’t sold at any price. As aBlogtoWatch puts it:
“The only way to own one is to build it during the workshop.”
Built, never bought. Reserve a seat.