Field Ops — RECON, Day 4 of 4: Meet Your Makers. Assembly & Horween

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COURGcrew —

TL;DR

  • Meet the assemblers
  • Horween straps inspected and immediately en route
  • Operator’s Manual / Mission Log on the presses
  • TiGr5 pushing for pre-Christmas shipping

Welcome to assembly. This is the last station before deployment to the crew.

For those of you who’ve been following along, you’ll notice this facility is “slightly” different from the case manufacturer in RECON day 3. I dig the contrast between the gritty monster machines and then the ultra-detail work of a dust-free environment with workers armed with miniature tools and delicate instruments.

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Field Ops — RECON, Day 2 of 4: Meet Your Makers. Ballistic Nylon, Leather Strap, TiGr5

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Titanium grade 5 case prototypes

COURGcrew —

TL;DR

  • Ballistic nylon straps in full swing
  • New leather mil-strap maker after safety issues and general shady-ness, pushed production back 4 weeks.
  • TiGr5 prototyping

Ever wonder what enough material for thousands of ballistic nylon mil-straps looks like? Now you know. On the left, the huge tower of ballistic is ours and will strap the COURG to our wrists:

Raw Ballistic Nylon

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Field Ops — RECON, Day 1 of 4: Meet Your Makers. Dials, Hands, Cases

Estimated read time:

COURGcrew —

TL;DR

  • All systems go for first wave deployment beginning of December
  • Dial, hand, and case manufacturing walk-throughs.
  • Many people work hard to build your COURG — in these 3 areas alone, a minimum of 15 craftspeople.

Here’s a Thanksgiving edition update. I’ll blast this out to everyone since it’s been a bit of a radio silence since our last debrief. But the next 3 trip debriefs I’ll summarize before the next blast.

Apologies for going MIA for a week. I planned to file these dispatches in real-time each day, but we took some enemy flak in the form of the Great Firewall of China, some food poisoning (I blame seafood), and a cold. And then I didn’t realize that all work shuts down for 1.5 hrs each day for lunch and siesta.

In some cases, workers stayed at it and let me see the workflow so I could move on to the next stop on time. The workshops and factories were scattered across the industrial outskirts so everything was an hour apart, and then we also contended with traffic bottlenecks at almost every turn.

The trip was an eye opener and really humbling to see how many people must work in tandem in order to craft the COURG for us. I have new-found respect for the men and women who help make the COURG. They are tireless in the attention to detail and stringent in producing excellent watch components.

As I toured these workshops and factories I saw many other big name brand watches on parallel production lines. We benefit from the stringent policies and standards that the larger established brands adhere to. For example, one brand insists on 5-day work weeks (other factories open 6 days), with hefty overtime.

Please know that this is a rough outline to give us a sense of the production. There are many other steps left out. The first day was jam-packed. We started around 8:30a and didn’t wrap at the titanium grade 2 factory until after the workers had already left for the day around 8p. What follows is a chronological account so you see as I saw, with some tidbits gleaned from later in the week for context.

So, this is quite long. Grab your favorite brew, sit back and enjoy the flight. Welcome to the hangar.

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