Showing our work on the new S8

You’d be forgiven for assuming the watch with a complication is the one that takes the longest to make. A complication is anything a watch does beyond telling the time, and our S3 Deadbeat Seconds has one: its seconds hand jumps once a second instead of sweeping round, which takes a fair bit of extra movement to pull off. The new S8 “only” shows hours, minutes, and small seconds. That’s it.

We made much the same assumption ourselves. We planned for around four weeks of assembly and finishing on the S8, and it took more than eight, roughly twice as long as an S3 Deadbeat Seconds. Those eight weeks only cover the work at the bench, mind. There are many more steps in the background before a watchmaker ever picks up the parts, including the raw machining.

Most of the difference comes down to the finishing. With no complication to point at, that’s what the S8 puts on show, so here’s what’s actually in front of you, one finish at a time.

Less metal, more work

The S8 is skeletonised. There’s no solid dial over the movement, just a chapter ring around the edge, and metal has been cut away from the bridges, the plates that hold the wheels in place, so you can look straight through to the other parts behind. Cutting metal away sounds like a shortcut. It isn’t. Every opening creates a fresh run of edges, and each must be properly finished before the watch is done.

The ratchet wheel is a good example. It’s the toothed wheel that turns as you wind the crown, and it’s usually left solid. On the S8 it’s skeletonised too, so the wheels beneath it stay in view, which means more openings, more edges, and more corners on a part most people don’t think twice about.

We chose not to engrave the movement or the case, either. The finishing is all there is to look at, and what goes on the caseback is left to the owner.

The corners a machine can’t reach

A bevel is a narrow edge cut at an angle, usually 45 degrees, along the edge of a part and then polished until it shines. Originally, it was just housekeeping. Machining leaves a rough burr along every edge, and removing it stopped loose pieces of metal from getting into the movement. These days it’s there for decoration.

The shape comes first, made with coarse files initially, then with fine ones. Then come finer and finer abrasives, and finally a small wooden peg daubed with diamond paste, worked along its edge until perfectly mirror-polished.

On a lot of movements, the biggest part, the mainplate that everything else is built on, has its bevels cut by machine and then polished by hand. On the S8, every bevel is cut by hand, including the mainplate.

The hardest bits are the internal corners, where two bevels meet in a point that turns into the part rather than out of it. A machine’s toolhead spins, so it can’t make a sharp inward corner, only a curve the same width as the tool. Getting a sharp point means working into it by hand with a file ground to a fine edge. A skeletonised movement is full of them, and collectors know to look out for them as a sign of proper hand-finishing.

Why we kept them shallow

Having gone to all that trouble, we then kept the bevels shallow and narrow. It sounds backward, but it was very deliberate.

A deep, wide bevel throws back a lot of light, and on a movement with this many edges, that adds up quickly. Make every one big and bright, and the whole front of the watch starts to glitter, with the hands competing against every polished edge behind them. On a watch that only tells the time, that rather defeats the point, and it loses the refinement we work so hard to achieve.

So the bevels on the S8 read as a fine line of light around each bridge rather than a wide band. They outline the shapes without shouting over the rest of the finishing, and the hands stay easy to read. Our dials taught us the same lesson. As the old adage goes, less is more.

Light in one direction

Some of the S8’s details are black polished, which is a slightly puzzling name until you see it. The surface is so perfectly flat that it reflects light in one direction only, like a mirror. From most angles it’s reflecting something dark, so it looks black. Tilt the watch until the light lines up, and it flashes bright for a moment before going dark again.

The part must be made completely and perfectly flat to achieve this effect. The watchmakers rub it on a plate of tin or zinc coated with very fine diamond paste until there isn’t a single imperfection left. Any flaw at all breaks the reflection, so it shows up instantly. It’s a painstaking, thankless task, but one we deemed absolutely necessary and non-negotiable for a watch of this caliber.

The same pair of hands

Every S8 is built by one watchmaker, start to finish. The same person finishes the parts, plates them, assembles the movement, and makes the hands for that watch at the bench. It’s how we build every Garrick, but on the S8 you can see more of that one person’s work than on anything else we make.

The hands can be polished, heat-blued, or heat-purpled, and none of those colors come from paint. The polished steel is heated slowly until a thin layer of oxide forms on its surface, and that layer changes colour as the temperature climbs, through straw and purple to blue. Purple sits just before blue, so the trick is stopping at exactly the right moment.

The bits you’d need a loupe for

The chapter ring, the ring around the edge that carries the hour markers, is frosted German silver. Despite the name, that’s an alloy of copper, nickel, and zinc, with no silver in it at all. The markers are engraved into the ring and filled with ink.

On a steel ring, we’d flood the engraving with ink and spin the ring on a lathe to wipe away the excess. German silver won’t put up with that. Ink permanently stains it, and the frosted surface draws ink out of the engraving like blotting paper. So each ring is filled by hand, with a needle, under a microscope. It’s serious stuff and needs the steadiest of hands.

Then there’s the serial number. It isn’t engraved straight onto the watch. It has its own little disc at about 11 o’clock, turned on a lathe, engraved, filled, and bevelled, before it’s fitted. You could look at the S8 for quite a while before noticing it. Most of the S8 is like that. It keeps rewarding a closer look. And that’s how we like it.

Better in person

Back in the summer, we said we might have one more reason for you to come and find us at IAMWATCH, if it was ready in time. It is. The S8 makes its debut at The Singapore EDITION, from 12 to 15 November 2026.

Finishing is also super hard to photograph. A bevel is a thin line of light that moves as you tilt the watch, and black polishing flips from dark to bright and back again. A photograph only catches one angle and stops there. If you’re in Singapore this week, come and find us, and bring a loupe if you have one.

At school, the right answer was never quite enough on its own. You got the marks for showing your working. The S8 does the simplest job a watch can do and leaves all its workings out in the open for anyone who wants to see.

More info HERE