My watch making journey started as a coping mechanism with my agonizing skin issue (itching eczema and painful loss of skin on my hands) back in 2023.

At first, all that I did was shopping for compatible parts online and assemble them into a watch — what people nowadays call "AIY" (assemble it yourself).

It didn't take long before it gets boring. Despite the multitude of choices the combination that I liked quickly ran out, kind of like the shows I like on online streaming platforms.

To expand my choices I went on to buying and repairing used watches. Restoring them to working condition and cleaning up the exterior (especially the crystal) was already a chore, not to mention the effort required to bring them to their original shining condition.

And in December 2024, even that wasn't enough. So I went on to building custom watch dials. Most of which were inspired by

After months of attempts with various techniques, I believe I have gotten to a point I can create some watches that I like.

I think this is a good point that I retrace my achievements in preparation of more challenges ahead to create more DIY watches I like for myself.

Achievements

Access to material

To make DIY watches, the easiest way to source the material is to buy from Taobao or Alibaba where the Chinese-made parts are cheap and abundant. The same goes for raw materials like metallic plates to every single part a watch is made from.

Oh and, second hand Chinese watches are amazing for ripping usable parts from.

Dial blanks

Anything under 0.4mm are good enough to be the blank of a dial. A print can be applied onto it either as a printed sticker, or water decal. Thicker material may be used if the movement used has high posts for hands.

Aluminium or brass are soft enough I can drill a 2mm hold at the middle with hand drill. Not so for stainless steel plate though.

To cut the hole from the printed material, a punch for leather works has been sharpened and used to punch a round hole on the printed material.

Reverse gilt dials

A printed sticker or water decal may be printed with transparency to reveal the underlying shiny metal, which may be white, red or yellow, giving a more premium feel to the dial.

Case ring

To fit a movement into any watch case, 2 things need to fit: stem height, and case ring.

VH31's stem height fits in anything that holds a Miyota 2115. For case ring VH31 is of an odd shape but some random ABS scrap comes to rescue.

SP68 fits anything that fits a Miyota 2035.

Sweep second quartz

I wrote about this before.

Challenges

Dial position/dial feet

With dial feet firmly glued/soldered onto the

Applied indices

I was able to get Dusk Star to work because it's just one hole to drill and align per index. Even then it ended up a bit off.

The bigger challenge is with drilling 2 holes per bar or triangular index. Those are much nicer looking and really elevate the watch (physically and metaphorically) from simple flat printed-on dials to a higher existence.

Raised numeral dial

Photo-etched metal can do this, but I am unsure how much it is. Probably quite expensive.

A punch can do a similar effect, like the one below, and it'll be even more expensive to CNC the stamp.

Date/Moon window

I can drill a round window. However I don't think I can properly drill, or punch, or saw a rectangular one.

I need some laser cut dial blanks which for now I don't know how much it'll cost me.

Likewise for the moon window.

Well, nothing some money and a lot of patience can't fix! I have a habit of trying things out with whatever available to me at the moment before doing things "the proper way" so it's simply a matter of time before I reach out to laser cut dial blanks, sunburst finish and precisely drilled holes.