The TimeZone Tour Visits IWC

by James Dowling

August, 2006

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After a one hour drive from Zurich, Eric (our coach driver) safely brought us to Schaffhausen, drawing up in front of the IWC factory. We poured out and spent a good few minutes admiring the AMG Mercedes cars parked in front of the offices (obvious fruits of the co-operation betwixt the two firms) before we were brought inside and went up to the conference room on the First Floor (European usage).

We were given a quick history of the company, which is still the only major watch firm based in the German speaking part of Switzerland. Whilst we nowadays tend to think of IWC as a very conservative company, its history is considerably more colourful. After F A Jones, the American who had founded the firm, went bankrupt & returned home dejected it was rescued by the local bank who appointed another American, Frederic Seeland, as manager. When he subsequently absconded with the firm’s capital, the bank decided that they had had enough Americans and hired a local manager Johannes Rauschenbach-Vogel, eventually he bought the firm from the bank and it remained in the family for a century. However, even Johannes was not entirely free from controversy; when one of his daughters, Emma, decided to marry Carl Jung (the pioneering psychologist) he warned her against it, saying that he saw no future in psychology.

Despite this interesting history, it is only this year that the company has appointed a historian, who will be responsible for re-organizing the archives and putting together a representative collection for their small museum.

After the introduction we were split into two groups of around a dozen each and my merry band had the great fortune to be shown around the factory by the redoubtable Kurt Klaus, IWC’s head of research & development.

Mr. Klaus led us from the original building to the new factory, which was opened last year. Here, we had our first encounter with the new garments we would come to love. These are white coveralls with a fine black check pattern (as seen being modeled by Mr. Klaus in the picture above); the black check is not purely decorative, in fact it is a mesh of thin carbon fibres which make the garment anti static.

On the ground floor of the factory, one of the first things I encountered was this huge case filled with brass bars, the raw material for the watch movements.

BTW, IWC are the only company in Switzerland who still plate their movements with nickel, as they always have done, unlike everyone else who have switched to rhodium for their plating.

Our first port of call was in the case making department, IWC now make just over 50% of their own cases and hope to soon make all of them apart from the titanium & ceramic ones.

Above, Mr. Klaus discusses the operation of a casemaking machine with (L-R) Scott, David, Bea, Alex, Madi, Alan, Rollin, Steve, Alec & Johnathan.

Here are a group of chronograph cases fresh from the machine but before any polishing or fitting.

After leaving the casemaking shop we visited the heavy end of the watchmaking operation where the baseplates are made from the raw brass we had seen previously. Here we first encountered the machine we were to be come increasingly familiar with over the next few days, the spark or wire erosion machine.

If you want to know more about these machines, this Wikipedia article gives a good primer, but essentially these machines remove metal from the plate one molecule at a time and can therefore produce parts with incredibly tight tolerances. Shown below is the plate for an IWC Portuguese skeleton watch as it came from the machine.

As you can see, it has been machined on several levels and even the chamfers for the jewel settings have done, all that is now required is for it to be dropped into one of these red drums.

They are filled with smooth ceramic pellets of differing sizes and as the drum is vibrated, the metal parts are smoothed off and now ready for the watchmaker.

We then went to the case assembly and finishing area, here we see an employee using an IWC designed and built machine to insert the tubes for the pushers & crown of the Fleigerchrono.

Close by, one of her colleagues was giving the final touches to a gold Portuguese case before it had the movement fitted.

What never failed to amaze me was the feeling of intense concentration everyone seemed to emanate; just look at the faces of both those young ladies.

Before we left the case area, Mr. Klaus stopped to show us the pressure testing system.

Cases are tested firstly before the movements are fitted and then again before the watches are ready for shipping. The cases are placed on the cylindrical plastic racks seen on the floor to the left and then placed inside the incredibly solid looking drum in front of Mr. Klaus. They are tested to well over their publicized limits, so as to reduce the chances of them ever failing whilst in a client’s hands.

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