Where UC1 Recurve Stands
Eighteen months of prototypes, three rounds on the dials, ten watches worn hard. An honest update on where UC1 Recurve actually is.
UC1 Recurve is at final prototype. It took eighteen months to get here, and most of that was tolerances: the same part made again and again, a few hundredths of a millimetre at a time, until the crown, the clutch and the bezel all agreed.
The central idea is simple to use. With the crown pushed in, turn clockwise to wind the movement and anticlockwise to move the internal bezel. A clutch around the stem separates the two functions. That small change in direction is the connection between the mechanism inside and the hand outside.
Down to the drawings
What’s left is finalisation, not invention. The engineering drawings are locked, and a full QC checklist sits behind them: every dimension, every finish, every function, with a pass or fail against it.
A drawing gives each part its dimensions. It also has to account for the neighbouring parts. The crown, clutch and bezel form an assembly, and the relationships between them matter as much as any individual measurement.
Three rounds on the dials
The dials and the finishing took three full rounds of revisions. Brushing direction, chamfer angles, the texture of the fumé: each was cut, worn, rejected and redrawn until it earned its place. None of it reads as effort on the wrist, which is the point.
Brushing and polish catch light differently. Their meeting point gives an edge its definition. On the dial, the relationship between texture, hands and applied indices changes as the wrist moves.
Ten on wrists
We have ten working prototypes in hand, and they’ve been worn hard. Real days, real knocks, not a photo booth. Field testing is the only honest way to find what a drawing can’t.
Wearing a watch brings the whole object into consideration: reaching for the crown, fastening the bracelet, reading the dial at an angle. Those ordinary movements are part of the design brief.
What’s left is finalisation, not invention.
That’s where UC1 Recurve stands: close, and unhurried. Thank you for being here for it.
— The Kintao Team
