Chapter 1 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.
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. That list is how a small studio ships a watch that feels like a big one.
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.
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.
Harder than it looks
Every steel case takes an electroplated clear coating that hardens the surface without changing its colour: the same brushed steel, more resistant to the daily marks that dull a soft case. A DLC (diamond-like carbon) finish is on the bench for a future iteration; this first run stays steel, and tougher than it reads.
What’s left is finalisation, not invention.
That’s where Chapter 1 stands: close, and unhurried. Thank you for being here for it.
— The Kintao Team