Masahiro Kikuno, Japanese Independent Watchmaker

Do you really think that someone passionate about work is indistinguishable from someone "faking it" after 40 years? I can't imagine doing what I would consider a mundane task for even 5 years straight at regular work hours. 20+ years and I think you would be able to distinguish someone who's doing it for the money and someone who's passionate about the task.

I see he has a copy of "Watchmaking" by George Daniels. That is the "Knuth" of watchmaking.

Here in Britain, we have Roger W Smith, the only watchmaker in the world who makes everything by hand. He was the principal disciple of George Daniels, a truly legendary watchmaker, who sadly died a few years ago.

Daniels famously taught himself watchmaking by taking apart old clocks, putting them back together and repairing them when he was young. If he had been born in the digital age, he'd have been a hacker comparable to Woz.

He didn't just make his own watches, he also made all the specialised tools needed. These days he is perhaps best known for the Daniels Co-Axial Escapement found in some Omega watches, which for many years was believed to be impossible to make.

If you google Roger Smith, he has lots of interesting videos on Youtube showing various parts of the watchmaking process from raw materials.

There are a few interviews with George Daniels too. Here's one talking about his first complete, from scratch watch:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=CSeTi93f2eU

Well, I didn't explicitly take the time scale into account. Or rather, it was like I assumed it was arbitrarily small. But I wouldn't exclude possibility that someone would try to hammer through his own head that he enjoys a job which he loathes through forty years. Sometimes humans can be strange like that.

Just imagine that the job becomes like a surrogate to the persons' actual identity. They identify with their own job and think it makes their lives meaningful even though they might intensely dislike it. For instance, the people I've met who work in medicine who were very much like that - one of my best friends went through med school. Where I live doctors often work long hours besides having extremely stressful jobs (and so take self-comforting addictions like smoking, caffeine abuse and drinking). It seems as if they're often led into the profession by rather unlofty motives like pay or prestige, but I also know that many give some inherent value to their work because they're helping people. Would they'd be better off in another job? I know it's not up to me to tell, I feel as if many would. Specially the ones very much sensitive about patient loss. Because it's a hard thing to deal with anyway, but it hits them the most.

So yeah, I think that someone might stay in a profession he might not actually personally like for some arbitrarily long periods of time. At least in principle. Don't know how it might apply to other professions though, because I don't see why people would keep programming for ethical reasons - unless they're deathly afraid of the coming machine revolution.

> Roger Smith still gets mainsprings, balances, sapphire crystals, and screws from outside sources.

I wasn't 100% sure about that and knew someone would point out if I was in error. I also want to be clear that my comment should not detract from the work of Masahiro Kikuno either, which looks incredible. Whether there are one or two people in the world doing this makes little difference to what an achievement it is.

Also Roger Smith now has a fairly large workshop with apprentices doing some of the work for him. He's no longer one man working in his spare room, although that is how he started.

In fact, when he first approached George Daniels about becoming an apprentice, Daniels told him to make a watch by himself and he'd appraise it first. So he did. Daniels told him it wasn't very good and made him do it again. So he did. After that, Daniels gave in.

Since so many knowledgeable people interested in watches are around here ... What are some affordable, good quality watch brands? Somewhere around 100 to 300 Euro maybe? I like those beautiful, elegant designed watches but 10k EUR upwards is way out of my league.