Every movement at the bench.

Eight movements sit in the parts library — five Seiko NH automatics, a Miyota 8285, a Seiko VK63 mecha-quartz chronograph, and a Seiko VJ24 quartz. They give you a range that no single movement family could deliver alone. Here's what each one is and who it's for.

How to read this guide

All eight movements sit at the same price tier — Foundation, $595. We restructured our pricing so that no movement costs more than any other. The only thing that lifts a build into the Premium tier ($795) is whether you choose one of our exclusively-designed custom cases or premium dials — both produced in small runs and priced accordingly. The movement choice is yours, independent of price.

What you're actually choosing between is what the watch does on your wrist. Mechanical or quartz. Date or no date. Chronograph or three-hand. Skeleton or solid. Each movement gives you a different answer to that question.

1. Seiko NH35

The default. The Seiko NH35 is the workhorse mechanical movement of the modding world — automatic, hand-windable, hacking seconds, with a date complication at three o'clock. It's the most-supported calibre in the modding aftermarket by an enormous margin, meaning more dial options, more case options, more bracelet options. If you're building your first watch, this is almost always the right answer.

Best for: every kind of build except chronographs and women's smaller cases. Daily-wear watches. Dive-style. Datejust-style. Field watches with a date.

2. Seiko NH36

The day-date sibling of the NH35. Adds a small day-of-week wheel that shows through a second window, usually at twelve o'clock. The aesthetic it lives for is the Rolex Day-Date (the "President") and the vintage Seiko 5 Sports. If you specifically want a day window, this is the only NH-family movement that gives it to you.

Best for: dressy day-date dials, vintage Seiko 5 homages, Rolex Day-Date-style builds.

3. Seiko NH38

The no-date NH. Strips the date complication entirely, leaving a clean dial. Best for skeleton-friendly builds, dress watches where the date would be visual clutter, and vintage references from before 1956 (when most watches didn't have date complications anyway).

Best for: minimalist dress dials, semi-skeleton builds, pilot watches, anything pre-1960 styling.

4. Seiko NH05

A slightly slimmer cousin of the NH35, often paired with rotating bezels in diver-style builds. The NH05 is what sits inside most of the Datejust-style and Submariner-style modding cases. Same base architecture as the NH35 but a different dial-foot position pattern, which means the parts ecosystem around it is smaller — though still substantial.

Best for: dive watches, Datejust homages, Submariner-style builds, integrated-bracelet cases.

5. Seiko NH70

The showpiece. The NH70 has the bridges and date wheel mechanism cut away so the gear train is visible from above. Pair it with an openworked dial and you can watch the balance wheel oscillate, the rotor swing, the escape wheel jump tooth by tooth on your wrist.

Best for: skeleton builds, exhibition-style watches, anyone wanting the wow-factor of seeing the movement at work.

6. Miyota 8285

The Miyota 8285 is the other major Japanese automatic in the modding world. Made by Citizen's Miyota division, it's been around longer than the Seiko NH-series and powers a huge proportion of mid-tier microbrand watches. Slightly slimmer in diameter than the NH-series, with a finer finish on the visible parts and a tighter feel through the crown when winding.

The dimensional difference means you can't drop a Miyota 8285 into a case designed for an NH35 — the dial foot positions and movement diameter are different. We carry case and dial combinations specifically cut for the 8285 in our parts library.

Best for: students who want a different aesthetic from the Seiko ecosystem. Slightly smaller case proportions. A more refined visible-rotor finish.

7. Seiko VK63

The VK63 is something different from the others — a mecha-quartz chronograph. The timekeeping is quartz (battery-driven, accurate to within ±15 seconds per month), but the chronograph mechanism — the start, stop, and reset pushers — is mechanical. You feel that satisfying snap of a mechanical pusher click, and the chrono sweep hand jumps to twelve when reset like a proper Swiss chrono. It's the best of both worlds: quartz reliability for daily timekeeping, mechanical character for the chronograph function.

The VK63 is the movement that powers most affordable microbrand chronographs — Dan Henry, MoonSwatch-adjacent designs, vintage racing chronograph homages. The recent surge in chronograph interest (the AP x Swatch crossover, MoonSwatch, vintage chrono reissues) has made this calibre suddenly central to the modding world. We added it to the library because the demand is real.

Best for: anyone chasing a chronograph look without paying $3,000+ for a true mechanical chrono. Speedmaster homages. Racing chronograph builds. People who want sub-dials and a chrono sweep that actually clicks.

8. Seiko VJ24

The VJ24 is our smallest movement. Quartz-powered, three-hand with date, designed for sub-36mm cases — the size range historically associated with women's watches, but increasingly back in fashion across all wearers. If you want a watch that genuinely fits a smaller wrist, the VJ24 is the calibre that lets us build one for you.

One honest note: the VJ24 is the hardest movement in our library to assemble. The hands are noticeably smaller than the Seiko NH-series — the pinions are finer, the hand-fitting bores are tighter, and the tolerance for misalignment is much smaller. We'll talk you through it carefully, but you should know going in that this is the build where patience matters most.

Best for: smaller cases (32–36mm), vintage dress reproductions, women's-proportioned builds, anyone who specifically wants a smaller-on-the-wrist watch.

"The movement doesn't make the watch yours. The choice you make about the movement does."

How to choose

The decision tree, simplified:

• You want a daily-wear watch with date — NH35.
• You want day + date — NH36.
• You want a clean dial with no date — NH38.
• You want a dive watch or Datejust homage — NH05.
• You want a skeleton showpiece — NH70.
• You want something off the Seiko grid — Miyota 8285.
• You want a chronograph — VK63.
• You want a smaller, dressier, or women's-proportioned build — VJ24.

Every one of them is a Foundation-tier build. Every one of them is $595. The lineup is wide on purpose: we wanted to make sure that whichever watch you arrived imagining, we could help you build a version of it.

Why we restructured the pricing

For most of the year, our pricing distinguished between Standard (NH35/36/38) and Premium (NH05 with bezel, or NH70 skeleton) at different price points. We've changed that. The reason is simple: we're a female-led watch school, and the watches women typically build use smaller, more delicate movements like the VJ24 — which are harder to work with, not easier. Charging more for those movements would mean charging women more for the same craft. We don't do that.

Now every watch build is $595 at the Foundation tier, regardless of the movement. The Premium tier exists only for builds using our exclusive custom-designed cases — case designs we've manufactured in small runs that aren't available anywhere else, plus some premium dials — which carry a manufacturing premium of $200. You pay extra only for what's genuinely more expensive to produce. The craft itself is the same.