Engraving

Your personal engraving

Ludwig Oechslin follows his own path in watch design – also when it comes to the back of his watches. For the functional reasons we outlined in this July 2015 blogpost, ochs und junior watches feature exclusively solid case backs.

This post is about the benefit of a solid case back when personalizing your ochs und junior. Since our case backs, like our dials, feature no logo or descriptive texts – the entire surface is yours to engrave with a personal inscription. A blank canvas like this is a unique opportunity in the luxury watch industry. Not a few logos and text descriptions make their way onto the case backs of other brands.

The watch above was purchased by Erik, our good customer from the Netherlands, to celebrate his 50th birthday. Erik hired a graphic designer to design this inscription which includes references to his birthday, as well as his beloved Porsche 911. Erik’s engraving is an extreme one. More often, our customers choose to add their initials, a verse of poetry, a few bars of music, or a significant date.

Design mockups

You can simply tell us the text you would like to have, and we will make a mockup for your approval. If you don’t have a special font already in mind for your text, we usually recommend Helvetica Neue, the Swiss designed font which we have used in all of our communications since 2012. You can also send us a graphic, a photo, or simply a concept, and we can turn these into a mockup for you as well.

If you like, you can develop your own ideas using the 6000 pixel photos of our case backs below, or the following PDF files which can be opened in a graphic design program like Adobe Illustrator:

• annual calendar, moon phase, date, two time zones (42mm)
• annual calendar, moon phase, date, two time zones (39mm)
• perpetual calendar (42mm)
• day/night (40mm)

annual calendar, moon phase, date, two time zones (42mm)

annual calendar, moon phase, date, two time zones (39mm)

perpetual calendar (42mm)

day/night (40mm)

Laser engraving

Birchler Gravuren & Lasertechnik AG is located about 30 minutes from our Lucerne workshop and lasers all of our engravings. They are engraving masters with their high-tech machine park in Neuheim, and are recognized experts when it comes to handling challenging one-off requests. Your engraving can use multiple levels of depth, monochromatic shades, and even can wrap-around your case, as seen on Erik’s engraving at the top of this post.

One thing we won’t engrave

While we will happily fulfill nearly every wish you could have for your engraving – we will not engrave a text that seems to have come from us. Examples of texts like this include “Limited Edition”, “Unique Piece” or “1 of 1”. In keeping with the small scale of our business and the large opportunity we offer for customization, we see the case back more for inscribing something personally meaningful to you. Since nearly every ochs und junior is a unique design, these traditional watch industry tokens lack the significance they would have when engraved on other watches, anyway!

Time to decide

When you order your ochs und junior, it is not necessary to already have the details for your engraving finalized. We can begin manufacturing your watch, and as a part of this process, we can develop the concept for your engraving together with you. It takes just a few days to add a laser engraving to your case back. Simple text engravings are free of charge. The price for more elaborate engravings depends upon the complexity of your design to laser and on how much of the design work is performed by us. We invite you to contact cofounder Beat Weinmann with any questions.

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For those who were curious, here is the front of Erik’s cool date watch! The dial is in Rhodium plated with oj blue hands and markers, the sturgeon strap has custom oj blue stitching, and the crown is the perpetual calendar crown!