- The day I no longer had a real job, I've never smiled so much.

I wasn't afraid of, you know, "Oh my God, I need to find another job."

I was like, "This is it.

This is my job.

I'm doing this for the rest of my life.

I can't go back."

(chuckles) (instrumental rock music) My name is Alex Draven.

I'm the owner of The ExCB, where I design handmade jewelry and timepieces.

I always wanted to be an artist.

My mom knew I was going to be an artist, so she helped nurture that.

It wasn't until college that I even considered metalsmithing.

I took a metals class on a whim, and at that point, really fell in love with it.

(metal clinks) And I was in a metals class every semester since.

Towards the end, I was like, "Oh, I need to figure out what I'm gonna do with my life."

And so I decided to start a jewelry company, and I got into watches, because I couldn't find one that I liked.

So I was like, "Fine, I'll make my own."

I was wearing it out, showing it off, catching everybody's eye.

And they're like, "Where can I get one of those?"

And I was like, "I made it."

(laughs) So I started doing production pieces.

At the time, I would make five, and then turned to 10, and now I'm making 20 at a time.

But 20 is my limit.

I don't outsource anything.

I need to make it.

If I didn't make it, it's not handmade, right?

When I say everything is handmade, I don't mess around.

Even the little knobs that hold the quartz movement in place, I set exactly where they needed to be.

I soldered them.

I cut them to length.

That's part of the process.

In 2015, I became a full-time artist.

I live in my studio.

(chuckles) I come in about eight in the morning, I leave about six at night, and I just make things all day.

I love it.

It's nothing but happiness.

Most pieces I see completed in my head.

Once that happens, I can sketch it out.

I can actually draft it to all the specifications that I would need to build it.

Other times, I don't know what I'm doing.

So I'll just kinda wing it.

I'll make a piece that's just on the fly, and it all starts off as just sheets of metal.

Then I cut it, forge it, solder it, do everything that needs to be done, all just using hand tools.

It's all very tormentive, but I don't want to use machines.

I'm doing it because as much as I hate it, as much as my hands hurt at the end of the day, I love that process of just, you know, doing something by hand.

My timeline for doing a line of like, 20 watches from my first cuts of metal, to my final buff of leather, I'd say about 250 hours.

It's very involved.

(laughs) You won't see anything like this, ever.

And I like to keep it that way.

That's the point of it.

I want showstoppers.

I want you to be stopped in the street and say, "Well, tell me about that watch."

There's no point of making something that looks like every other.

So I make it weird.

I'm always trying to outdo the last piece I made, and I don't think I'll ever be done doing that.

That will be an ever-evolving process.

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