Advised by Michael below, I found the site, with quite a lot of interesting articles: I read some of them. What I found quite interesting is the difference between finishing parts to improve the technical qualities and to improve beauty: quite often it serves both goals. There is a difference though to make sure that touching surfaces are as smooth as desired, and to blue the screws for pleasing the eye. The craftsmanship, the patience and the cost that one is willing to put into building a movement determines the overall quality of the watch, so much became clear to me, apart from a lot of other topics described.
IWC finishes its watches for the most part to improve the technical qualities of the watch. Often this is nice to look at too, but the emphasis is less on finishing just for the beauty of it. I like that, if this leads to cost reduction and a lower price this is of course no problem at all for me. An example may be the hand-wound 98xxx movements that are, as far as I can fathom of course, made as good as possible, without making them look as glamorous as Lange, Journe or Patek movements. The beauty lays in the technical qualities, that is good enough for me. As far as looks is important to me, I mean the case, dial, hands, even the strap. The combination of looks and technology with IWC is at an optimal point for me, just being a reasonably knowledgeable buyer of watches, not a connoisseur of craft (how big and well off is this target group really?). Where some of the rituals to build a watch take some aspects of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes" I am out, I have the impression I have nothing to fear with IWC in this respect, except with their wooden watch box of course.
OK, about "IWC as the workman's Patek", let's leave it with the statement that I don't like it, I wouldn't be surprised if IWC itself would never mention it.
Kind regards,
Paul, wearing steel VC Portuguese