Watch Repairing. Master the Larger Sizes.

In Watchmaking as in any vocation, your degree of success will come according to your love for the work and the amount of time and labor you are willing to put into it.

To the man who likes things mechanical and takes pride in doing his work just a little bit better than the other fellow, there is a fascination in Watchmaking difficult to describe to the uninitiated, and an opportunity for financial returns which few outsiders appreciate.

No matter how long he has followed this trade, there is always the greatest satisfaction to such a mail in seeing a fine timepiece again functioning properly, the result of his own skill in taking it, a broken or abused movement, utterly useless, and restoring it to its original.
However, such skill can be attained only by conscientious effort, wisely directed, and an irrepressible determination to “make good”.

The success of my resident school has been due largely to my having been able to direct each student, to see that he followed the instructions exactly, mastering each step or problem before being allowed to advance to another, and worked diligently all the time he was in attendance.

If you are willing to give the same amount of conscientious effort that you would be compelled to give were you in a first class resident school, I see no reason why you cannot make the same degree of progress.

Method of Studying the Lessons

My endeavor has been to make this course so simple that a student with no experience in this line, one who has never seen the inside workings of a watch, may follow with ease every step from taking the movement out of the case to the matching of the escapement in a modern timepiece. Not only will he understand it but if he performs each operation until he has really mastered it, he will be surprised at the progress he makes and the ease with which he is able to do work that would now seem utterly beyond him.

The mere act of reading these lessons as you would a work of fiction will help you very little in attaining a mastery of Watchmaking. They should be studied by taking one problem at a time, never leaving this one until it is thoroughly understood and mastered.

The first step should be to read carefully the stand every portion of it, If any part should not be entirely clear, start again at the beginning and read until you come to the first point that seems the least particle confusing. Such confusion is generally caused by misunderstanding some previous paragraph, and in order to clear this up it will be necessary for you to go back to the beginning and over the entire preceding paragraphs of that particular subject.

This rule should be followed with all your lessons. If necessary study them over and over. The same method should also be followed in doing the practical side of the lessons. Whatever you may be doing, fitting mainsprings, cleaning, jeweling, turning, assembling — if at any point you see where you can improve it, start again and when you come to that certain part, make it better. This should be your constant aim, to always improve the quality of your work.

In this practical work don’t be satisfied when you have merely succeeded in doing the work once. Do it until you are expert in that particular thing. If you are putting a mainspring in a barrel do it over and over until you can almost do it with your eyes shut. In this way you not only get ability to do good work but you acquire speed as well.

One of the advantages of our method of studying this fascinating subject is that you are not held back by some other student. You are in a class by yourself and your progress is determined entirely by the way you apply yourself to the work. One thing I want you to guard against, Right at first there is a tendency to rush your work – in other words trying to get it out quickly without really keeping up to the standard that I want. Just remember that to make a success you must first master each step in every job and then your speed will come with practice. The man who aims at perfect work soon surpasses the man who merely works to get his job done.

Watch Repairing

The average man associates the word Watch with the combination of the watch movement and the case in which it is carried. These two are separated into two classes by those who are engaged professionally in this line, and the work of making and repairing them differs greatly, the man who works on watch cases being known as a casemaker while the workman who specializes on watch movements is known as a watchmaker.

By the term watchmaker throughout the jewelry trade, is meant one who repairs rather than one who actually manufactures watch movements. In the present day, watch factory methods have reduced the making of watches to a point where the factory worker generally specializes on one operation, working on some certain part, and it may be not even knowing what office that part performs in the completed watch.

Such a worker might he an expert in his one specialty on one make of watches — in fact he is a “factory expert” — but as a watchmaker in the true sense of the word he needs much further training. The factory man even in most advanced work, works only on one make of watch and that in the latest model while the Master Watchmaker must be able to repair any make of watch, Swiss or American, regardless of age or model.

In our lessons, Watchmaker refers to the repairer of watch movements. However, the man who really wishes to qualify as an expert must be able to calculate and make some of the parts, and thoroughly understand the relations and actions of the different mechanisms that go to make up the complete watch.

First – Master the Larger Sizes

In these instructions we will divide the work into two general groups, POCKET WATCHES and WRIST WATCHES; and all our preliminary work will be upon the pocket watches. The mechanism of these two groups is of the same order, the parts of wrist watches necessarily being smaller and more delicate than are those of the larger pocket watches.

Do not attempt to work upon wrist or bracelet watches until you have thoroughly mastered the pocket size watches!. I know that after you are able to do the work of the first few lessons on large watches there is a great temptation to try your hand upon the small sizes, but if you will hold off until you have acquired the proper skill in handling small parts, you should then have no difficulty in repairing the small size watches for which the experts get such big prices.