Comment by technothrasher

4 years ago

> A warning though, if you consider to get into that hobby. I tried, it's really hard, expensive

Wrist watches are pretty hard and expensive. Pocket watches are less so. When I was interested in getting more intimate with watch repair, I went to eBay and bought up a whole bunch of old pocket watch movements. I've got about 150 of them in various condition, most of them Waltham (easy to get, inexpensive, and I happen to have spent the first 25 years of my life spending a lot of time in the old Waltham Watch Co factory building because my father's company leased out space in it).

Basic tools aren't too bad, just a nice set of tweezers, screwdrivers, and a good magnifier is enough to do a lot of repairs. But you can fall down the rabbit hole pretty quickly with the desire for increased quality tools and things like a staking set so you can replace balance wheel arbors.

I tried to move from the pocket watches into wrist watches, and while the technology is largely the same, the reduced size and increased complexity made it less enjoyable for me. Instead I ended up moving the other direction and now have a nice collection of 18th and 19th century 30-hour and 8-day clocks (more commonly known as "grandfather clocks").

I was recently gifted an 1850’s Waltham that a buddy restored. Pulling it out of my pocket is now my standard answer to “What’s your TikTok?”

This little site really helped me cement in my mind what’s going on inside of the watch.