Service Repair and sales of Wrist and Pocket Watches. All work carried out by graduate certified watchmaker,
Go direct to the watchmaker and save, no sale tax out of state.
Go direct to the watchmaker and save, no sale tax out of state.
After years of seeing many quick fixes I decided to start showing some of the damage I see daily having been repaired by so called “watchmakers”. I often get email asking if I can repair there watch following a visit to the cheapest repair person, or there claimed " fully serviced" watch from auctions that always helps the sale price!. In fact a high percentage of my work comes from the quick fix cheap repairs and auction purchases. One common mistake is that people think a jeweler is a watchmaker, do you hire a plumber to do your electrical work? Watch repair is becoming a popular hobby and many people can get a watch ticking enough to sell at online auctions/shows, damage often occurs in doing so, this can be expensive to reverse often permanent. I will however quickly add there are some home hobbyists who do wonderful work.
If you value your watch enough to have it repaired find a qualified watchmaker.
A good indication is finding a formally trained graduate of a full time watchmaking school there are not many working independently, and not to be confused with a series of short cut 2-4 day hobby courses with a nice certificates, hard to compare to years sat in a formal watchmaker school adhering to the highest standards daily.
Even then you need to look at his workshops, equipment, the bench should be clear only the basic tools visible, scrubbed clean dust free bench and workshop, look at the diversity of watches he regularly works on
If you are not sure remember mistakes can result in permanent / expensive damage.
I will keep adding more photos as I remember these are very recent sadly will not take long to find more
If you value your watch enough to have it repaired find a qualified watchmaker.
A good indication is finding a formally trained graduate of a full time watchmaking school there are not many working independently, and not to be confused with a series of short cut 2-4 day hobby courses with a nice certificates, hard to compare to years sat in a formal watchmaker school adhering to the highest standards daily.
Even then you need to look at his workshops, equipment, the bench should be clear only the basic tools visible, scrubbed clean dust free bench and workshop, look at the diversity of watches he regularly works on
If you are not sure remember mistakes can result in permanent / expensive damage.
I will keep adding more photos as I remember these are very recent sadly will not take long to find more
This was a quick fix done local repair man, to a
high end wristwatch the stems are very expensive so
to save money he hacked a new stem out this caused
the gears not to engage and gearwheels severely damaged
resulting in it now costing several times the
cost of the stem to repair.
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Setting jewels can be difficult, so here is a quick way! |
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A balance staff change, wheel buckled, lower roller table twisted to position with enough force to flatted the side, possible pipe wrenched used!, having no roller jewel a plug of wire, needless to say cheaper to replace balance complete if possible.
Barrel destroyed in attempt to fix mainspring barrel hook |
Here is another problem solved to close a loose barrel, solder it shut! |
This is truly a classic don't think
I need to add notes!
His friend had some dial cleaner
that would make it shine like new!
The book said carefully make a tiny mark where the stud is to aid reassembly and then poise after staffing, the screw heads have been hacked away, balance buckled roller glued on the watch did tick afterwards albeit running 15 minutes fast this was sold at a show as being serviced
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After 100 years of running he decided that the fork needed to be corrected |
Here is a watch that was left to run un serviced to long and ground away the pinion watches like any machine need servicing. |
This was a very interesting repair gluing the arms together, looks like he also had a little difficulty with the hairspring.
This came off a once good quality pocket watch |
If the seals are not changed at regular intervals they can turn to a rubber goo and fail, this gets into
the movement it becomes very hard to remove requiring much more time and cost.
the movement it becomes very hard to remove requiring much more time and cost.
I often read of people doing quick fixes to
pivots by grinding then down with stones, instead of the skilled
turning work required to make a delicate high polished.
This was serviced by the owners local guy apart
from breaking off a few screw heads gluing
them back on, they also found it necessary
to jam a old screw driver blade in under the
balance cock for no reason, Built in tool kit?
numerous other problems had to be resolved,
A once high value high grade Illinois pocket watch , many problems with this sadly, the hack could not get the square peg in the square hole so started hacking away, not to mention the home made cleaning solution that has corroded most pivots and pinions on the watch plus irreparable balance damage after an attempted staff change, it was running when sold on eBay sold as is "may need service!" when you buy from Ebay you only have a short while to have them inspected and returned if in this state, several buyers have watches shipped direct to me, asking sellerswill they ship to a watchmaker for immediate inspection should they win is often enough to filter out these hacks.
You often see bargain rolex repairs upper plate destroyed wonder what else I will find..... |
This came out of a once quality watch a 24J bunn,a few hours on the "local guys" bench and all but scrap hairspring is also damage, |
Rolex serviced locally, movement chiseled out destroying
internal parts & repair now exceed watch value
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This watch was bought off
ebay running recently serviced
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This once good working watch was sent into to a "watch repair shop" Google rating 1.3, to be told it could not be repaired.
Quick initial look and started a list and stopped after a few seconds as too much damage, detent screw head broken & plate damaged, barrel arbor, click spring, third wheel broken, hairspring damaged, basically now a parts watch at best. |
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someone many years ago didn't know this is a left hand turn screw tightened it down so tight no one else could release it so just trickled some oil in each service, I removed the screw to find this very old brown hard grease
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Pocket watch in for repair this week. a lot of work trying to make a jewel fit. Classic square jewel in round hole..... |
Look at edge of dial, what you see is oil, he just
bought this off a watch chat room as running, two
damaged gears so he filled it full of oil, strong
smell like penetrating oil, this had to be fully
hand cleaned first then cleaned as normal
doubling the expected cost.
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Simple way to fix loose barrel cover is to solder it shut, may have beneficial effect on re tempering the spring also!! Wonderful no doubt sold as "just been serviced" |
This watch had a list of recent service records.
A soup of metal and glue used to time it,
out of interest I did test it and of course way off.
