Excited

[stevieisballer]

I am a 16 year old trying to learn how to repair watches and eventually make my own. I am excited to see the walkthroughs on here!

[Daveb]

Welcome to the forum, you will get a lot of help from here. Good luck.

[Geo]

Welcome aboard young man, we could do with more folk your age getting into horology.  

There are lots of good folk here more than willing to pass on knowledge, so don't be frightened to ask regardless of how simple or complicated the question is.  We all had to start at sometime, and I for one wish I had started at your age.

[Cad101]

A big welcome to you its good to have you here.

Mick

[Watchtime]

Welcome and prepare for some long evenings reading all the knowledge here, enjoy.

[oldhippy]

Welcome to the forum. If you want to take up horology as a profession you need to undertake an apprenticeship, not sure how long you have to serve these days, back in my time 1970’s it was 7 years two of which was served as an improver. It’s all very well saying read loads of books, you can’t learn everything out of books you need hands on experience, get stuck in and get those hands dirty.

[clockboy]

Welcome I agree 100% with old hippy if you can find one look for an apprentice position.If I was you I would write to Rolex, Omega etc and just ask the question. In my experience as a manager the best jobs are never advertised. 

 

They are out there is you look. see below;

http://www.bournemouthclocks.co.uk/2/about-us/38/vacancies/

[JohnR725]

Besides apprenticeships depending upon your location in the world there are schools that teach watch repair.

[oldhippy]

I didn’t want to bring up about courses at collages but as its been mentioned I will tell you my bad experience with one.

Many years ago when I was running my own business I had far too much work. I didn’t want to take on an apprentice because I didn’t have the time. About 25 miles from me was a collage that undertook the teaching of watch and clock repairs, it was one of those learn all you need to know in a year or something like that, at that time I’d been working about 20 years and still learning new things. So this chap started and according to the collage was one of their best students. I offered him the use of my fully equipped workshop but he preferred to work from home. I let him take a few simple timepieces home to work on, hopeless he didn’t even know how to re-bush a clock properly. I spent more time teaching him that in the end it was quicker for me to do the work myself. It didn’t work out and because of that bad experience I have stayed away from recommending such courses.    

This just my opinion.    

[stevieisballer]

Thanks for all the information!


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[dadistic]

Greetings and Salutations!

Dive in! You can do a lot with a low budget, I know that I was *not* rolling in money when I was 16. 

Building a watch is certainly doable, I've put together a few myself, new and old parts, ended up with some unique and interesting pieces. 

Making a watch movement from scratch, now that is a challenge, but it can be done! Good goal to aspire to if you really get in to watchmaking.

Have Fun!

[JohnR725]

8 hours ago, oldhippy said:

I didn’t want to bring up about courses at collages but as its been mentioned I will tell you my bad experience with one

The problem with everything is you can always find good and bad examples of everything. I don't even know in the US whether there even is apprenticing anymore?

So school bad stories yes they do exist. I had seen a discussion where a graduated from a school perceived that he had all of his knowledge to go get a job. He did an interview where somebody seemed to be very patient and took him through a modern watch and it was quite obvious he didn't know how to do a watch. In the discussion he revealed that he never completed a watch at school but yet perceived somehow he would get a job. The school has since gone out of business.

So the better schools today hopefully have better standards and are part of a network perhaps. A lot of schools are wostep -based education or in this country SAWTA. So better schools have testing procedures when you graduate at least you know where you stand unfortunately watch repair can't be learned that way entirely. You get our school you go work in modern shops work on modern watches but to learn everything in watch repair takes time lots of time basically your entire life and you still not going to learn everything there is to know about watch repair.

 

[stevieisballer]

I live in the US and I have not heard of any apprenticeships. I have heard of some schools though.


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[jdm]

On 12/5/2016 at 9:50 PM, JohnR725 said:

You get our school you go work in modern shops work on modern watches but to learn everything in watch repair takes time lots of time basically your entire life and you still not going to learn everything there is to know about watch repair.

I think that's a bit of an extreme statement
Philippe Dufour has been making watches independently since 1978, I guess he was about 30 yrs old back then?

Although, we all know that repairing watches is more difficult than making them  

 

[JohnR725]

59 minutes ago, jdm said:

I think that's a bit of an extreme statement
Philippe Dufour has been making watches independently since 1978, I guess he was about 30 yrs old back then?

Although, we all know that repairing watches is more difficult than making them  

 

I noticed the smiley face as I'm replying so I'm somewhat feeling stupid because I think I'm jumping to a wrong conclusion from your response. So for that I apologize sometimes I miss read things. so I won't be quite as harsh on jumping on you for that first statement.

so how to learn watch repair? Specifically for schools I've seen the students worked with them out of the modern schools two years they can do a watch. But unless they get a job in a service center where everything is the same basically an extension of their school things can be challenging. there is no way school teaches you everything.

I sometimes compare learning watch repair to becoming a doctor. Have you ever noticed for doctors say they're practicing and you wonder why you can't get a doctor that's in the game? Watch repairs the same thing learn the basics but then you have to go practice more practice the better you get. Read the questions on the message board how many can come up with a quick answer for every single question? All the watches are different like doctors patients all have conceivably different stories different histories. although watch repair does have certain challenges doctors do not. Like resurrecting a dead patient the watch comes in its dead it's been previously worked on conceivably by lots of people especially antique pocket watches that's where things get really challenging to fix.

besides who wants to do something that we know all the answers? Do you think that Philippe Dufour has all the answers to watchmaking?

 

 

 

 

 

[jdm]

1 minute ago, JohnR725 said:

all the answers? Do you think that Philippe Dufour has all the answers to watchmaking?

I think he knows a thing or two

Seriously, I also think that in most professions people like to think of themselves like being the doctor of the object  or project they're working on. Be it an object, a court case, or archaeological site, comes in terrible state to you, then is brought back to life. In my everyday work of networking, sometime we work in a maintenance window, otherwise we need to operate on production systems and if any mistake is made, it's not just a slow-down, it's a business failure. At some time, some proud engineer liked to compare this to changing the wings of an airplane flying.
Personally I know that i'm no doctor, yet I think i'm better than some