I am interested in joining a local watch repairing club.

[Midazolam]

I am interested in joining a local watch repairing club.

Is there a list somewhere of local repair clubs? I live 100 miles north of St Louis Missouri near Hannibal Missouri.

[Shane]

Hannibal!  Say HI to Dr. Sherman Potter for me.

Welcome.

Shane 

[dadistic]

Although not specifically a repair club,  there is a chapter of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors in St Louis.

Check out their website for more info - https://www.nawcc.org

 

[Midazolam]

19 hours ago, Shane said:

Hannibal!  Say HI to Dr. Sherman Potter for me.

Welcome.

Shane 

You would be suppressed to know how many people ask where he lived in Hannibal.  By the way, there was a real one or two.  Shoeless Joe from Hannibal MO and of course Mark Twain,

18 hours ago, dadistic said:

Although not specifically a repair club,  there is a chapter of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors in St Louis.

Check out their website for more info - https://www.nawcc.org

 

Thank you for the info.  I did look go to their page and it is just what I am looking for

Larry (Midazolam)

[JohnR725]

19 hours ago, Midazolam said:

local watch repairing club

it would be nice if someone had a list of all the local watch repair clubs I unfortunately suspect the list would be really really short. That is if you restrict it to watch repair only

17 hours ago, dadistic said:

National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors in St Louis.

while it's a collecting Association does have involvement with just about everything associated with horology. This means you never know what you're going to find at your local meetings. But you also have the regional meetings where one or more chapters will combine together and have a really big usually yearly meeting. Up until the existence of eBay  the regional meeting was where I usually spent my money to pick up tools watches and other things. Then if you can manage to go to one of their national meetings that's the entire US really opens up the possibilities for things.

There's also another Association which is the American watch and clockmakers Association

https://www.awci.com/

out of curiosity how far do you want to drive to your local club? I notice they're having their annual meeting it's going to be in Harrison, Ohio. the annual meetings can be very interesting they even had one south of Seattle once it was quite nice at least as far as lectures went. the vendor display totally sucked as they were protesting a policy decision that they had made regarding Rolex parts so basically had local vendors only no one else which was very sad. But still the lectures were outstanding

I see they do have a list of the affiliate chapters not sure if there's any going to be near you.

https://www.awci.com/member-center/affiliate-chapters/

one of things interesting with chapters in this Association is at one time there were considerably more of them. For instance there was one in Seattle it still exists I still go to meetings which are really quite fun I learn a lot. ut as you see it's no longer on the list I don't think there's any chapters west of the Mississippi anymore. we dropped her affiliation with the national Association and never looked back on that decision and were still in business. More than likely there may be otherformer chapters out there somewhere perhaps

[grsnovi]

On 8/27/2022 at 6:28 PM, Midazolam said:

a local watch repairing club

I would be shocked if there even was such a thing.

[nickelsilver]

29 minutes ago, grsnovi said:

I would be shocked if there even was such a thing.

When I got started in the mid 90s I was in Tucson and looked up the local guild (a jeweler friend told me about it, I was like, "there's a whole group of folks making watches here in Tucson?!" haha). So these were pros, but they were happy to have me at their meetings and got me going to NAWCC meetings and then I packed up and went off to school!.

[JohnR725]

4 hours ago, grsnovi said:

I would be shocked if there even was such a thing.

I suspect that your quote is sort of correct.

in order to form a club you'd have to have enough people with similar interests to form club and the number of people repairing watches at a hobbyist level is possibly relatively small in a given area.

But what about other influences like the nawcc or AWCI. Both national associations that have or had local chapters some of which got to be quite big. This would allow better networking and more likely people could come together once they found others existed like them.

Or what about AWCI orphaned chapters. when I went to the local community college to learned watch repair the instructor George suggested that everyone should join the associations and of course the local chapters. I started going to the local AWCI chapter which at some point in time we decided to part ways with our national Association. I have to wonder how many other chapters have done something similar and may still be in existence out there.

in any case we still exist. Our meeting location is interesting because it's a school that has the sole purpose of teaching hobbyist watch and clock repair. So we get to meet a nice classroom. There is a mix of people that come to the meeting there are some professionals but the majority are hobbyists are people learning watch and/or clock repair.

http://www.norwestschoolofhorology.com/wwca/index.html

 

 

[dadistic]

It's great to see a thriving, independent group like you folks out in the northwest. 

There are some groups in Minneapolis/St Paul, including an AWCI affiliate, but I don't know how active they are any more.  Two and a half to three hours away, so I haven't gotten down there yet to meet the folks involved.  Seems to be some consolidation happening, groups are starting to merge, hope it all doesn't fade away before I get there

https://minnesotawatches.com/

Cheers!