How Watches Work
fratellowatches.com
How Watches Work
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Re: How Watches Work
#2To those that are interested in Watchmaking.
1. All books by Henry Fried. (A. many books overlap info., but if reasonably priced are work buying.)
2. All books by DeCarle. (see A above.)
3. George Daniel's book.
4. All past issues of AWCI magazine.
5. Oh yea, get Questions, and Answers for AWCI test questions.
(Don't pay a lot for these books, pamphlets. They can be found, but you need to hunt.)
6. Decide if you want to use a loupe, or stereoscope.
7. Yes--it does take a few years to get good.
8. You will not get rich repairing watches, but you can do it forever.
(If you are in the need if a watchmaker in the bay area, in a few months I will have a small shop. The business will be under the name of Jacob Decosta. I'm honest. There will be some very complicated watches I won't work on though. My prices will be vastly lower than factory prices.)
Re: How Watches Work
#3I would like to suggest "the history and mechanics of the self-winding mechanism" from the subtitle as a more informative title for this article.
Watches work in a lot of ways, after all; some are solar-powered quartz with a radio listening to the atomic broadcast!
Also, it appears "How Watches Work" is the name of the series, which would be awkward if another post from the series ended up on Hacker News.
Re: How Watches Work
#4To those that are interested in Watchmaking. 1. All books by Henry Fried. (A. many books overlap info., but if reasonably priced are work buying.) 2. All books by DeCarle. (see A above.) 3. George Daniel's book. 4. All past issues of AWCI magazine. 5. Oh yea, get Questions, and Answers for AWCI test questions. (Don't pay a lot for these books, pamphlets. They can be found, but you need to hunt.) 6. Decide if you want…
Kind of a niche for HN, but there's a few watchmaking programs catering to US military veterans that began after WWII, dried up a bit but seem to be making a bit of a resurgence.
Re: How Watches Work
#5To those that are interested in Watchmaking. 1. All books by Henry Fried. (A. many books overlap info., but if reasonably priced are work buying.) 2. All books by DeCarle. (see A above.) 3. George Daniel's book. 4. All past issues of AWCI magazine. 5. Oh yea, get Questions, and Answers for AWCI test questions. (Don't pay a lot for these books, pamphlets. They can be found, but you need to hunt.) 6. Decide if you want…
I really enjoyed the courses at: https://learnwatchmaking.com/
Re: How Watches Work
#6I got pretty into watches during the pandemic. It's definitely one of those expensive hobbies.
Re: How Watches Work
#7I got pretty into watches during the pandemic. It's definitely one of those expensive hobbies.
Not necessarily! You can get plenty of nerd mileage out of Orient, Seiko and Vostok automatic/mechanical watches for a reasonable amount of money.
Re: How Watches Work
#8I got pretty into watches during the pandemic. It's definitely one of those expensive hobbies.
Not necessarily! You can get plenty of nerd mileage out of Orient, Seiko and Vostok automatic/mechanical watches for a reasonable amount of money.
My first mechanical watch was a Seiko SKX007. I wore it almost everyday for ~10 years and it was a complete delight. There is something so wonderful about having something on your wrist that feels like magical engineering.
Re: How Watches Work
#9For those who are interested in superior technology, start reading about quartz movements and the piezoelectric effect. Citizen Watch Company recently release the most accurate quartz watch ever, accurate to 1 second per year. Contrast that to the mechanical watches that Rolex—one of the best mechanical manufacturers—produces and the best they can do is an accuracy of about 1 second per day. Hundreds of times less accurate. Yikes! And then you can get into radio-controlled and GPS-controlled solar watches that you literally never have to set or change the battery. So neat!
Mechanical watches are an emotional rather than rational technology, and hey if that's what you're into: mechanical watches and horse-drawn-buggies and gas lanterns then that's totally cool.
Re: How Watches Work
#10To those that are interested in Watchmaking. 1. All books by Henry Fried. (A. many books overlap info., but if reasonably priced are work buying.) 2. All books by DeCarle. (see A above.) 3. George Daniel's book. 4. All past issues of AWCI magazine. 5. Oh yea, get Questions, and Answers for AWCI test questions. (Don't pay a lot for these books, pamphlets. They can be found, but you need to hunt.) 6. Decide if you want…
Do you have a Google Form or something where people can sign up for an email notification when you open your shop?