My Pocket watch collection so far

A few general tips from a guy who loves tinkering with antiques:

- Disassemble things on a TRAY, so that nothing can roll away and fall off the table.

- Buy a decent ultrasonic cleaner. Use it often.

- Needlepoint tweezers are your friend.

- Get decent magnifiers.

- Photograph EVERY step. You'll never remember it all.

 

I always use a tray for things like this. I also have some small jars I use to put little screws in and stuff when working on small things.

i bought some watch makers tools so that I have the right tools for the job.

I've worked on all kinds of things but never pocket watches before so this would be my first time, I'll be practicing on a couple of scrap movements to start with. I'll be sure to take photos of each step as there will be a lot of steps and also I will take photos with measurements of the screws so that I don't get the screws mixed up and end up putting the wrong screw into a part.

I've been watching lots of youtube videos on watch service & repair.

Whats the best fluid to use in the ultra sonic cleaner? I know if I use soapy water parts could rust pretty quickly if I'm not able to get them dry fast enough.

 

I just use water. Water, and then towels to dry them afterwards.

 

I got an old pocket watch today and the hands were off the watch face so I decided to get my tweezers to attempt to put them back on and the hour hand breaks.

I'm not sure if I'm cut out for watch repair I have a feeling no matter how careful I am I'm probably just going to break them further rather than repairing them. The parts especially the hands are horribly fragile and expensive.

I can repair many things but watches are just a completely different ball game for me.

I'm going to resell the two smaller pocket watches, I'm going to leave them alone and sell them as they are otherwise I'll just end up breaking them further.

The others I will keep as time pieces and treasure them.

Maybe I can just get a job lot of old broken watches and practice on those, that way it wont matter if I break anything plus I'd have some nice cases where I can just put battery movements inside.

 

Having seen what goes into restoring a pocketwatch, I'm pretty sure that watchmakers are wizards, and that magic is real.

 

I can glue the broken hour hand back together. I may as well do something seeing that I've ordered all the stuff I need for watch repair, Its so easy to give in and give up on something that seems impossible to do at the time.

One thing I've learned from working on things is that if something seems to difficult, come back to it another time and try again.

Thats kinda what I've done but as I'm still waiting for all my bits and tools to arrive, there isn't much I can do right now. Everything I need is in the mail so I may as well give pocket watch repairing a go and if it doesn't work out I can say I tried.