This blog is what got me into the fabulous hobby of watch repairing. Well, this blog and Marshall's awesome repair videos over at Wristwatch Revival: https://www.youtube.com/@WristwatchRevival
Watch repairing is a very rewarding hobby. It requires copious amounts of patience, but there's something fundamentally satisfying about disassembling something to its individual components, cleaning them and reassembling them meticulously. These things are designed to be taken apart, and it shows. I'm hard-pressed to think of other modern day objects that are meant to do this.
Watch repairing is a very rewarding hobby. It requires copious amounts of patience, but there's something fundamentally satisfying about disassembling something to its individual components, cleaning them and reassembling them meticulously. These things are designed to be taken apart, and it shows. I'm hard-pressed to think of other modern day objects that are meant to do this.
There are thousands of tiny parts inside each warhead,
so steady hands are key. That’s why technicians go
through a skills assessment that includes disassembling
and assembling a mechanical wristwatch.
A co-worker keeps a blog of his watch restorations. I have no interest in the hobby, but I do have an interest in viewing the work of someone that does. Of particular interest to me is that what he restores isn't high-end stuff, but common watches that might have one particular bit of history that makes them interesting. Radium dials, for example.
> If it wasn't for the computing power/software complexity required, hobbyist 3D printers could probably have been a thing in the 70s or 80s
That statement completely ignores enormous quantities of engineering that have occurred.
Stepper motors, for example, had huge amounts of engineering thrown at them by disk drive manufacturers in order to get them where we are now.
Resin printers needed high precision galvanometers to direct laser beams. The control of that would have been ridiculous in the 1980s.
Modern resin printers rely on high-resolution monochrome LCD displays. That requires cheap LCDs (only remotely viable after 1990+) as well as enormous quantities of embedded RAM (4K monochrome takes almost 1MiB of RAM which was half the total memory of Powerbook 100, for example).
And modern printers rely on high-power UV LED sources to create uniform flux. Blue+ wavelength LEDs we're a decades long research task.
Revolutionary technologies appear when a series of engineering barriers drop that allow a synthesis of ideas.
The printing press is a good example. Lots of people talk about how the Chinese and the Muslims had the printing press, but that wasn't enough. The printing press needed engineering in paper, inks, moveable type, eyeglasses, an alphabet, etc. before it could take off.
Everything about 3D printing seems to be basically free of any kind of nonsense. Simple, highly reliable hardware (Sometimes you get a clog or something but nothing really fails badly for a very long time), made of cheap commodity parts, with software constantly being pushed to the limit of what's possible.
So many other hobbies feel like they're just excuses to bikeshed or gear collect, or they rapidly become gear collecting hobbies, sometimes leading to some disappointment in yourself when you see the hoard you never use.
Plus, it's repeatable, so you don't have to build daily routines around something irreplaceable. Some people enjoy that, but it doesn't fit well in the high tech mindset where anything that isn't repeatable feels like a liability, especially if managing physical objects and keeping track of your stuff is already a major source of stress.
Files don't wear out either, so it's not like software, where you assume it will likely need maintenance at some point and could stop working in a system update at an inconvenient time.
It also doesn't need much space or expensive equipment, and doesn't take so long to learn that us modern screen addicts would probably just give up before making progress.
They’re not complex, just easily taken apart and meant to be repaired by humans. The software isn’t particularly complex either, the reason for their surge recently was due to patents expiring for additive manufacturing. https://futurism.com/expiring-patents-set-to-improve-3d-worl...
Yeah, I suppose the software to control the printer is the relatively straightforward bit, the complex part is the software that slices the model and converts it into an efficient set of G-code commands for the printer. (That and the software used to create 3D models to begin with...)
That isn’t complex either. There was no reason besides patents that 3D printing could have been a reality decades ago. Simple math is all you need and gcode isn’t just 3D printing it’s also for CNC, something that was able to be done around that time.
While 3d printers aren't necessarily complicated they are fun to watch. They are like an inside-out machine. Most machines are hidden in some sort of casing or under a hood. 3d printers are exposed, so you are able watch the gears spin, belts turn, and the print head extrude.
I can relate - i took repairing espresso machines as a hobby since the pandemic. The parts are not complex at all and even 60+ years old E61-machines can be serviced easily (apart from not so cool stuff like asbestos as boiler insulation, leaded solder for boiler + fittings and mercury pressure switches).
But even todays machines (depending on manufacturer and origin) are very serviceable. Especially italian made ones.
Great espresso machine! Very pretty and takes almost no space + heats up promptly. I had a pre millenium "professional" model until last year (not my daily driver though).
I had a Dalla Corte mini as main machine but couldnt resist a great offer and upgraded to Ascaso Baby T recently :)
What surprises me about the Italian coffee machines is you can buy many of the parts at a local hardware store. They look home made. The Chinese ones seem to be 100% custom parts, maybe to account for price at scale.
Lenovo vs. Apple notebooks. My ThinkPad T430u comes apart simply and you can remove subassemblies quite easily. I replaced the touchpad and battery on my daughters MacBook Pro and it was a nightmare.
I wish there was a good beginner level entry point with a kit or something. But most of what I saw was "you need to build your own tools and then you can start" and that's too high a barrier for me.
Is there by chance a simulator of this on Steam if a good beginner hobby kit doesn't exist?
Bah, don't listen to 'em. Inexpensive set of jeweler's screwdrivers, and pair of precision tweezers, some sort of magnifying device, and a couple oils (use Liberty oil for the pivots, it's cheap but good enough to start). Cheap oiler tools off eBay or amazon. I have maybe $50 in tools.
Buy some cheap movements off eBay, and dive in. Yeah, you'll lose parts and break things but you'll learn a bunch.
I have a couple Westclox watches from the 60s that I bought for $10/each on eBay, and they both now run at +/- 2 seconds a day.
A set of small screwdrivers (at least one 0.8mm and one 1.2mm or so), pointy tweezers and a movement holder should be all you need to try the hobby out.
The screwdrivers and tweezers should be of good quality though, at least get the ones that cost 3-4$ each from China.
And you don't even need a mechanical watch. Cheap quartz watches also have tiny interesting parts in them that you can try to disassemble and reassemble.
Watches are pretty amazing, a mechanical engineering marvel crammed into tiny compartment that can easily keep working for 100 years with minimal upkeep, very sturdy, looking great at almost any design era and helping with time. I never got the lure of 'smart' watches of these days, they all look like plastic toys for kids including most expensive ones, definitely when compared to good mechanical watches. Also in formal environment its one of few 'jewelry' items that are always allowed along with wedding ring, anything else may raise eyebrows and give negative points depending on location/company.
I've seen people's OCD around me or similar issues getting worse with arrival of smart watches and nearly constant interruptions from notifications. Yet those folks don't turn them off even if I mention visible degradation on their part, I guess then they would end up with charging-needy expensive-yet-soon-obsolete gadget without much else (sport monitoring is cool for some folks, again I simply don't get the desire for constant measurements and comparisons - for me it takes away most of the fun that sports should be in first place, I focus on being challenged at my current level, not chasing some meaningless numbers).
I guess if one is 'free' from such things the described effect is less bad, but why the heck would I ever wanted to be notified instantly on my hand when something happens? Peace of mind and clear focus are rare and precious things these days, and this destroys it for few seconds of dopamine kick.
Very relaxing. Until impossibly small $15 Incabloc springs start flying around the room. I'm convinced these sublimate into a vapor the moment they fly out of view of your loupe.
Not relaxing to me, like the YouTube videos. It is difficult and frustrating. It is very easy to wreck things like brass threads. Often lots of things are seized up on anything more than a few years old. Fun all the same.
I do, I have a fine whetstone. I agree, properly sharp/shaped screwdrivers make a huge difference. I think I need a better roller sharpening guide, and lots more stuff. :)
This is so true. I used to repair phones and other gadgets before starting with watch repair... and I was kinda scared to take apart something filigree like a watch because it surely would never go back togheter properly.
But no, everything goes back togheter fine without having to apply any kind of force. If it doesn't it's 99% my fault. E.g. even tiny screwholes are slightly tapered so the screws kinda fall in there automatically.
I have a Kershaw Leek, which while it isn't particularly expensive, is easily on the "cost exceeds direct utility" side of things, is easy to take apart, and I can't imagine what I would regularly take it apart for.
Well if you carry it regularly, when you take it apart you will find there is lots of lint and other gunk on and around the detent ball, in and around the pivot and elsewhere. Upon cleaning and oiling it you will probably notice the action is a lot smoother. In rare cases if it gets really gunked up it can actually effect the locking mechanism of the knife presenting a potential safety hazard. Having your pocket knife close on you while breaking down a cardboard is no fun!
Kershaw leek is really a great knife.
Also keeping your pocket knife sharp is another example of it being directly maintainable and repairable. I often spend several hours a month sharpening my pocket knives though I probably have a few more than the average person.
Marshall’s channel is amazing. He is so humble and always curious about learning. It got me into watchmaking as well, primarily because his attitude of “If I can do it, so can you!”.
My project at the moment is to try to make a mechanical watch.
The concept is that it will only have one hand (the hour hand), and the mainspring barrel will encircle the entire movement, you'll wind it up by rotating the bezel (and therefore the outer part of the barrel) clockwise, and the mainspring will drive the inner barrel clockwise. The hour hand is mounted directly on the inner barrel (which therefore completes 1 revolution per 12 hours), and the rest of the movement only exists to regulate the speed at which the inner barrel rotates. So the rest of the movement will be a series of gearings-down, with an escapement at the end.
And to set the time, the movement will be mounted into the case with a ratchet, such that when you turn the bezel anticlockwise, the entire movement (and therefore the hand) rotates anticlockwise allowing you to set the hand. You'll only be able to set it as precisely as the ratchet (i.e. you'd need 720 positions of the ratchet to set it to 1-minute precision), but the watch will never keep particularly good time anyway so I don't think this is a problem.
Yesterday I got an escapement at almost-watch-scale ticking for the first time, albeit erratically and requiring enormous drive torque: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvNODOp6uBc (3d printed for expediency, the real one will all be machined; and I say "almost-watch-scale" because although it fits inside the 50mm diameter that I am aiming for, it is obviously too thick to go inside a sensible watch).
I have a relatively inexpensive Seiko 5 mechanical watch that I really like, but as much as I love the idea of mechanical watches I simply don't have the patience to tend to it. Accuracy is a big problem (at least with my specific watch). Half of the time it's magnetized and running a few minutes fast per day, and the other half (shortly after de-magnetizing it) it's running a few minutes slow per day, meaning I needed to remember to adjust it every morning and always had to assume there's at least a minute or two margin of error one way or the other any time I read it--almost completely defeating my reason for wearing a watch in the first place.
For a while I wore a solar-powered Casio that self-adjusted every morning using the NIST atomic clock radio signals, and the peace of mind knowing that my watch was always accurate was such a pleasure in comparison. It was kind of cheap build quality and eventually fell apart, but I don't think I'll ever go back to a mechanical watch again after that.
Even though my mechanical watch wasn't as inaccurate as yours (mine was only a minute or two off a week), the act of regularly adjusting it to match the true time slowly changed my impression of it from a "serious timekeeping device", the image cultivated by marketing, into "this is a silly hobby for people who have too much time and money". Doubly so when you look how much it costs to repair a mechanical watch.
This single-use timekeeping device was literally the least accurate timekeeping device on my person, compared to my phone and computer.
It's also the only timekeeping device that will still work after three days away from an electric plug, and the only one you would wear all you life.
1 second/day is 10 PPM. Reaching that accuracy with only mechanical means in a device small and robust enough to be worn on the body is something to admire, not to fault for its limits.
I replaced my mechanical watch with a G-Shock that lasts ten years without charging of any kind. Even my current Garmin will last a week when charged - it will last even longer if I turn off every single feature.
I use the Garmin to track my exercise - I don't care if the mechanical watch will last all my life if it doesn't do what I want it to do, and it's not even that great at the one thing that it does do.
There aren't a lot of normally-priced mechanical watches that get 1 second/day accuracy. That precision can be admired in mechanical watches, but as I said, it becomes a fun expensive hobby.
Digital watches also exist, last years on a single cell and some have a solar cell to extend that. A cheap Casio F-91W is accurate to 1 sec/day and I imagine you’ll find others that can do better.
People (including myself) often wear mechanical watches because they really enjoy the engineering/history/whatever of mechanical movements. To me, I enjoy getting to wind my watch/set the date and time/have a reason to interact with it. I enjoy that it's a conversation starter for some people (hey, nice watch!) and for others it's an opportunity to talk about something I enjoy. It's also nice that it's aesthetically very pleasing compared to a random seiko or electric watch.
Well, when the collapse happens and you have no batteries, satellites, etc., you can use the stars[1] to tell time and reset your mechanical watch to within a reasonable estimate given the circumstances. I own a relatively cheap mechancal watch I adjust every week. I bought a Garmin vs. an Apple/Samsung watch too. My Garmin battery lasts about 20 to 24 days depending on how I use the watch vs. 24 to 48 hours. It does more than I need, but has come in handy in my line of work.
Half of the time it's magnetized and running a few minutes fast per day, and the other half (shortly after de-magnetizing it)
Wow, that's bad. Do you know what is magnetizing it? A cheap Seiko 5 should be able to keep time within a few seconds a day. Minutes a day means it is broken. It isn't a just tuning issue, there is something else going on.
Yes, it sounds a degaussing and calibration. My simple Seiko 5 with 7S36C is within +/- 4 seconds per day, and I never adjust it except short-month skipping.
Put it one a timegrapher and check amplitude, beat rate & beat error in different watch positions (watch dial up, dial down, crown up, crown down etc.).
There are timegraphing apps on the iOS/Android app stores (using the microphone for detecting beat signals) for a very quick test. The watch's tick signal may be a bit on the weak side but i usually get some data in a reasonably silent environments with direkt contact of the watch to the phone's body.
Seiko 5s have clear back covers generally, and a water intrusion should be pretty visble, in my opinion.
Oil age maybe a factor, but maybe it’s dropped? I had a Swatch with an ETA movement (with shock absorption nonetheless), and I somehow managed to damage its balance wheel assembly by dropping to a soft carpet from ~80cm, because it started stopping when it was not in dial up position. They even opened it and recalibrated and oiled it, but it’s dead.
Accuracy can vary a lot even within one price segment. My Seiko 5 was pretty inaccurate too, while my current watch cost 30 bucks more and has less than 3 seconds deviation per day. So I set the time once every 1-2 months and that's perfectly fine for me.
But it's definitely not the most practical tech.
> almost completely defeating my reason for wearing a watch in the first place.
Maybe it's just me but I don't need perfect accuracy on a wristwatch. If one minute more or less matters I'm already too late anyway.
I also got really into learning about watches and watching a watch repair stream on twitch (in 2020), and I even pulled out my great-grandfather's pocket watch from the 1890s and got it serviced/repaired (or at least running again for a while but now it won't run again; I suspect the person I took it to didn't do a great job).
When it came to buying a watch for myself I also ended up also getting a solar powered Casio with NIST synchronization ("Waveceptor"), the type with hands (for the looks). I love the idea that it's technology without software updates or battery changes (hmm, does the battery you charge with solar wear out?), and always keeps perfect time to the second without any effort on my part. This one (price seems a lot higher than before): https://www.casio.com/us/watches/casio/product.WVA-M640D-1A/
Somehow, watching all those meticulous adjustments to make sure the mechanical watches kept good time made me prioritize that to the point I didn't even get a mechanical watch.
I'm the same. I had several Seiko 5 watches in the past and even modded one of them with a hacking mechanism. I would monitor the accuracy every week with a timegrapher app on the phone and try to make small adjustments.
The convenience of having a modern Bluetooth-syncing cheap Xiaomi fitess watch is so great I don't believe I'll ever go back.
I own a cheap seiko 5 as well. It's basically so close to perfect you need a specialized device that measures its error to a ridiculous degree to figure out its running slightly fast. It's like average 3 point something seconds a day.
I have been torn between wearing mechanical watches and smart watches. I don't need/want/like notifications on my wrist, but I really enjoy the activity and heart rate tracking of the Apple Watch.
I have been reluctantly wearing a Samsung Withings watch that looks mechanical but is actually smart, but a mediocre compromise (you need to wear it higher up the wrist than I usually do, and I don't believe it gives accurate heart rate and activity measurements). 30 day battery life is pretty cool though.
I may just start going back to my Vostok and Seiko watches full time at this point. (I don't like spending a lot of money on watches, anyone who is curious on getting into them should check out both brands as economical starters - the Vostok Amphibia has a storied history!)
Any smartwatch will become unusable, polluting garbage a few years (months?) from now: a canonical example of planned obsolescence. Their self-tracking functions are a double-edged sword, a source of stress as much as relief.
Any well-built and well-maintained mechanical watch will last you decades. No dependencies on electricity and network connectivity, it's a self-contained and entirely autonomous piece of human engineering. Mine was built in 1975 and is one year older than me. In a world where everything fades away so fast, wearing it everyday feels like owning a precious relic.
>No dependencies on electricity and network connectivity, it's a self-contained and entirely autonomous piece of human engineering.
This already veers straight back into the marketing territory that everyone in this thread remarks was an eye opener when they actually got a mechanical watch.
I have a mild prepper tendency and I had to eventually kill my romantic views of mechanicals when I realized it just time drift and wouldn't last long without regular maintenance from someone with the tools and knowledge/skill, not to mention someone in this very comment section mentions a mechanical watch suffering a death from drop onto carpeted floor.
Mechanical watches are cool, but I easily spend less time without my PineTime (which I'm surprised nobody else in these comments has even mentioned) working than my friend spends manually syncing his seiko back to time/maintaining it.
I never heard about PineTime until now! Looks like a cool gadget. What has your experience been with it, apart from it being more accurate than a mechanical?
It's an interesting experience, I have github send me an email on the odd occasion the community developed "OS" gets an update. Then I download the zip file on my phone browser and upload the file on Gadgetbridge for the update.
I sometimes call it my "soviet in a good way" watch, it ended up becoming my "function over fashion" watch, which means almost all day every day wear for a few years now.
pros:
decent battery life (1-2 weeks, i turn off bluetooth and gps on my phone overnights which helps both devices)
"good enough" design (durable enough for all but swimming/showering)
easily replaced or modified (even takes standard watch bands)
flashlight, notifications and all traditional digital watch functions
multiple community "OS" options
cons:
community development can be slow, buggy
water droplets particularly from natural rain can trigger the touchscreen, not amazing if you bike in seattle or something
anemic hardware
The charger is cheap and isn't that quick but again, the pinetime kind of excels in knowing the difference between good and good enough, as I once heard an engineer say (about something else), and I rarely find myself bothered by it's lack of luxuries.
>What do you think is the PineTime's biggest strength when compared with a mainstream smartwatch?
Frankly, I think the combination of price/replaceability and privacy are the only things unique (besides niche FOSS modding) to it among smart watches; and I like the open aspect of essentially every detail.
It makes it the only smart watch I've used that feels like it respects my dignity, frankly. A minor philosophical quibble but one I take stoic pleasure in. It is a tool, and technology that serves me, not another.
> Have you found the watch to be hackable? Is there any sort of customization that you've done to it?
I actually got it hoping I'd have the inclination to tinker with it, but my only idea that wasn't already being worked on by the default "OS" is a red flashlight mode, which with the IPS screen is a moot point anyways, since the black pixels when turned on make for a low-light flashlight anyways, heh. A hardware drawback that ironically makes it a more accessible tool in my experience.
The PineTime is still an electronic gadget that you won't use for very long.
My watch takes 15 seconds to rewind each day, and 5 seconds to be time adjusted by one minute twice a week. Service is every 5 years, the last one cost me 88 €. It gets more valuable each year, and I plan to bequeath it to my son in a (hopefully) very distant future.
Yes, it's manual. I have no experience with automatic ones.
Admittedly, it is a rather pricey model (Omega Speedmaster). I bought it second hand for 1500 € a few years ago. Unfortunately, prices have since skyrocketed for many emblematic watches like this one.
For me it's the opposite. Notifications and payments are my main benefit. I would never wear a watch that shows only the time (hence I never wore one since the late 90s until mid 2010s). Sleep tracking with SpO2 is a big thing for me too though.
I think mechanical watches are much more about being jewellery than function, even though it's impressive engineering. But I'm not a very flashy guy (I don't even own any shirts that fit anymore, just T-shirts lol) so I don't really care.
But it's good to see everyone can get what they like. I'm personally really happy with how far smartwatches have come.
Yes I've seen that kind of watch too. I forget which brand it was but it was one of the mechanical brands.
For what it's worth, the amazfit and Xiaomi products also have very great battery life (around 2 weeks) and some are very light. With the gadgetbridge or notify for Android apps they're really privacy conscious too.
If you're cheap/privacy/FOSS focused like myself, I find the "PineTime" is largely the modern day Pebble watch.
It may not literally watch every breath you take while you sleep, but I haven't wanted that personally anyways.
Only real drawbacks are battery life is only OK (about a week or so depending), the IPS screen can be bright in the dark (though it's a nice flashlight) and it only has 1 meter of water resistance, though it seems well sealed enough to trust it if I fall into water momentarily. (And really, swimming/showering with watches is kind of niche anyways)
I miss my Pebble :( I still have it, but I blame Apple and normiesl consumers for the death of the Pebble.
Consumers bought into Apple's shiny power hungry oled Apple Watch and yet they still complain about battery life to this day. Do you really need slick animations on your watch? Consumers will still buy what is shiny and cool looking over what actually works.
And don't even get me started on WearOS, Google's sorry excuse is such a disappointment, I swear I'd have to actually try if I wanted make as many bad UX & performance sucking decisions as they did.
If that's your use case, definitely check out the Withings Scanwatch line. If you're not using a lot of the other features, the battery can prob go well over 30 days between recharging.
I was wearing a MiBand and getting ready to get an Apple Watch. Then my wife got me a Longines auto. I'll never go back to smartwatches again.
I'm not a collector when it comes to watches, and I can happily wear that Longines until the end of time, and will be happy.
Having a tactile watch with real hardware with no electricity inside brings me more joy than some capable electronic toy which needs constant tending and replacement.
If I was climbing mountains, maybe but mere outdoor activities I have a ProTrek. More than enough.
In a similar story, my wife gave me an Omega calibre 1861 Moonwatch years ago, and I nearly always wear it. But a few years ago, I got an Apple Watch for running, and now I often wear both, because I like the heart monitor, the haptic hints while driving, and don't always have my phone along. I wish the Apple Watch had a face that didn't have a time display.
Consider something like a Whoop or Oura Ring which monitors health metrics but doesn’t rely on a watch? That’s what I’ve settled on so that I have the best of both worlds.
Wow. I had looked at the Oura Ring before and thought it looked cool, but I missed that it basically requires a subscription, which is wild considering it seems like I get all of the same metrics from my Garmin watch with no subscription required.
I wear a smart watch at the gym to track my heart rate, but when not at the gym I wear a mechanical watch (or some other normal watch... I recently got a Casio World Time I have love way more than I probably should).
I had an Apple Watch, but sold it, as I felt guilty not wearing it more, with all that it can do. I ended up getting the cheapest Polar watch option, that does everything on-device (I don't have an account or anything), and can wear that to the gym if I just want to check out my heart rate.
Try Garmin Instinct? It's a digital watch (not analog) and more of a fitness tracker than a smart watch. You can disable any notifications you don't want.
That's where I ended up. My Instinct has replaced my mechanical watches for every occasion except for the most formal. The app is decent, the metrics are awesome, and the accessories work without fuss (I pair mine with the Heart Rate strap when doing kettlebell stuff). I love my other watches and still have one or two I will eventually convince myself to buy, but the Garmin Instinct 2 has been on my wrist for 90% of the last year.
I disabled all but the most important notifications (calls, texts primarily) and it's been great. I no longer have to drag my phone out of my pocket when someone calls me, and all unnecessary notifications can wait until I'm bored.
I had both a Pebble v1 and a Pebble v2 and loved them both. Pebble went defunct though, so I switched back to a Seiko 5 automatic dive watch once I found I didn't really care for any of the other available smart watches at the time.
There's something beautiful to me about a mechanical watch being tied to my personal relativity. Compared to an NTP synchronized smart watch, nothing should update the time on my watch but me. The actual usefulness of this feature is merely philosophical but it makes me happy to consider.
The only thing I miss is weather at a glance on my Pebble. I used a watch face with the temperature on it and to this day I still look at my wrist when I'm thinking about the temperature lol
I wish I could buy an Apple Watch without screen, crown and button. Just a smart disc to record all my Health and activity data, worn under my wristwatch
Mechanical watches these days are primarily about aesthetics. Although I must say that I find myself reaching less and less for my mobile these days to find out the time because I wear a mechanical watch.
A smartwatch is about data, primarily.
You can have both. Use the mechanical watch for occasions that require a formal attire and use the smartwatch as your daily driver and sport companion.
For me it was an easy choice. First, I was starting to worry about heart health. Second, my mechanical watches could be sold for more than I paid for them.
Bartosz does an amazing job of making custom interactives and animations to support his articles. It looks like he uses custom canvas with webgl for the 3d renders.
There are 3d engines in JavaScript like three.js (https://threejs.org/) that can abstract some of the 3d rendering work for you.
I agree with naet that threejs might be the thing to look at if you want to make 3d animations. My own interactive diagrams are 2d, and I often use svg with reactive data filling in the parameters. [1] I've also tried hand crafting and it's not so bad for pages like this. They're mostly write-once pages, not software that's being maintained for many years. Some of our intuitions are out of whack when they tell us that we need abstractions and frameworks for maintainability.
Nice to see this again. Such a clear breakdown of a complex topic, presented beautifully.
Tangentially related, the documentary The Watchmaker's Apprentice [0] is a captivating look at the dedication it takes to create a mechanical watch. It's amazing that it's possible for a single person to craft each tiny cog and spring from scratch and put it all together.
I worked at a local-owned jewelry store for years (starting out as on-call computer guy). The kind with an old fashion in-house jeweler who did all repairs himself (setting stones, resizing rings, cleanings, etc). We did everything EXCEPT most watch repairs. We changed batteries in the quartz watches, and replaced and repaired bands, and performed some minor repairs of mechanical watches, but we sent out most watch repairs to a watchmaker several cities away.
The boss, who was an old jeweler who had started out in the business as a boy in the fifties working under a jeweler and watchmaker, always said that watchmakers are a dying breed, and could pretty much name their price.
When I started working and learning the trade we had two watchmakers that we shipped to. Within two years one of those had retired, and we were unable to find a replacement for him.
I loved working and repairing jewelry (even more so that my fulltime job in IT for local gov), and wanted to become a watchmaker, but my life took me elsewhere. Now that I am older and in a better place in life I often think of those three years, and have been considering obtaining the tools to start up a hobby in one or the other...or both.
Like any hobby, there is a YouTube culture around mechanical wristwatch maintenance/repair these days if you want to learn more. If I remember correctly, there’s a channel called Wristwatch Revival that is quite good.
This post is what got me into mechanical watches as I've always wondered how the analogue clocks/watches work but couldn't bother myself to actually read upon it. But after the article, I even got myself a clean Seiko 5 automatic, not because I wanted a fancy watch, but I wanted to own a piece of mechanical wonder.
Grand Seikos are some of the best mechanical watches. Their quartz line is also exceptional. Very underrated and much prefer them over overpriced Rolex.
The Spring Drive movement is amazing, very accurate, very high quality and that smooth sweeping seconds hand is mesmerizing. Availability is good, and the price is a lot better than the high-end Swiss brands.
Rolex these days is a joke, even the authorized dealers will rip you off shamelessly. They will either refuse to sell you a watch they have in store, or they will force you to buy 30 grand in extra jewelry just to get the Rolex you want.
It's a mechanical movement regulated by quartz. In a traditional mechanical movement, the escapement prevents the main spring from unwinding all at once. It is done with a fork which ticks at a certain rate governed by the balance wheel. In a Spring Drive movement, the escapement is replaced with an electromagnetic "brake" governed by a quartz crystal. So it still has many of the characteristics of a mechanical watch: it's still powered entirely by a main spring which can be wound or automatically wound by your body movements, it needs regular maintenance like other mechanical watches, and it isn't as durable as most quartz-only watches.
That's true but it's still driven by a spring and mainly mechanical. I understand people who don't like it, but I also see it as a reasonable tradeoff and find them just as fascinating as purely mechanical models. In the end people wear them for the same reasons.
I agree with you. I used to stock up gold Rolexes as investment but sold them when their value peaked during the pandemic. For collection purposes? Rolexes are duds.
There’s no doubt that smart watches offer way more functionality than a mechanical watch which is appealing to most consumers. However, what you’re buying with mechanical watches is more a form of art these days, and, for certain watches (eg Rolex) a status symbol. As someone who has always been drawn to watches (of all kinds), I really enjoyed this article. I even took off my watch (Omega Planet Ocean) and peered through the exhibition case back to take a look at the balance wheel and double barrels. Thanks for sharing!
This reminds me of Dave Sobel's book Longitude, which tells a fascinating story on how John Harrison created the first reliable marine clock. Such stories humble me and make me deeply appreciate the ingenuity of mankind to conquer the seemingly impossible challenges to build the civilization we enjoy today.
Incredible as usual. Like a visit to a science museum. Wikipedia should commission this guy to explain all the things in this intuitive, interactive, visual way.
Do you know where he says he's not taking commissions? Just curious bc I wonder who is trying to commission this kind of stuff, and what his reason is for not doing it.
The original post [1] was ranking #4 as the highest-upvoted story on Hacker News before it got kicked to #5 last August by Bram Moolenaar's death announcement [2], then to #6 after Altman's saga ranked #3 a few weeks ago.
Over all, this story is classified as #1 in creative content that is not in the genre of news or announcements.
There are semi-electric versions of mechanical watches based on "tuning fork" movements. They are cheap and accurate, and are a stepping stone between mechanical and quartz from the 60s/70s
to make it practical on a tuning fork, that movement of the forks would need to correspond to the tooth size of the wheel. For a large tuning fork, its probably in the order of mm, so not beyond home shop manufacture
A ratchet and pawl limits the backlash to the distance between the teeth on the ratchet gear; think of it this way; if it were to turn less than the radial distance between the teeth on the ratchet gear, backlash could still happen; similarly in regular operation, it turns the ratchet gear slightly more than that distance, and there is backlash until the pawl engages.
I bought a mechanical watch after reading this blog post and it's been my daily driver since. It always brings a smile to look at it and see what fine craftsmanship and mechanical intelligence can achieve.
Diving into watch repairing? It's like the DIY version of a puzzle game - tricky but super satisfying. Hats off to the internet for turning casual viewers into budding horologists. And for those who just enjoy restoration blogs, it's cool to be a fan without getting your hands dirty. As for beginners seeking an easy start, a watch repair simulator game sounds like a fun, stress-free way to dip your toes in. Whether you're a hands-on tinkerer or a digital-only enthusiast, every tiny screw and spring brings its own adventure.
My favorite watch ever was a self-winding mechanical Swatch. I suspect they (Swatch) acquired the company that made it. Disappointingly, when the pins that held the band on started to slip, there was no good way to repair it.
I've since switched to a smart watch, but I keep getting tempted to go back. I generally use my smart watch as a very gentle alarm, and for fitness tracking. I just don't want to be the geek who wears two watches. Maybe I should only wear it at night?
The Swatch brand was founded 1983 by ETA CEO Thomke and his Engineers. ETA is a watch movement manufacturer.
Speaking of Swatch and mechanical watches: the Sistem51 is an interesting watch, since it's the only mechanical watch ever fabricated in a 100% automated production line. The parts are welded together and held by a single screw.
https://www.swatch.com/en-us/sistem-51.html
A self-winding watch needs to be worn for hours each day to not run out of power. A manual-wind watch will be a better choice for a night-only mechanical watch.
I have an Oris Aquis Date that I purchased for myself a few months ago, I love looking at the flywheel movement and hearing the tick when I put it up to my ear.
Looking at drawings 3 & 4, these linear vs rotational springs are analogous considering they are each at rest in the center of the user control slider. They can act like a spring in either direction, and are basically sitting there in the neutral or non-energy-storing condition (zero-sprung or zero-wound respectively) until you move the slider away from the center position.
Take a look at the 9th or 10th interactive drawing, where you can move the slider to the right to wind the mainspring, then release the slider to watch the mainspring unwind.
When the energy is depleted, all the bands in the coil are bunched up around the outside of the barrel. It's not much of a spring any more.
This is the same type of torsion spring as in drawing 4 but with the mainspring being used for primary energy storage there is no desire for recovery to a neutral position from both clockwise & counterclockwise directions like you see in drawing 4. Instead you only need to ever draw energy from storage to use in a single rotational direction. Opposite rotation is used only to store externally applied energy.
So you wind it in one direction to store energy then it releases the energy in the opposite direction.
But without the precurvature shown in drawing 11 the torsion spring would tend to be exhausted when it was "zero-wound" like the one in drawing 4, with the coils widely spaced away from each other, free to absorb & recover energy from either rotational direction. And since we only need to draw energy in one rotational direction, that amounts to only half of the energy the spring is capable of storing for our purposes. Notice how about half the length of the spring is coiled similarly to drawing 4, with the upper half of the loose spring coiled less tightly and in the opposite direction.
Because when our mainspring is exhausted, we want it to be bunched up along the outside of the barrel so we get the most out of it before it needs to be retensioned. And when it's fully retensioned we want to get maximum energy storage from the hardware so at that starting point we want the coils to be tighly wound, bunched up around the arbor.
But not too tight.
Or it could be overwound.
As long as there is some space in between the coils, when recovering rotational energy you have access to what is stored along the entire length of the free portion of the coil. But once it's wound tightly enough for the coils to be in significant direct concentric contact, the free portion of the coil becomes so small it does not contain enough energy to drive the timekeeping mechanism.
It could get so tight that it's not much of a spring any more. Closer to a solid cylinder with a slight tab hanging off.
Which is more of a problem when both ends of the torsion spring are permanently attached to their substrates.
Instead in these drawings, the color-coded metal strip is used to provide a friction grip between the outer end of the coil and the barrel, strong enough grip to drive the timekeeping mechanism but designed to slip counterclockwise within the barrel if manual winding proceeeds more than necessary, slipping before the coil can get wound too tightly.
Basically, overcharge protection for a non-electric hardware device.
Bitcoin is like a virtual Swiss watch, with the base layer being the center wheel and PoW mining being the mainspring. The third wheel is the BIP300 protocol and the fourth wheel is LN and other L2s. The nodes are the balance wheels. https://youtu.be/9_QsCLYs2mY
Watch repairing is a very rewarding hobby. It requires copious amounts of patience, but there's something fundamentally satisfying about disassembling something to its individual components, cleaning them and reassembling them meticulously. These things are designed to be taken apart, and it shows. I'm hard-pressed to think of other modern day objects that are meant to do this.